Problems creating wiki categories that actually do any thing (from Talk:Page Creation Information)

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Now find another wiki page. Use a talk page if you're bashful, or make a new page. Put the text "{{Template:Snargash}}" somewhere on that page. This is how you tell the wiki, "Go find that template, and include its contents right here!"

When you look at you page after saving or previewing, instead of "{{Template:Snargash}}", you should see the contents of Template:Snargash. It will just say, "My name is Snargash Moonclaw, and I am awesome!"

Not to throw confusion in, but I've never actually done it that way.  I don't type {{Template:Snargash}}, and I'm not even sure that works (I haven't tested yet).  The funky brackets are actually the syntax for the word "template," so to put a template on any page, you don't even need the first part.  If you have a template created somewhere called "Template:Goober," then putting {{Goober}} on any page will do the template.

[Lmns Crn]

Hey, I didn't know that. I'm guessing it works either way, since all my templates are called up by {{Template:Whatever}}, and they seem to work okay.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

[blockquote[LC]
Would you mind linking the reference you found so useful? I'm still mostly groping about in the dark myself, you see.[/blockquote]

While the actual page may as well be quoting Stephen Hawking in hieroglyphics for all the use I can make of it, the menu on the left of it will link to explanations of a number of things (in the case referred to, Categories) which are useful. However, as Ishy can attest (from my actions based upon that info) the link still could stand to be more informative. . .

Being tired and about to head home, I'll delve more into these matters tomorrow.  - will probably block quote yesterday's discussion with Ishy from my User Talk page, to try and present/figure out how to do what I was trying to without creating the problem which resulted from my doing so. . . (Sorry Ish - I didn't see what was occurring until I clicked on All Categories from the Wiki Main Page. . .)

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Actual conclusions to my confusion italicized near bottom and problem/question reformulated from them in bold

[blockquote[Sunday User Talk]Snargash, I am changing some of your categories to include your campaign setting name in them, so that there's no confusion when someone else inevitably also wants to use a "Races" category, etc. --Ish 20:52, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay - I'm still experiencing a bit of confusion as to when the use of the Setting Template on a page handles prevents that from happening - my impression had been that using it on all my pages made it unnecessary to clarify further - everything automatically referred to the setting only. . .--Snargash Moonclaw 21:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)



Okay, I'm going to write up a tutorial soon on how to use categories. However, I would recommend that all your category titles be changed to "Panisodore <Category Title>," so that when they show up in sub-categories, they will appear properly in alphabetical order. So, your categories "Power Groups (Pansidore)" should be changed to "Pansidore Power Groups," and the same should be done with other categories. --Ish 21:40, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
[edit] CATEGORIES

Snargash, ALL your categories should start with the word "Panisadore," so that they 1 - show up properly in alphabetical order, and 2 - disambiguate properly. Please don't create more categories without that. Thanks! --Ish


UUUUGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! THat's part of what I've been trying to prevent! If you click on the Category Panisadore under those circumstances ABSOLUTELY EVERYFREAKINGTHING is listed under the letter P! THat's not alphabetical order when the rest of the alphabet ceases to functionally exist!!! I want to be able to look under the letter R and immediately see "Races (panisadore)" and "Regions (Panisadore)" and click on them - not have to scroll down a page full of categories as

P

Panisadore aaa
Panisadore aba
Panisadore abb
. . .
Panisadore caa
. . .
Panisadore ad infinitum


until I finally locate

Panisadore Races


Are you saying that Races (Panisadore) won't disambiguate from Races (any other setting)? Under the conditions above setting up the categories becomes a complete waste (of over a week's worth of frustration and hair pulling just rtyiung to find out how to do the little bit that I've actually done). Further more, it's pointless since instead of organizing the information it simply clusters it up together even worse than if there are no categories beyond the setting itself.--Snargash Moonclaw 21:59, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

    It does not become a waste, because the purpose of categories is not for each individual wiki user to have pretty, organized indexes - the purpose is for the entire wiki to be organized, and in the grand scheme of things (the whole wiki), organization works much better to have specific campaign settings listed out in the categories. I sympathize with you wanting your own special category pages just for Panisadore, but the categories are not for the individual, they're for the entire wiki. --Ish

        I grasp the macro-level organizational priority - I'm finding myself confused as to how/if it works beyond that. I've been under the impression that a setting could be further organized (hence my question about disambiguation of "Races (x)" and "Races (y)" at the micro level by establishing through the templates that such internal (sub)organization was specific only to material utilizing the identifying template - I got this impression from the "Page Creation Information" page - the way that is written seems to imply that placing {{Setting|Panisadore}} on the page prevents the problems you're describing and permits the further organization within the setting. I guess the next question then becomes, "What does it actually do - and what does it specifically *not* do?" I'm not trying to be difficult here - I'm trying to clarify some of my fundamental conceptions/possible misconceptions - I may have been trying all along to do something that the wiki does not in fact do at all (or even intend to) which unfortunately constitutes the reason I was trying to put the setting into the wiki in the first place.--Snargash Moonclaw 22:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


Okay - now going to All Categories from the Wiki Main Page and looking at "Races" I can see how the macro organization then displays subcategories by setting name. One thing that occurs in "All Categories" which I find counterproductive at various levels is displaying subcategories as if they are Level 1 categories as this conceals the structure and organization. This may be a matter of how I'm interpreting the info presented arising from the fact that I'm basically assuming/expecting category/subcategory structure to be essentially the same as classical outlining structure - in which case you don't list a topic as a Level I heading and a Level A heading and a Level 1 heading, etc. So I've been listing subcategories only under their immediate up-level category; e.g., Oceana ONLY lists [[Category:Regions (Panisadore)]] and NOT ALSO [[Category:Panisadore]], therefore Oceana does NOT appear among the subcategories of Panisadore - you have to first click on Regions (Panisadore) to see it and the other 3. On the other hand it looks like the Setting Template doesn't prevent a subcategory from appearing as a top level (All) category. I'm seeing the problem and now wondering if there is a way to accomplish both things - "Races (Panisadore)" also shows up as a top level category separate from "Races" which then lists the ""Setting" Races" subcategory discretely. Actually inserting the setting template in the edit screen of any category (at any level) along with the definition of its up level category seems to have no effect - so subcategories beneath Panisadore still appear as Top Level in All Categories. Perhaps this is desirable - my impression is that it clutters the information. The template does not appear to affect a category page in the same fashion it affects a wikitext page - I had been under the impression that it did. . .

Okay so instead - is there anyway to format category entries in the manner of [[Category: Panisadore *subcategory name goes here*]] such that a pipe or something essentially renders the word Panisadore invisible - it still acts as an operator to suppress ambiguity, but is ignored when listing (alphabetizing) the subcategories?--Snargash Moonclaw 23:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC) [/blockquote]

Right now All Categories looks like this:
. . .
# Help (14 members)
# Jade Stage (72 members)
# Jade Stage Boru (7 members)
# Jade Stage Cities (2 members)
# Jade Stage Cosmology (1 member)
# Jade Stage Creatures (2 members)
# Jade Stage Dwarves (11 members)
# Jade Stage History (1 member)
# Jade Stage Incomplete Pages (31 members)
# Jade Stage Individuals (3
. . .
# Portal (1 member)
# Power Groups (Panisadore) (2 members)
# Races (2 members)
# Races (Panisadore) (2 members)
# Regions (Panisadore) (4 members)
# Resonance (5 members)
# Shadowfell (1 member)

I'm wondering a couple of things about the All Categories list - notice that there is no Settings Category between Resonance and Shadowfell - Shouldn't there be one? The {{Setting| Your Setting Name}} template only establishes "Your setting name" as a category, "Settings" itself has not been created as a category to include the various Setting Names as categories. If I were to include the statement: [[Category:Settings]] in the page "Category:Panisadore" it would do this making Panisadore a 2nd level (sub) category. I would actually expect to be seeing this already in the same way that we have the first level category "Races" listing two "Setting Name Races" subcategories when you click it. This exists though because both subcategories include the statement: [[Category:Races]] in their category pages. This latter shows me why the categories are established Setting Name first - Races (Panisadore) should not be showing up in the All Categories list (sorry bout that Ish)- however, if I do that "Panisadore Races"  will appear in All Categories as well as among subcategories of "Races" (just as the two inside "Races" show up in All. . . as well) - this is why I included part of the Jade Stage category entries - this at present is the most extensive example of 2nd and lower level categories appearing here as if 1st level categories. (Another effect will be shown below to illustrate what I'm trying to avoid within the Panisadore category and posed the bolded question in order to address. . .) The upshot here being that there are 114 entries in All Categories now - and of course many many more to come as people add more to the wiki. Not sure if everyone would agree, I would think though that this is quickly becoming unwieldy, whereas if All Categories showed only level 1 categories, e.g. "Settings,"  "Races," etc. it would be more useful - especially when we got up to hundreds of entries. Clicking "Settings" would then show an immediate list of Setting Names, "Races" would show Race pages by setting (like it oes now), etc. - providing a neat index to the wiki that can easily be delved into further. I like what the "Races" entry does - if I want to see how other setting treat the races this index puts links to that info together right in front of me to look at and compare - I don't have to go digging through each setting to find it - or find it hasn't been included in the wiki for the setting at this time.

At this point there is now a Level 1 "Settings" category - created just now precisely as I described above. Adding the statement "[[Category:Settings]]" to any setting category page (e.g., "Category:Jade Stage") will now include that setting category as (turning it into,) a subcategory of "Settings" rather than a Level 1 category.

As for the 2nd level "Setting Name" categories I'm wanting to find a way to use the proper "Setting Name Category X" syntax (e.g., [[Category:Panisadore Races]] rather than the problematic [[Category:Races (Panisadore)]] in such a way as will still produce this:

[blockquote[Category:Panisadore]Categories and pages under Panisadore Setting Template
Subcategories

There are 3 subcategories to this category.
P

    * Power Groups (Panisadore)

R

    * Races (Panisadore)
    * Regions (Panisadore)[/blockquote]


Rather than this:

[blockquote[Category:Jade Stage]Subcategories

There are 19 subcategories to this category.
J

    * Jade Stage Boru
    * Jade Stage Cities
    * Jade Stage Cosmology
    * Jade Stage Creatures
    * Jade Stage Dwarves
    * Jade Stage History

   
J cont.

    * Jade Stage Incomplete Pages
    * Jade Stage Individuals
    * Jade Stage Magic
    * Jade Stage Nations
    * Jade Stage Objects
    * Jade Stage Organizations
    * Jade Stage People

   
J cont.

    * Jade Stage Places
    * Jade Stage Politics
    * Jade Stage Races
    * Jade Stage Simocs
    * Jade Stage Technology
    * Jade Stage Tribes, Families, and Clans

[/blockquote]

At this point the Jade Stage Category page ceases to provide a useful index since it only consists of the letter J. . . I'm hoping that some sort of pipe can be used to suppress the setting name needed in the syntax from appearing, permitting the strings following the setting name to be alphabetized.

I discovered the pipe trick to clean up the appearance of links to page subheadings - I've been using it in reformatting the various Deity entries to link to their Associated Orders so that:

 [blockquote[line from deity entry including links to subheaders in Orders and Societies page] '''Associated Orders: '''{{L|Orders_and_Societies#Druid Groves|Druid Groves}}, {{L|Orders_and_Societies#Turners of the Wheel|Turners of the Wheel}}, ({{L|Orders_and_Societies#Wild Hunt|Wild Hunt}})
[/blockquote]

Actually appear discretely as [blockquote[actual entry, italics added] Dashin

Title: Mother of the Myriad Things
Associated Phenomenon: Nature
Alignment: N(G)
Rank: Greater        
Race: All                    
Gender: F
Symbol: Golden beehive on a green disk            
Weapon: Sickle              
Totem: Bee
Portfolio: Nature    
Domains: Animal, Plant, Protection, Healing, Destruction, Repose
Associated Orders: Druid Groves, Turners of the Wheel, (Wild Hunt)

Description: While often anthropomorphized, she is generally considered by her worshipers as a much more abstract being; perceived as the source of all that exists. In conjunction with her husband, Wu Jai, she is viewed as the receptive yin principle giving form to the energizing yang principle which he represents. While nature is essentially neutral, most view her as good, particularly in light of her opposition to her sister Gaurashiage.
[/blockquote]

Everything before the pipe | (L|Orders_and_Societies#Druid Groves) is invisible and whatever follows it is displayed. I'll be doing exactly the same over time linking the various Orders entries on that page back to the deities whose churches are involved in the order. This is one of the things (as LC was saying) that a wiki really kicks ass in. Time consuming, but someone checking out the deities can immediately go to relevant info and likewise immediately go back to say, another deity involved in the same order.

Ishy - for now I'm going to leave the setting categories (Panisadore) be without creating any further ones, (I know your last PM said to just keep doing them the way I was since a fix/change is in the works) so we can see if the above can be accomplished. Besides, for now, I have a lot of editing to do in the Deities and Orders... pages to make the initial standardized tabulatory data blocks legible and interlink them all.

Thanks to all for your patience and tolerance!

[Ishmayl-Retired]

To answer the "Shadowfell" and "Resonance" question above - I can't speak for Resonance, but Shadowfell no longer exists, and thus doesn't need to be in the Campaign Settings category.

I saw that you created a "Campaigns" category.  There is actually already a "level 1" category called "Campaign Settings," which I changed yours to fit into - all the other settings are already in that one.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

ah - I hadn't looked closely at all 114 category names. . . k' and thanks - until I looked at these various category pages I never realized I needed to put the statement into the Panisadore category page - I thought that the use of the {{Setting|Panisadore}} template was doing that already.

(I hadn't been asking about the Resonance and Shadowfell categories - that was the place I expected to see a "Settings" category listed alphabetically - St. Murphy of course has just demonstrated what I meant about invoking him - the category in fact being there as "Campaign Settings". . .)

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Snargash, it will put them in the page automatically, there's just one step that has yet to be done for you.  There's this template called "List of Settings" (here: http://www.thecbg.org/wiki/index.php/Template:ListOfSettings) that you have to add your setting to.  I have done that, so all your links should work properly now, and all your pages that include {{Setting|Panisadore}} should now include the category page at the bottom.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

I'm afraid I'm not following you here - the URL goes to a page that hasn't been created yet and I don't know how to add my setting to the template (although if I understand you correctly you have now done that for me already). Part of the reason being I don't actually understand how the syntaxial components of even the {{Setting|Panisadore}} template actually function - using it has been a case of blindly following instructions in the Page Creation Information page. At present it is added to all my pages (per said instructions) but I don't see anything different with them today reflecting whatever change you have made. I do understand how the template provides disambiguation of wikitext pages - ensuring any of my pages which duplicate the name of a page in another setting are properly navigated to when using links, although I have also included the setting name in wikitext pages with common names - e.g. Deities (Panisadore), as also suggested in the Page Creation Info. I'm missing something here but can't quite point to what.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Meh, here's the url:

http://www.thecbg.org/wiki/index.php/Template:ListOfSettings

And don't worry about it now, it's already set up, you don't need to fix anything.

And now, if you go to the bottom of any of your pages that have {{Setting|Panisadore}} at the top, you will see that your page links to Category:Campaign Settings page.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

SHOOT, ignore that, I'm confusing myself now from brain farts.  Okay, when you set up your {{Setting|Panisadore}} template at the top of each page, it will automatically put that page into Category:Panisadore.  Only the main page for any campaign setting needs to be in Category:Campaign Settings, and I have set yours up appropriately.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Ah okay. Don't be confusing the Nunk - it's too easy to be any fun!

I do like the fact that all pages show up in the Panisadore category page, even though further subcategories are nested (behind/beneath) the next category up (since I only define them as belonging to that category and not any higher categories as well - it took me a while to figure this out and delete the higher category statements in the subcategory pages; initially I was including all statements and low level categories where showing up in all category pages up to [[. . .Panisadore. . .]]) and now only show up when you click on the appropriate category containing them. This can make these single level category pages very useful as an index for searching - any page can be jumped to directly from "Panisadore" if you wish (you don't have to go digging through the subcagtegories to find it if you know you want the page on elves) but if you are looking for how they fit together the subcategory indexes will hopefully provide a sort of ToC as an alphabetical outline to show you what all is subsumed in a given broad concept. At this point the Category pages are how I navigate through my own material in order to edit or add to it. (I had been clicking on My Contributions to find a link to the page I wanted but that has become far too cluttered to be practical anymore - hence my choosing now to impose some organization on the material before it gets even more unwieldy.) It just gets confusing since category pages are treated differently than text pages. That's exactly why I had been trying to name the subcategories as [[Category: XYZ (Panisdaore]] because that is how the WikiText pages are named: "Deities (Panisadore)" works one way (as desired) as the name for the (disambiguated) WikiText page but much differently as the name for the category that subsidiary pages to that page (like "Primordials" or "Evil Deities,") belong in :wtf: . . . (I really am slowly figuring some of this stuff out  :explode: )

[Matt Larkin (author)]

You might seriously consider a menu template like you see used on Jade Stage or Eclipse (or the Mythology Resource Page). You can add the {{Setting|Panisadore}} template to your Panisadore menu template and it will automatically be applied to all pages. Plus it makes navigation easier, especially for your readers.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

:stupid:

I'm seconding Phoenix' statement - navigation bars are extremely useful.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Here is where I fall utterly out of my depth I'm afraid. Looking at the Eclipse Main Page (clicking from the wiki Main Page list of settings) I see the menu that has been placed just below the really cool graphic banner (in light of my comments about pretty pages doing tricks I'm not being sarcastic - it really looks cool, I'm just too lazy to ever bother creating or modifying one for my own page) however, clicking on edit only reveals:

[blockquote[Eclipse mainpage menubar template and structure/code is concealed somewhere within:]__NOEDITSECTION__{{EclipseBanner}}{{TOC_Right}}[/blockquote]

Being both shorter overall and a bit more informative in the edit window, [blockquote[Jade Stage Main Page provides me with this example]{{Jade_Stage_Banner}}

The Jade Stage: Main Page ==

Welcome to the Jade Stage wiki! This page marks a new attempt to archive and present information related to the Jade Stage, a fictional world painstakingly detailed by [[User:Luminous Crayon|Luminous Crayon]].

=== Getting Started ===

Readers new to the Jade Stage may wish to begin by browsing the {{L|overview}}, or by reading about the most strongly-accented {{L|themes}} emphasized by the world. Alternately, specific words, phrases, people, and locations can be looked up alphabetically in the {{L|glossary|glossary of terms}}.

{| class="wikitable" border="2" cellpadding="5" align="center" style="text-align:center; background:#ddffcc; color:#113300"

|+ ''pages by category''
|-
| {{L|Races}}
| {{L|Politics}}
| {{L|Religion}}
|-
| {{L|Objects}}
| {{L|Magic}}
| {{L|History}}
|}

{{Template:Jade_Stage_Footer}}

[[Category:Campaign Settings]]
[/blockquote]

While I recognize the 6 link statements which make the buttons on the menu functional (and provide their labels) none of the rest is clear to me. Well, I do recognize the color settings as things I can safely ignore/leave out, but the actual meaty bits of this table set up might as well be written in Cyrillic for all the sense I can make of them. This is why when Sparkletwist and others have suggested I just copy something from a page doing what I want/like and just play with it I can only scratch my head - I haven't got the first clue where/how to begin to play with what.

 [blockquote[Phoenix]You might seriously consider a menu template like you see used on Jade Stage or Eclipse (or the Mythology Resource Page). You can add the {{Setting|Panisadore}} template to your Panisadore menu template and it will automatically be applied to all pages. Plus it makes navigation easier, especially for your readers.[/blockquote]

I'm not being deliberately obtuse here, I really have no idea how to do (or even quite what you mean by) anything you just said there. I don't have a Panisadore menu template nor really any idea how to create one (as distinct from some other form of template) to which I might add the {{Setting|Panisadore}} template. . . The concepts/logic involved in these things is not unfamiliar (and I'm certainly capable of following/processing/making creative use of) the principals once defined and understood (the logic and concepts are the same as writing old DOS batch files, pipes etc.) however much of the terminology and syntax is entirely unfamiliar (and what is the same as used back then are terms and syntax I haven't actually used in about 15 years and have no references now to work with like I did then. . .) In DOS I could at least type "command" /? and get a list of available switches which I could then look up in order to find out what they did - here I can't even look up the switches/parameters of things that I might fiddle with because I have no reference by which to simply find out what the variables even are which exist and are available to me to manipulate. I'm really not as dumb as I must be coming across by now - I simply don't have any of the tools which I know quite well I need in order to learn how to manipulate the tools which the wiki offers - actually to even find out just what the tools the wiki does and does not offer actually are. . . Hence my constant bitching about the MediaWiki Help wiki: in past experience as single decently written and indexed manual was sufficient for me to very quickly answer any questions I had and work out how to accomplish whatever I needed - even if I knew absolutely nothing about the system/language/environment whatever prior to trying to get it to do that certain thing. I have never found e-documentation half as informative or as swift as even twice the speed with which I can accomplish this with halfway decent hardcopy documentation. (and MediaWiki Help is the worst example of e-documentation in this regard I've ever encountered - honestly, it really blows my mind how bad it is!)

Thank you for your patience and consideration.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

No problem SM.

This [/url]is the actual EclipseBanner template file.

It has the following text [quote="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0"
|- valign="middle" align="center"
| width="100%" style="border: 0px; color: #000; background-color: #FFFFFF; vertical-align: top; padding: 0em;" | [[Image:eclipselogo.jpg]]
''Sun--Moon--Man--God--Apostasies--Apotheosis''
|}
{| width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0"
|- valign="middle" align="center"
| width="100%" style="border: 0px; color: #000; font-size:85%; background-color: #FFFFFF; vertical-align: top; padding: 0em;" |
[[Eclipse]] *
{{L|History}} *
{{L|Solar Empire|The Solar Empire}} *
{{L|Lunar Empire|The Lunar Empire}} *
{{L|Locations}} *
{{L|Cast}}
|}

]
''Sun--Moon--Man--God--Apostasies--Apotheosis''
|}
Creates a table with the picture "eclipselogo.jpg" and includes my tagline. (I didn't set this up, I stole the code from CeruleanSaga--I don't understand enough about wikicode to do it from scratch).

{| width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0"
|- valign="middle" align="center"
| width="100%" style="border: 0px; color: #000; font-size:85%; background-color: #FFFFFF; vertical-align: top; padding: 0em;" |
[[Eclipse]] *
{{L|History}} *
{{L|Solar Empire|The Solar Empire}} *
{{L|Lunar Empire|The Lunar Empire}} *
{{L|Locations}} *
{{L|Cast}}

This is a table beneath the banner and tagline setting up the menu. If you want something similar, copy the text and replace the "L" links with your own text.

Because of the Setting template, if you have a document called Panisadore (History) you don't even have to change those links. The L template automatically disambiguates to the right page.

Good luck!