Template talk:Age

From MYSTlore

Not sure about how I feel about this template- it seems a bit redundant when most articles list that information within their first paragraph. Thoughs? Shoomlah 17:14, 15 November 2006 (CST)

This was Tay's idea, and (in my view, anyway) is to evolve into something more like an infobox on Wikipedia, like, say, here. I agree that it's near-useless at this point. Chucker 17:16, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Ah, that makes more sense. Is it going to become a sidebar in the future? Shoomlah 17:47, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Depends on more pieces of metadata we can add to it. E.g., when was it written, does it have a particular purpose (e.g., "harvesting age", "rest age"), etc. Like with Wikipedia's infoboxen, we could also have a thumbnail image representing each of them (contrary to current images, which may or may not be representative of the entire age — the current version of the Teledahn article, for instance, has four screenshots, but none of them actually represent the age itself properly, for reasons that are probably obvious). Anyway, point being, if we can make this a little more detailed, it would make more sense as a sidebar. Right now, with only one single piece of information, I'm not so sure. Either way, I'd be okay with making it completely invisible for the time being, but for the indefinite future, I'd like to make something nicer out of it. :-) Chucker 17:53, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Not that I'm volunteering, but where would they work on a new Template: Age page if someone was so inclined?--JohnLynch 22:18, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Well, you could use this template talk page, but then you wouldn't be able to test your template 'live', so if that's required, create a new template (Template:Age_dev or whatever, and once you're done, you can just delete it). Chucker 12:10, 16 November 2006 (CST)

I've got it started at Template:Age dev although it could definitely use some work.--JohnLynch 23:56, 16 November 2006 (CST)

The problem with this template is that most Ages have little to no relevant information in terms of "stats," and so, while it could extremely useful on more prominent Ages, it'll look a bit blank on the obscure ones. Yet I do still like the idea, I just don't know how would be the best way to go about doing it. Shoomlah 00:43, 17 November 2006 (CST)

The "Written" variable is a little ambiguously-named. It's clear from the label that it's referring to the date, but it may not be as intuitive for editors. Perhaps just "Date" or "Date written" would be better? Chucker 00:45, 17 November 2006 (CST)

And what Shoom'lah said is certainly true, but I don't have a better idea either. We can only hope that more information does come in, or the whole thing will be "stuck" soon enough anyway… Chucker 00:45, 17 November 2006 (CST)

Also, just for the heck of it, a few general suggestions- location of the Age's descriptive or primary linking book seems important, especially in a post-Gehn world where who "owns" an age becomes far less defined. We could also use this as an opportunity to show the book itself, which I've always thought would be an interesting addition to Age pages. Also, a list of which Ages are connected- Myst, for example, would list D'ni, Rime, Mechanical, and so on. Whether the Age is or used to be civilized, possibly the type of Age (Rime and Tahgira (Not Teledahn. I'm just confused.) are glacial/snow, Edanna/Haven are nature or jungle. That sort of thing.). Written in could be "Date Written" or "Date Finished." I'll see if anything else comes to mind. :) Shoomlah 00:54, 17 November 2006 (CST)

"We could also use this as an opportunity to show the book itself, which I've always thought would be an interesting addition to Age pages." I'm assuming by "showing the book itself", you mean a picture of its cover? Or of the linking panel? (Where applicable, we could technically have fly-by videos, too…) In case of the cover, we might need to remind readers not to judge a book by its cover… ;-) Okay, sorry. I just had to put that in.

Related ages sounds like a good idea, yes.

Bit confused by you calling Teledahn "glacial/snow"; I can see that for Rime, obviously, but… anyways, this is steering too off-topic.

Chucker 01:11, 17 November 2006 (CST)

I'm sorry, Tahgira. It's late. :P And I did mean the covers, if only because some of them are really pretty. Shoomlah 01:31, 17 November 2006 (CST)

Okay I incorporated all of your suggestions, along with a couple of my own. However ANYONE is welcome to work on it. Honest ;) I don't really know what I'm doing, so I'm not too good at it. What I'm trying to do is set up a box much like the one on this page, although because of licensing issues (and the fact I don't understand their code) I can't do a straight copy and paste, however they have it set up so that fields which are empty, just don't appear. Now as you can see here empty fields do appear. Also at Wikipedia their text begins at the very top of the box, whereas on my page the text begins halfway down. So if anyone knows how to fix these issues, go at it! I'll try myself, but it'll be slow going (and as I get side-tracked with other things, there is a good chance I'll forget about it and leave it unfinished).--JohnLynch 03:26, 19 November 2006 (CST)

I probably should have mentioned this a lot earlier (and I was planning to o_O )… I'm afraid conditional template variables simply aren't possible here. I've tried before. The implementation Wikipedia uses relies on an extension, and according to this, our version (1.6.8) simply doesn't support this feature of the extension. I haven't tried, but I'll trust its judgement. We can't upgrade to something newer than 1.6.x just yet because, as of 1.7, support for older PHP versions than 5.0 has been dropped, and we can't upgrade to PHP 5 because Debian Linux doesn't officially support it yet — even though it has been released well over two years ago, Summer 2004. A stupid situation, I know, and hopefully one I'll be able to rectify in the near future.

Unless there's an alternative solution to implementing this, I don't think this can be done. Sorry to disappoint. :-\ Chucker 03:55, 19 November 2006 (CST)

Thanks Chucker, I'll stop trying to get the conditional thing to work. In that case might want to reconsider how many options we have in the template box. Also for Ages where we know absolutely nothing, you can always just leave the Template out. You don't need to have the box for every Age. --JohnLynch 05:45, 19 November 2006 (CST)

Folks, we're on MediaWiki 1.9 now. I haven't added the ParserFunctions extension yet, but such conditionals are no longer out of the picture, so a more suitable Age template should be possible. Oh, and if you experience any issues with the upgrade, please let me know. Chucker 10:10, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

ParserFunctions extension added. A template with optional parameters should be possible now. Chucker 16:23, 29 September 2007 (CDT)

I think the text from Template:Age dev1 can be put here now, and all the ages' articles updated. Any objections? Gorobay 15:15, 26 December 2007 (CST)

Okay, I'll change it now. Gorobay 19:05, 27 December 2007 (CST)

[edit] Journal field

Now that we have many journal transcription, I propose we also add an optional 'journal' field, linking to the respective article. For example the Selenitic infobox will have a link to Selenitic Journal. Koena 04:52, 15 January 2008 (CST)

Like that? Gorobay 05:41, 15 January 2008 (CST)