Category:Atlas

[kgauck]

Discussion thread for Category:Atlas (http://www.birthright.net/brwiki/index.php/Category:Atlas). If you would like to add a comment, click the Post Reply button.

[kgauck]

I've been wandering around the bodies of water, filling in entries on various seas, and using Atlas as the critical category. We have Atlas, World, and Continent, and I wonder what the best way to go forward is. I think by happenstance, we've been using Atlas when we don't use the other two.

1) We don't want these three categories to have essentially the same information.
2) Which one should be the master index of all things geographical?

I think so far we've been assuming that Atlas was the master index, and I have some attachment to that idea, but I'm doubting its wisdom. Perhaps Atlas should only contain realms and domains, and Continent should contain every river, forest, and mountain range.

Putting everything into atlas makes it the super comprehensive master index, but it also gets really large. Continent excludes Djapar, and Anduria, and whatever other world someone creates.

Continent makes more sense for several reasons. One is that its very unlikely some will be searching for a geographical feature by name without any idea of what continent its on. Second, if we do expect expansion with entries on Djapa and Anduria (and we already have Anduria stuff) the natural hierarchy of small but complete, bigger and less complete, and total and most general makes the most sense.

What is the best way to populate these three categories? What would you include and what would you exclude from each of these?

[bbeau22]

Why not put everything under the title of Atlas. Then have a tree for the others undeaneath.

Atlas
Contenants
Regions
Countries

Bodies of water that are larger than anyone one country would be listed under region with a nice description there. Anything smaller can be listed within the country description.

-BB

[Rey]

I like Atlas too. But, as you say, there has to be a distinction. I was thinking like this:

World: Aebrynis
Category: Atlas
(Continent: Cerilia, Aduria, Djapar, Thaele, ...)
Geographical: Mountain, river, sea, ...
(Region: Khinasi, Mor-Atha,...)
(Domain: ....)

If you have a sea, just skip Continent, Region and Domain. If it's region or continent bound, then add them. If it's not a geographical feature, then skip that and go to domain or whatever..

As for wiki,
World can have:
Atlas, which has:
Continent or Geographical (that is not continent bound)
Region or Geographical (that is not region bound)
Domain or Geographical...

Does this sound complicated?

[kgauck]

I have some questions. By a "tree" are you referring to a hierarchy of categories? If not, what?

Shouldn't similar types of geographical features be found at the same level of category, despite whether one occurs with one domain and another with several? So that when a person goes looking for a river, all rivers are listed, rather than having some rivers in domain categories, some rivers in region categories, and some rivers (like the Ruide, which flows through the Rjurik Highlands and Anuire) bumped up to continent level?

Domains certainly might include very small geographical features, like a single mountain, a town, or a swamp. As long as a reader can predict where to look for the next one.

[Rey]

Yes, a tree is supposed to be a hierarchy of categories.

A hierarchy for this I had in mind was to be grouped within continents, regions, or perhaps domains. And also a general group like oceans, seas, maybe islands that don't belong into any of those.
But, the idea of grouping them together without being tied to a location or region sounds OK.

Where to put them?
I'll try and think of some ideas.

[Rey]

OK, how about this:

1. World is divided into Continents, Geography (or some other name) and Organizations.

2a. Continents are divided into Regions (Anuire, Vosgaard, ...), Subregions (Northern Marches, Taelshore,...), Domains, Provinces, Locations/Settlements. Exceptions: Imperial city, without domain or province.

2b.Organizations are divided into Holdings (and other), holdings into Guilds, Temples, etc.

Organizations are separated because they are not always tied to a location, province or domain.

2c. Geography could be divided into seas, rivers, and so on, but you'd have to name all of the geographical features. Also, you can avoid naming any of these and put them all together under geography. Downside is: with more continents you get it all mixed up.
These can be then marked as General or Continent based.

And then, the same thing could go for Organizations. If all continents are put together, there could be an extensive list. Maybe they, too, need to be put under each of the continents?

[Sorontar]

My vote is pretty much continuing what has been done so far:

Atlas:
* Races, World, Religion
* everything within all of the sub and subsubsub categories

Races
* Awn/Ehrsghlien, NPCs, character classes, other monsters

World:
* Continents, Landmarks, Weather
* Shadow World, Aebyrnis, any other Birthright worlds designed
* e.g. World: Aebrynis, Shadow World are world categories. Continent:Aduria is a member of World:Aebyrnis.

Continents:
* Aduria, Cerilia, Djapar etc
* all regions are members of these categories
* e.g. Region:Khinasi is a member of Continent:Cerilia

Regions:
* Khinasi, Anuire, Brechtur etc
* all domains within part of these regions are members
* e.g. Domain:Roseone is a member of Region:Anuire

Landmarks (**NEW**)
* Waterways, Mountains, Forests, Deserts, Plains
* we might also want to include Cities?

so Roesone is Atlas, World: Aebyrnis, Continent:Cerilia, Region:Anuire, Domain:Roesone

The Maesil River is Atlas, World:Aebyrnis, Continent:Cerilia, Landmark:Waterway.

I am still debating about what to do with organisations. They are so tightly bound to Domains that I don't think they need their own category. Likewise with holdings. If you want to know about the Temple holdings of Haelyn, you look at Temple:Haelyn and look at its Domain subcategory members. Any holdings that have their own page will just be ordinary members (and members of the appropriate Domain category). I can't see the need for a more general category for all religions. A general one could be made for sources and guilds though. Not sure about law holdings.

And not everything needs to be a member of its own category and a member of all classes above in the hierachy. This has normally been done for geographical things but it shouldn't be done for NPCs etc.
i.e. Darien Avan only needs to be in Category:NPC and Category:domain:Avanil, but not Races, Region, Continent, World... and perhaps not Atlas.

Sorontar

[Rey]

I like this one.

Just a few remarks.

Landmarks sound OK, but these are only "land" marks, you also need seamarks, to include oceans, seas and islands. Also, under landmarks I'd file only natural ones, and leave the artificial tied to domain or province (e.g. cities). This goes away from the definition of a landmark and seamark, as they are bound to artificial entities.

I don't think all organizations are so tightly tied to domains. As for holdings, one church can be spread throughout the region, guild especially. There is no real profit from trade if you bury yourself into a single domain.

Law holdings have no names and are not actually organizations, but rather influence of a regent. Also, they don't have names. Same goes for the sources.
Though, we can talk about Darien Avan's law holdings and Swordmage's sources.

[kgauck]

I don't think all organizations are so tightly tied to domains. As for holdings, one church can be spread throughout the region, guild especially. There is no real profit from trade if you bury yourself into a single domain.

Law holdings have no names and are not actually organizations, but rather influence of a regent. Also, they don't have names. Same goes for the sources.
Though, we can talk about Darien Avan's law holdings and Swordmage's sources.

Temples are domains. Any organization that has holdings are domains. Domains with land are realms.

Law holding domains exist. Melisande Reaversbane has an all law holding domain which goes by the name of the Royal Navy of Muden. Throughout Rjurik there are jarls that have nothing but law holdings. Those would go by the names of the provinces the jarl has, as opposed to the whole realm. Source domains are also separate organizations and should have their own pages.

[Thelandrin]

Well, I would have though that you could put Darien Avan, say, into Anuire/Avanil, but that's only a minor tweak.

Considering I've never even heard the word "seamark" before, I'd rather we didn't go inventing whole new words, simply because we're getting too picky about what a "landmark" actually is.

[kgauck]

The Maesil River is Atlas, World:Aebyrnis, Continent:Cerilia, Landmark:Waterway.

Right now, all pages in Category:Continent:Cerilia are also in C:World:Aebyrnis, except two I made today where I added Continent to geographical features. 100% correspondance between Cerilia and Aebyrnis strikes me as too much overlap. World contains 24 pages that don't exist on Cerilia, mostly to do with Aduria and Djapar.

As long as both contain only domains, I guess I have no objection, since its prudent to keep Cerilia from being as hard to use as Aebyrnis if that category gets a lot on Djapar and Cerilia (and I hope it will).

There are items, that are questionable, however: a tavern, a woods, a history of Kvigmar (which is not categorized in history), four NPC's, and and the economy of Medoere. If there are no objections, I'd like to remove the world and continent categories from these.

Regarding a new category, Landmarks, I wonder if its really necessarily. If these are in Atlas and in Region, they should be easy to find, in one comprehensive list, and one organized in a tight group.

Of course, I'm willing to be persuaded.

If we were thinking of adding categories, I think NPC's is a huge category. We're recently crossed the 200 NPC mark, and I wonder of its worth it to identify NPC's by more than the categories NPC and whatever domains they are associated with. Since I tend to look for NPC's with unusual characteristics when I have new portraits (age, sex, function) I'm not sure my search criteria are useful to anyone else. Just something I anticipate may become an issue as the list of NPC's grows.

[kgauck]

Well, I would have though that you could put Darien Avan, say, into Anuire/Avanil, but that's only a minor tweak.

Every NPC has both the NPC category and the domains they are associated with. Darien Avan is in NPC and Avanil.

[Rey]

Temples, as structures (the sum of them), are domains (or part of it, at least). Haelyn's Aegis is not exclusive only to Ghoere. Maybe only as one of the Ghorean temple holdings.
Darien Avan has law holdings not just in Avanil.
Sometimes holdings are only a part of a single domain, sometimes not. From domain point of view, they can have these temples, these sources, these law holdings that hold sway, any these guilds that control trade. From holding point of view (guilds and temples go much easily here), particular holding can be spread throughout more provinces and domains.

This all depends on a point of a view.

Likewise, it's much easier for law holdings and sources to be viewed through a person, rather than other way around. Temples and guilds have names. Law holdings and sources have not (unless you use a province name for that). OK, some of the sources actually do, but who refers to them by name? And who knows the name of them all? By the book, there should be one in each of the provinces.

[Rey]

Considering I've never even heard the word "seamark" before, I'd rather we didn't go inventing whole new words, simply because we're getting too picky about what a "landmark" actually is.
:)

Seamark is not a new word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamark

And landmark sounds good as a word, but the problem is, like a semark, it refers to an artificial entity.

[kgauck]

Neither a landmark nor a seamark needs refer to an artificial entity. Landmark, in use since old English, is any prominent feature of a landscape. Seamark, in use since at least 1475 refers to the same thing, if visible from the sea.

However, landmark has gained an additional meaning, derived from its original sense, that of being an important place, so that a landmark can be a location of significance. Since the use of a location on the wiki probably denotes significance more than the fact that it is a handy navigational aid. Seamark retains only the navigational sense of meaning.

[Sorontar]

So should we have Category:Law: Darien Avan and Category:Law:Aeric Boeruine for law holdings and Category:Source:High Mage Aelies for his source holdings?

The guilds so far are not grouped together but every holding for a guild will be included in the Domain: GuildName category. Presumably there could be said to also be Domain: Magename etc for sources. So either we go one way or the other. Darien and Aeric are province regents so their law holdings would normally be placed under the Domain: Realmname banner. Should we do likewise for the Gorgon's sources and make them all part of Domain: The Gorgon's Crown? Or should we also have Source:The Gorgon?

About landmark. I nominated it because 1) it has a general geographical meaning (as well as other meanings) 2) it can easily be thought of as only referring to natural items 3) it is easy to remember/spell. While its use for the oceans and seas may be a little questionable, they are a minority compared to all the other things that can be added to the category/have subcategories, e.g. Category:Landmark:River or Category:Landmark:Mountain.

Other candidates might be "Natural attraction" or "geographical item/feature" but they are both two words and (for me) fail on 3).

Its Friday night and my brain is thinking too hard. Night all.

Sorontar

[kgauck]

Category:Law and such is really a division of the domain, not the NPC.

Category:Temple:Haelyn and so forth makes sense, one does search for things by faith. A Guild category and law category would make sense if people were looking for guilds as such like "I'm writing up el-Hadid and I need a distant guild domain to mention as a foreign partner". Some of these kinds of searches can currently be done with a two step search, using another page as a proxy, I might look at Category:Region:Khinasi and find a guild in either the articles or subcategories there. But, I know how the wiki works really well, I'm not sure that's an intuitive search process. Maybe it is.


I think we just need to have our eyes open for a good way to subdivide NPC into a way that's meaningful for characters. I don't have any ideas yet. I think I can solve my own problems with a {{no portrait}} tag that says this page is in need of a portrait. Once we get a better idea of how people search for NPC's and have a hard time finding them, then we might have a better idea how to create subdivisions.

[Thelandrin]

I think that "landmark", in the sense of an interesting or noteworthy location, either on land or at sea, is more than serviceable for all geographic features.

How exactly would we even begin to fill out Category:Law and Category:Source? Province rulers' external holdings should still be listed under their domain, thouhg in the case of people like DA or AB, perhaps in a different section beneath.

[kgauck]

Do we really want these categories? Are they useful?

[Thelandrin]

I don't think we do, unless they're so unusual that it's worthy of notice.

[Rey]

Maybe someone eventually would wonder which sources does this particular wizard hold. Under his NPC section you can add that info easily. No need for more categories, if that is a goal.
Filed under particular domain you have the opposite, which sources are controlled and by which wizard(s). This is the part where the upper mentioned comes in handy. I want to see what else did this one put his hands on.

It may be writing down what is already written, but who'd want to browse all domains in search of this?

[kgauck]

The domain needs to have a separate page than the NPC. But that's a separate issue.

My point was that NPC's need to be subdivided, not domains. Domains may benefit from that, but let's decide to subdivide because there is a need, not because I suggested NPC's need it.