User talk:BladeHamilton

From MYSTlore

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Hi there... I'd like to ask you some things.

First of all, I see that while other wikis start an article with the bold subject, here i see bold italic subject. Is it intentional? I 'correct' it to the standard wiki usage wherever I see it hoping that I don't annul someone's hard work to make this.

Secondly, I see that supercategories are misused. For example I created the category 'humans' and 'DRC members' as its subcategory. And some user also added the supercategory 'humans' to all the articles of the DRC members. Note that they also belong to the supercategories of 'people' and 'character'. as far as i know an multiple categories are frowned down upon in other wikis since for example ALL DRC members are humans. That way, articles appear messy... duplicate in both a category and its own subcategory. Is it intentional?

I will try to fix it as good as possible. But please explain to me if it is intentional and wish for all subcategories to serve as complete indexes of all articles, something which IMHO is not very nice.

Btw I don't like categories such as 'Appears in ...'. I think a system like Wookieepedia's would be better. For example having a section 'Appearances' and list allworks AND sources, notifying whether something appears OR simply mentioned. also, we can include for example websites and other products (eg. Myst 96 calendar, hint books etc), instead of making a separate category for each of them.

Also, I see that 'tall' pictures, will push the next section below them, instead of allowing a text 'lay' around it. See for example the article of Yeesha. Her image pushes all the 'History' section down leaving this whole blank space around it. This doesn't happen in other wikis. What is wrong? Maybe a setting that an administrator must take care of?

Oh and btw, how many active users this wiki has?

Koena 17:09, 23 July 2007 (CDT)

Hi, and welcome to MYSTlore!

Let me start by saying that MYSTlore is not associated with Wikimedia (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc.), nor with its semi-related organization Wikia (Memory-Alpha, Wookieepedia, etc.). I deliberately launched it as an independent project of those two huge wiki organizations, because I disagree with some of their design choices and/or prefer to keep certain things under my own control. This has quite a few effects; for example, as you already noticed, MYSTlore's license is not identical with Wikipedia's.

The spirit of a wiki (people contributing to an article as to provide future visitors with a high-quality, high-breadth-and-depth result) remains, but certain details differ on all kinds of levels. Policies 'over there' may or may not apply here, and vice versa. I realize this can be confusing especially as the same software is used (though not the same version, nor the same stack of extensions and customizations). (FWIW, Wikia does provide a wiki with a goal similar to MYSTlore: http://dni.wikia.com/ )

MYSTlore is also very young. While it's fast approaching its first anniversary (has it really been that long?!), it has been growing at a slow (albeit steady) pace. At this point, very few policies exist.

In general, I would ask that you do not make changes by yourself without first having discussed them with others. Specifically, many of your contributions amount to altering pages based on what you feel ought to be the policy, when no such policy is set. You're welcome to propose policies (pick an existing page in the MYSTlore talk namespace, or create a new one with a fitting title), but don't impose them based on your own judgement.

Now, let's go on to individual issues, but keep the above in mind:

1. On MYSTlore, the article's title is in bold as well as italic. Do not "correct" it to just bold. Plain bold and plain italic are used for emphasizing internal links related to the article (bold for a term; italic for a name). Generally, nothing else is allowed to be both bold and italic at the same time.
2. I can see what you're saying. Unfortunately, the software doesn't provide the visitor with an easy way to determine what the supercategories are. That is, when you have an article about a D'ni person, you do get a link to the category D'ni people, but not to Characters, nor to People. There is no set policy on whether supercategories should be included, and I don't think one is necessary, as long as their inclusion in an article is moderate.
3. The "Appears in" categories have the benefit of allowing you to browse the wiki by appearance. That is, going to the "Appears in Myst III: Exile" category automatically gives you all kinds of plants, characters, ages, whathaveyou that have some sort of mention (whether on screen or not) in the game. Per your description, Wookieepedia's approach would not provide that at all.
4. The image shouldn't overlap to the History section, because it is unrelated to that section. The real solution is to provide more text in the initial part of the page, before any section begins. (That the image pushes the section down was a deliberate change, though I do not remember the exact article that required it. It wasn't Yeesha.)
5. That's a little hard to gauge. We average about a hundred visits a day, with each person remaining on the site for about ten minutes and looking at a little over ten pages each time. Very roughly averaged, we have had about a hundred new articles per month thus far. There are only about a handful of frequent contributors.

By the by: Blade's not an admin (or in any other way privileged), just a frequent contributor, so you shouldn't be using his user talk page for these questions. Just sayin'.

P.S.: It is extremely hard to respond to your questions when you keep editing the page in the mean time. ;-)

HTH, Chucker 17:50, 23 July 2007 (CDT)

Ok, Blade was one of the first persons who greeted me so I guessed he was an admin. Sorry to disturb you, Blade :-) Koena 17:54, 23 July 2007 (CDT)

As for the supercategories, I'm not entirely certain that is the best way to handle it. For example, while all DRC members are currently human, that's not part of the definition of DRC member that they be human. There is some untidiness in terms of the People and Characters, yes. For instance, DRC members can easily be under characters. There might be some overlap between characters and people in terms of notable explorers, some of whom happen to be characters IC and just players OOC, but are notable in both venues.

As for the Appears In... categories, there has been some talk of separating that into Appears in and Referenced in. And there hasn't been a lot of work in clarifying the articles themselves on it. I've been thinking of suggesting a format for that (maybe a infobox of some sort). That's on my list of things to do ;) As for the Categories, I think part of the idea was to group them by game the topic appeared in, as well as provide an easy way to see what to avoid if you didn't want to be spoiled about a particular game.

As for active editors, I'd say we have about 5 - 10 active editors here. We have a lot more readers, however.

Blade Lakem 18:00, 23 July 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Patrolling

As per MYSTlore talk:Patrolling, you have been granted patrolling permissions. This comes with no obligations and is entirely voluntary; cf. MYSTlore:Patrolling for more information. Chucker 12:26, 4 August 2007 (CDT)

I've tried the Special:Patrol page a few times, but it always says that there are no changes available. Am I missing something? Blade Lakem 10:46, 5 August 2007 (CDT)