Fan-based index pages

[AndrewTall]

I set up the fan-based pages that can be seen on the main wiki page shortly before it went live, hoping to 'cover the basics' and give anyone who wanted to post something of their own a fairly obvious place to do so where it might be found be the community members.

The idea that these pages would act as index pages on which the community could link their own pages, while providing some sort of order to the melee.

In practice some have not been much used, while some of the user: Fred and user: pagewanted links, which were set up to indicate pages that I thought might be wanted and show novices how to write the necessary page name continue to exist as sad, lonely red 'broken links'.

So, time perhaps for a tidy up...

Any thoughts on whether some of the following are of any interest to the community, should be expanded, killed, relocated somewhere less obvious, left quietly to mind their own business, etc...

Feats, skills and abilities. 2 entries, one mine, one Ken's.
Legendary items. 8 entries, multiple contributors
Player tips. 6 entries, I rather fear that ALL of them are mine, and were set up with then forlorn hope that other people would add their tips and comments to them. My habit for puns may be partly at fault here.
4e conversion draft. We had some people post entire rulesets (yay!) but the mass of pages for specific races, etc are unused - in practice can anyone see them being used?

[Arjan]

4e conversion draft. We had some people post entire rulesets (yay!) but the mass of pages for specific races, etc are unused - in practice can anyone see them being used?

actually they are still there... we just dont have a 4ebrcs namespace anymore.. which they were linking to..
i removes the BRCS: from the pages, and most of them are linked again

if you think a page is lost and you remember it might have been done, just use the search or check with the old pages to confirm (or other way around ;) )

[Sorontar]

actually they are still there... we just dont have a 4ebrcs namespace anymore.. which they were linking to..
i removes the BRCS: from the pages, and most of them are linked again


I think he meant more that he provided links or "template" pages but no-one tried to fill out the pages.

I have noticed the following page being linked from the 4eBRCS page. Any idea why this has the BRCS: prefix? The

http://www.birthright.net/forums/showwiki.php?title=BRCS:Halfling

The actual BRCS page is fine:

http://www.birthright.net/forums/showwiki.php?title=BRCS:Chapter_one_Character_Half lings_Cerilian

The original 4eBRCS page is

http://www.birthright.net/brwiki/index.php/4eBRCS:Halfling


Other pages that are 4e but now are BRCS: can be found in the category http://www.birthright.net/forums/showwiki.php?title=Category:4e_Conversion

Sorontar

[Arjan]

I think the reason is that i "combined" the two namespaces into the BRCS namespace..
Which i thought later was a wrong decission since 4e pages were overwriting 3e pages due to the same name.
The reason is that namespace-tags like wiki, brcs, srd cannot have nummeric vallues.. so i had to comeup with stupid tags like brcsfour, which would make things even more complicated and confusing.
since both 3.5 and 4 are campaign setting, i though it was a good idea to have them both in the same namespace...

but i guess we have to sort things out to find a reasonable structure to distinct both... i think they can both coexist, perhaps change titles like BRCS:Halflings (4e)

[AndrewTall]

I think he meant more that he provided links or "template" pages but no-one tried to fill out the pages.

Sorontar

Indeed, people have commented on masses of red links before, since in practice the 4e conversion project doesn't appear to be a mass-community project like the BRCS aimed to be the page by page approach I created links for is redundant.

I've often thought about trying to 'fill out' the various tips pages, since I really wanted to see other people's ideas when I joined the community and would have loved a systematic record of some sort, but if its just me writing for me alone to read then there is no point - I'd rather finish off Dhoesone (yes I know, piggies in fly-by formation).

[AndrewTall]

sigh, Arjan, the 'about' link - perhaps we need to rename that page 'about BRwiki' :p

[Arjan]

Indeed, people have commented on masses of red links before, since in practice the 4e conversion project doesn't appear to be a mass-community project like the BRCS aimed to be the page by page approach I created links for is redundant.

I've often thought about trying to 'fill out' the various tips pages, since I really wanted to see other people's ideas when I joined the community and would have loved a systematic record of some sort, but if its just me writing for me alone to read then there is no point - I'd rather finish off Dhoesone (yes I know, piggies in fly-by formation).

well this is one thing i hope to accomplish with the new software.. hoping that we are found more easily, and we can motivate more people to contribute..
although.. i have no spoken a single person who plays 4e.. they all still play 2 or 3e.. and with the amount of stuff released for 4e..
but who am i?

i am just a simple person who get autolinked as well.... for goodness sake, dont say about arjan

[Sorontar]

i am just a simple person who get autolinked as well.... for goodness sake, dont say about arjan
:) That is because you are legend in your own time and that of Anuire as far as we are concerned.

My main concern with the wiki is that it is structured in such a way that it is a meaningful resource. Categories and continuity between pages is one way. Having manually constructed index pages is another. The problem with the index pages is making people aware that they are there. They also tend to look like (IMHO) a poor man's version of the categories. This is because the pages to which they refer are not a closed set. I can never be sure if they have linked to all the pages they should.

There are also the hubs (e.g. the Atlas) that were started but never followed up. I think this is the way the Atlas should go, being a hub that lists in sections various pages and categories. They can be treated as alternate front pages to the wiki. I don't know how much descriptive text needs to be on those pages.

Sorontar

[AndrewTall]

The problem with the index pages is making people aware that they are there. They also tend to look like (IMHO) a poor man's version of the categories. This is because the pages to which they refer are not a closed set. I can never be sure if they have linked to all the pages they should.

Sorontar

I had thought that being on the face of the wiki would make them natural starting points. They will not, inevitably be complete - in fact I know pages which I have put up that could be on them but aren't. I didn't know a way to list the 'most popular categories' on the main page to enable people to go directly to the category page though.

[Arjan]

I had thought that being on the face of the wiki would make them natural starting points. They will not, inevitably be complete - in fact I know pages which I have put up that could be on them but aren't. I didn't know a way to list the 'most popular categories' on the main page to enable people to go directly to the category page though.

i am indeed thinking on some ways to "let people know whats on the wiki"
- list of most popular categories - the problem with that one is that the top 20 consist mostly out of D20 SRD pages...
- better eyecatcher to various sections on the frontpage of BRnet.
- better layout of the wiki main page.. why have the whole BRCS there taking up alot of space, while the BRCS:Main_Page has the same links? i could make a block just listing the chapters.. so you have 9ish links instead of 50+
- that same way we can do with 4ed and fanstuf.. give them the same structure of file so people can navigate them more easily

just thinking out loud, i am open for every kind of idea

[Thelandrin]

I've said before that I liked your punning titles, Andrew, and I still do.

Just like The Other Wiki does, Halflings and Halflings (4E) should be more than sufficient.

(My 1,000th post. Wooh! :))

[Sorontar]

i am indeed thinking on some ways to "let people know whats on the wiki"

Top five most visited pages (other than the MainPage) + five most recently editted?



- list of most popular categories - the problem with that one is that the top 20 consist mostly out of D20 SRD pages...


Hmm.... can you run a regexp filter?



- better eyecatcher to various sections on the frontpage of BRnet.

- better layout of the wiki main page.. why have the whole BRCS there taking up alot of space, while the BRCS:Main_Page has the same links? i could make a block just listing the chapters.. so you have 9ish links instead of 50+



That might be worth starting a new thread to discuss.



- that same way we can do with 4ed and fanstuf.. give them the same structure of file so people can navigate them more easily


The problem is that as we know, most of what is on the wiki can be considered fan-stuff. The exception is D20 and BRCS. The question is whether we need to make this clear on the Main Page, or whether the Main Page can actually divide into Fanstuff+Other stuff. I think for things like the domains and NPCs, such divisions are hard to make. Things like new spells and alternate rules are a little more obvious, but I doubt that we need to label them as fan-based.

Sorontar

[AndrewTall]

Hmm.... can you run a regexp filter?

??? Nope, not a chance, none whatsoever. :confused:


The problem is that as we know, most of what is on the wiki can be considered fan-stuff. The exception is D20 and BRCS.
Sorontar

Well, BRCS is also fan-stuff. Aside from the people who don't understand or outright reject the notion of copyright I can't see anyone misunderstanding. We have 'observation' and 'fanfic' banners for the far-out stuff, that should do in my opinion.


I've said before that I liked your punning titles, Andrew, and I still do.

But not enough to add your own stuff I note :( HINT HINT!


(My 1,000th post. Wooh! :))

Congratulations...

[Sorontar]

??? Nope, not a chance, none whatsoever. :confused:

Regexp = regular expressions
Term-matching patterns for techies


Well, BRCS is also fan-stuff. Aside from the people who don't understand or outright reject the notion of copyright I can't see anyone misunderstanding. We have 'observation' and 'fanfic' banners for the far-out stuff, that should do in my opinion.

Yeah, well we know the arguments we have had with some people over whether things are "canon" or not. That is more what I was meaning. We can't easily have indexes of canon stuff and indexes of fan stuff. However we can divide the wiki into d20 srd/brcs 3.5/brcs 4.0/other if need be. A lot of the other could also be considered to be Atlas but is also open to having various alternate pages for a topic.

Sorontar