MYSTlore talk:Guide

From MYSTlore

Would it be worth having guidelines for writing pages? MYSTlore doesn't really seem to define how pages should be formatted, and pages written by new MYSTlore contributors are usually not formatted well, so I think it's useful to specify page format more clearly.

Here's a few guidelines I can think of:

• On the first line of each page, describe in one sentence what the page is about. For example: "Tokotah Courtyard (sometimes referred to as Takotah Courtyard or Dakotah Courtyard) is the courtyard at the top of the Great Stair on Ae'gura."
• The first mention of the page's subject should be enclosed in five apostrophes, like this.
• For larger pages describing ages or areas, divide the page in Geography, History, Restauration, See Also, Sources, References, ... sections
• Link as much words as possible, but try not to link to the same page more than once.
• On the News and Events page, try to make the summary of the news event less than a full line.

Etc...

Ddfreyne 05:22, 10 March 2007 (CST)

Yup, we need a MYSTlore:Writing pages. Mind drafting one? Chucker 09:08, 11 March 2007 (CDT)

Contents 1 Categorization 2 New Policies? 2.1 Capitalization 2.2 Dates 3 Dictionary

[edit] Categorization

The guide is getting a little long. There should be headings such as stuff to read before contributing, stuff worth knowing as a visitor, etc. Chucker 06:26, 23 March 2007 (CDT)

Well, it's a start. Chucker 20:14, 4 August 2007 (CDT)

[edit] New Policies?

I have some new policies to suggest. Please leave comments :)

• Speculation - I think we should put together some sort of policy on speculation and theories. I know that LostPedia has a pretty successful one [1]. Maybe the policy should be that speculations and theories should be put in a separate section of an article with an appropriately-worded template. I think that there is a difference between that we have been using the unverified canon template for (to warn about things which might not be canon and rather artistic license) and fan speculation. I think we need to separate out fan speculation from the main article. It's interesting and important, but by no means definitive and shouldn't be presented as such.
• Game Appearances - I'd like to set up a policy for indicating where various topics appear in the games. I think we should go ahead with the division of topics into 'appears in' and 'referenced in' instead of what we have now. I also propose creating an infobox (maybe to be placed on the upper or lower right of an article) that lists the games or other sources in which a topic appears. Maybe there is some nifty MediaWiki legerdemain that will generate the appropriate category entries based off of the entries in the infobox. It's a lot of work to recategorize, yes.. maybe we can make a template (uncategorized-sources or such) which we can place on an article to mark it for someone to come and categorize it (like we do for stubs).
• D'ni words - do we want to have entries for individual D'ni words, if so, how do we handle that? My personal feeling is that unless we want to go into the business of being a dictionary, we should only include articles for those D'ni words that represent concepts that deserve articles in their own right.
• Dates - how do we want to organize dates - do we want a page for every D'ni year? Do we want them for blocks of D'ni time? Or is there some sort of way to effectively line back to the main timeline to the appropriate point?

Thoughts? Blade Lakem 08:50, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

Sorry, just now saw this (still catching up). I'll look into it later! Chucker 16:35, 28 July 2007 (CDT)

Okay, here goes.

1. Agreed, we need a policy. We should probably have a little box template that floats with the text and says something along the lines of "Fans have been speculating on this.", linking to a page with theories. For example, consider this from the Teledahn article: "It had been assumed that some, perhaps all, of the people imprisoned here were Bahro." (Speculation could be: if that is the case, why couldn't they just link out? And if the tablet prevented them, why the need for chains?) Just like there is a Teledahn#Prison cell, there'd be a Teledahn/Theories#Prison cell, which would also have a template linking back.
2. You've since created a proposal on this, so I won't respond here.
3. I've been pondering that for a while and don't have a clear answer, but I tend towards: yes, we do want that, if only because it's awfully hard right now to find words on the web. In fact, looking up a Myst/D'ni/Uru-related term on the web and getting a clear, concise answer is exactly what MYSTlore is all about. That said, as the gap between Wikipedia and Wiktionary makes clear, there's a difference between an encyclopedia and a dictionary, and perhaps we should have words in their own namespace, e.g. D'ni word:Gahro. (I also wouldn't mind buying another domain, if that's considered nicer, but I would mind the massive additional administrative overhead…) In short, I'm not quite sure on this yet. Eer is an example of a page that I created that can't really be turned into a whole article. We can't even give synonyms or homonyms with how little D'ni we know; at best, we can probably give an example use in a sentence, a quote where it's been actually used by relevant characters, and the first time it was mentioned.
4. Same issue as words, really. Koena's been doing some of that (creating pages for years, and even a category), but I'm not sure I really mind. Chucker 17:29, 28 July 2007 (CDT)

D'ni Words: There already is a pretty good dictionary out there... Talashar 20:19, 28 July 2007 (CDT)

There were DPWR, D'ni Desk Reference and other sites before MYSTlore; yet MYSTlore has found its own place. Why artificially constrain the community? Chucker 06:04, 29 July 2007 (CDT)

Speculation - I think that the template leading to a subpage is a great idea. We'd just need to write the templates back and forth, and a policy page on it. Once again, I point to LostPedia for an example of one.

D'ni words - If we are going into the dictionary business, a separate namespace would be fine, as long as we have the links on the main page that make it easy to use (the average reader doesn't know about namespaces to search easily on them, I think). Maybe, since khrees does run the D'ni dictionary, maybe we could ask him (and other members of the DLF) to collaborate with us and use MYSTlore for his work. With the right tweaks, the wiki would be a lot more robust than the web page he's using currently. Oh, and I'd just name the namespace Dictionary. That way we could add other words from other languages if they ever pop up.

Dates - I am just wondering if the year pages and the timeline aren't redundant. It seems easy for the two to get out of sync. Here's a suggestion: we use the date pages, then maybe the Timeline article can stitch those together (like the current events pages)? I dunno if that is technically feasible, but I think it'd be nice.

Blade Lakem 22:36, 28 July 2007 (CDT)

1. Yeah, I'll look a little more into how LP does it, and maybe I'll then draft something up later today.
2. I'm okay with the name "Dictionary", but I don't think there'll be that many non-D'ni words (it's hard enough to find many D'ni words ;-) ).
3. A timeline dynamically generated from individual date articles sounds good, but would take some work. I don't think I'll implement that any time soon. Chucker 06:04, 29 July 2007 (CDT)

Any more thought on these? I know that you made speculation templates. Are you done with that? As with the D'nu dates, Koena's 'year' pages seem to be working fine. What about the Dictionary? Is that going to happen? If so, I'd be willing to ask khrees if he wants to collaborate, or ping the DLF. Blade Lakem 15:27, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

I'm not happy with the speculation templates yet, but if someone wants to play with them, be my guest.

I'll be pondering dates and such at some other point. What we have now works, even when it's not ideal.

Likewise, I'd say stick with using individual articles with a "D'ni words" category for now, regarding the dictionary. Chucker 16:46, 9 August 2007 (CDT)

Okay, what do you think? Human/Theories Chucker 10:14, 10 August 2007 (CDT)

That works. All it needs is the templates on both pages. Blade Lakem 11:29, 10 August 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Capitalization

I've been pondering something on "Written" vs. "written", "Age" vs. "age", etc. as well. Should be able to write something up soon. Chucker 09:42, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Dates

As Koena and Talashar have evidently noticed, I've created two more extension tags, <hahr> and <year>. Their usage is mostly self-explanatory. At this point, given a hahr (or year), they merely link to an appropriate article for the equivalent hahr, and convert to the respective other format. That is, if you say "hahr 1234", the user will automatically see "1376 DE (6280 BC)", and "1376 DE" will link to an article with that year's name, following Koena's convention.

Now, this isn't a perfect solution, but I do feel it's a step in the right direction. Thanks to the per-year articles, the user can get a quick answer to the question "what else happened that same year?", and using templates, we can, where applicable, expand that question to "that same hahrtee fahrah?". The user also immediately says a rough conversion to years (or back), which is particularly useful with dates related to Atrus's heritage, or the fall, since one can relate to 1815 AD a lot more easily than to 9471 DE.

Unfortunately, the conversion algorithm is nothing but "add or substract 7656" (well, and substitute the appropriate suffix). With Yeesha's date of birth, that already seems one year off (as far as I can tell, it's supposed to be 1815 AD, but 9470 DE). If someone could provide me with a more algorithm in pseudocode, that'd be great. As I understand it, 1995 AD equals one hahr to the second, but what does this mean with respect to, say, 1815?

There's other limitations to the approach of this tag. Any further suggestions on this? Chucker 19:16, 3 September 2007 (CDT)

Is it possible that someone could tell me how to put in a page redirect? The Wikipedia help manual isn't telling me what I need to know...

--Mystress 18:02, 22 December 2007 (CST)

[edit] Dictionary

So, I went ahead and created the Dictionary and Dictionary talk namespaces. I moved Shorah over there for testing purposes. Any input on how we want to proceed from there? Do we want a Dictionary link in the sidebar? What would it point to? Chucker 13:18, 10 February 2008 (CST)

Dictionary link in the sidebar that points to the main page of the Directory namespace. From there you should be able to search words, and see browse lists by category. Also with links back to the main articles on D'ni language. Maybe something that gives a list first D'ni letter? (Maybe we could have categories for each letter (i.e.[[Category:D'ni words beginning with ts]]or such). Blade Lakem 13:37, 10 February 2008 (CST)

Okay, it points to Dictionary:Main Page, which doesn't exist yet. As for the first-letter thing, I think we should have a template on top of each dictionary entry that shows all the letters, with the current one highlighted. Chucker 13:41, 10 February 2008 (CST) Okay, I've created a main page and a browse-by-letter template. Within a word, simply provide the first letter as a parameter e.g.: {{dictionary-header|first-letter=sh}} for Dictionary:Shorah. Chucker 14:27, 10 February 2008 (CST)

That's really slick. Thanx! As for the Dictionary itself, do you mind if I ping people at the DLF to get their help filling it out? Blade Lakem 18:38, 10 February 2008 (CST)

No, not at all. Chucker 00:30, 11 February 2008 (CST)