Overhauling page creation

Okay, so we need the following elements for article creation:

• A base name that forms the URL component
• A custom title (which can go into the request queue) (optional)
• The page type (trope, index, work, creator, useful note, administrivia, etc)
• The Namespace (applies to works only; others would be set by the type choice)
• The index? (tricky; indexing is done by editing the index article, not the article being indexed)
• The article source text.

Alternatively, have Page Type and Medium choices, with the latter applying only to works pages. The combination of the two would determine the namespace. You want to avoid overwhelming the user with choices but it really is a two factor system conceptually.

Ooh, for extra fun, have the final URL display dynamically on the creation form as you make the choices above. That way you can preview it.

The form should also contain error handling, including "article exists", "article is locked", "URL is in a bad format", "permission denied" (the latter for non-mods trying to do things like make an Administrivia page).

If subpages get moved to a system like I suggested, there will have to be a pass to identify all of them and transplant them into the proper format.

Also, we'll have to deal with all of the namespaces that are being used as subpage headers: Monster.Video Games and the like.

edited 16th Oct '12 1:49:19 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

By point:

1. If Custom Title is in there, the namespace list will need to be without CamelCase so that the bug doesn't show up.
2. Disambiguation and Examples will need a few namespace choices as well.
3. An indexing functionality would require an editing script, methinks.

Error handling is good, but the last item has no reason to exist.

edited 16th Oct '12 1:49:02 PM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

The CamelCase namespace bug with custom titles is a separate issue, which shouldn't be conflated here. Let's plan this system as if everything else were working properly.

edited 16th Oct '12 1:50:59 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Including indexing would add extra programming — how about, at least to start, just prompting the user to visit the Index-Index to find a juicily appropriate home for their new page?

I agree that Disambiguation and Examples would need their own namespace or page type. I also think Redirect and Tropes List (for works that have been split up) should be page types.

If there's an error checker, it could warn the user when they give a(n incompatible) namespace to a non-work page, or try to make an index+index.

edited 16th Oct '12 1:57:12 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

Tropes List is Examples. Redirect already is a page type.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Disambigs would be a page type, yes, but they would go in the Main namespace. Redirects would be a special case where you'd need to specify both namespace and article name.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Oh, duh. Of course Examples would cover both trope list and work list subpages.

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

Not all disambigs are in Main/.

Also, we need a system to specify subpages. Methinks that you'll have to type in the URL for a subpage and get to a similar form, but with a subpages box rather than a namespace one.

Also, there should be a list of official namespaces and subpage types (not publicly editable, I'd say), maybe also controlling other namespace/subpage variables.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I figure that each page type would have a list of valid subpages, and you would pick them from a menu. If it doesn't exist, you'd be prompted to create it.

edited 16th Oct '12 2:18:05 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I like the idea of getting away from the tech terms 'namespace' or 'group' and using 'Subject.' As in Subject: Literature; Subject: Trope; Subject: YMMV and so on.

edited 16th Oct '12 9:12:46 PM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

I'm wary about this idea of trying to control namespace creation. As things stand now, the vast majority of existing namespaces have been created "on the fly" just because pages have to be split when they get too long. I think non-mods should at least be able to create new pages in those kinds of namespaces, especially when the split is by medium.

But even excluding those kinds of splits and all the work subpages, drawing up a list of namespaces is tougher than it looks. Work pages have more namespaced mediums than you think, certainly many more than have icons; previous attempts at drawing up "official" lists have been woefully incomplete.

We'd also have to account for all the translation projects and Just for Fun subwikis (AATAFOVS, So You Want To, etc.) that exist right now, if we want to force tropers to select namespaces from a list.

And even if we want all pages of type X in namespace ABC now, I don't think it would be prudent to rule out the possibility of later splitting some of those pages out to IJK.

I just don't see how forcing namespace choice in page creation to avoid "overwhelming the user with choices" won't have the unwelcome consequence of cutting off a lot of legitimate, currently existing namespaces from their natural routes of expansion.

Well, first off, we do have an used namespace list. It should not be too difficult to simply add all the current namespaces to the Official Namespace List.

And I don't think that creating new namespaces is a life-and-death emergency in most cases that it couldn't be resolved with a "If you need a new namespace, bring it up [[somethread here]]"

Oh, and also the OP: Splitting a page could be a simple as adding a page 2, All page 1's would act as an index of their subpages immediately.

edited 22nd Oct '12 7:53:53 AM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

That's a useful page for highlighting possible namespace mistakes (Namespace Goes Here, Mainl, Tivia, Trvia, Disambig, How To, Index, Notes, TV, JustBugsMe, Fan Vid, Fan Film, Fan Game, Draft, Cards, Character vs. Characters, Forum vs. Web Forum, Films vs. Film, Fanfiction vs. Fanfic, Video Games vs. Video Game, Webcomics vs. Webcomic, Web Original vs. Web Originals, Comic vs. Comics, Trope Namers vs. Trope Namer) but not finding the articles in question.

EDIT: OK, sorry. Since this isn't the thread to do it, where should I discuss fixing these?

edited 22nd Oct '12 10:35:49 AM by ArcadesSabboth

Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.

You need this URL to find pages in a given namespace: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/namespace_index.php?ns=Namespace.

Also, finding the pages in a given namespace isn't an issue here. Finding the namespaces is the issue.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I know all about that Article Count list of namespaces, but we most certainly can't put all that into a drop-down list without "overwhelming" the user. If we don't, we risk losing the ability to create new pages in legitimate existing namespaces.

Fixing namespace typos takes a page move and the Cut List (or a redirect when there are many inbounds)

Re : That list lists subpage namespaces (which ought to become entities on their own in the wiki) and namespaces that could be merged into others or turned into subpages as indicated in the original post.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I'm imagining a sort of "Page Creation Wizard", which would walk a troper step by step through the process of creating a page. The process would be slightly different depending on the page type (naturally, given that this wiki's code seems to run on twigs and baling wire, I may be dreaming a bit higher than is feasible). Start with an empty page, perhaps with the page type dropdown right there on the page (if you're Known), possibly alongside a custom-title request box, and a text box for actually typing in the article. Some specifics per page type:

• Trope: A notice appears gently nudging the reader to YKTTW above the article text, and a reminder to crosslink from work pages and appropriate indexes below the article text but above the submit button. (We'd probably have to completely remake the whole indexing system, probably making them a lot more like Wikipedia's categories, to automate them. However, we might want to provide indexes of page-type-specific indexes, to give people ideas, maybe even with laconic descriptions of each index if it's not obvious from the title.)
• Work: A dropdown appears of medium-specific namespaces, and maybe a crosslink reminder below.
• Creator: Maybe provide a reminder to crosslink here too?
• Index: Provide a short description of how to format an index page, in addition to a text box. The pre-filled template idea below might come in especially handy here.
• Just for Fun: As Prfnoff points out, this will need a dropdown of applicable namespaces as well; the bigger problem with this page type is laid out below.
• Disambiguation: Perhaps a dropdown of applicable namespaces would be in order here as well.
• Administrivia: Maybe this shouldn't even appear on the drop-down list for non-mods.
• Redirect: Replaces the article text box with a simple one-line text box to fill in the name of the article to be redirected to, with namespace if necessary.
• I'm imagining that "a work's examples page" and "subpage" would follow a different system:

For works especially, I see people staring all glazed-eyed at the list of every possible subpage type, and that's before we even get into trope lists. Perhaps have the row of buttons that's there now, but also have a "create subpage" button alongside them, which pops up an edit box and a dropdown of appropriate nonexistent subpage types.

This might get fiendishly complex, especially given how many works pages have multiple levels of subpages (for example, a Characters page divided on multiple levels), and how subpages intersect with other pages (for example, some types of Just for Fun pages, like WMG and Headscratchers, might be created using this system); we should solve those two cases before going too far into how this part would work. This would also probably replace the "ghost tabs" for select types of nonexistent subpages, which could be good or bad.

Similarly, I'm wondering if the creation of contributor pages might follow a different system as well, for example, a "create your contributor page" link on your profile, maybe coupled with a PM to all new tropers reminding them to do so. Depends on how necessary it is for someone (especially non-mods) to create a contributor page for someone other than themselves.

Other ideas, depending on how sturdy the twigs and baling wire are:

• Page type could pre-fill the article text with a template for that type, at least for Trope, Work, Creator, Index, and Disambig.
• Perhaps, in addition to a normal submit button, there's also a button for submitting directly to YKTTW. I don't know if this would be necessary for disambigs. A Laconic text box would appear in addition to everything else that would probably be ignored if the page is created straight-up, with the possible exception of tropes, given the differences between how laconics are used on the wiki and on YKTTW.

That might "overwhelm" us trying to sort it all, though I'll take a crack at it in another post.

How do page types and namespaces work when it comes to foreign languages? I wonder if we might have a "translation" checkbox that would open up a list of languages...

What are you referring to here? I imagine this system might actually make it easier to do this.

A few notes:

• There are plenty of good Administrivia/ pages created by non-mods, and no junk pages either. So there is no reason at all to even consider a restriction.
• I think that every page should have a no-stub, please-crosswick warning at the top.
• There need to be two editable lists for namespace and subpage choices - not publicly editable, methinks. They might also select some namespace or namespace icon functionality.

If we go for making Page1 a subpage of Page, we'll need to migrate all the current Page1 pages to PageOne and custom title these, but I tihnk this could easily fix the page splitting issue mentioned earlier.

The temporal order between namespace and subpage selection is probably teh most arduous thing to make here.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

While there are good Admistrivia pages written by non-mods, traditionally they've been written in the sandbox and then launched only after they've gotten moderator approval. I also know we've had issues in the past with non-mods, you in particular, changing administrivia pages to say things that are not actual policy but merely their own preferences that they're attempting to force other people to follow by making it sound official. I've had to fix a fair bit of that lately.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

^About which page are you talking?

edited 28th Oct '12 1:49:20 PM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Some things I'm finding:

• We have a ton of namespaces for trope example lists
• Some namespaces, like Analysis, can apply to both tropes and works
• Some Just for Fun namespaces are more like subpages of Just for Fun pages, but some (Darth and Sugar) aren't, and some (Pantheon) are borderline
• The "intersection" problem isn't limited to stuff like WMG; some trope example lists border on being subpages of works, and in fact example pages for stuff like CMOA now appear to be considered work subpages
• Some namespaces are used both for entries in a franchise and for a franchise's trope lists (for example, The Dresden Files)

Okay, so I started making my list in Notepad and lost all of it when I was dumb with my computer, but I kinda needed to re-sort them anyway, so I've gotten started at sorting all the namespaces at Namespace Sorting.

The worst part? I'm not even half done. I took to copy-pasting from the Article Count list when I got a huge block of trope example namespaces (and not even bothering with the bullet formatting), which I'm probably going to do ended up doing again with the work subpage namespaces.

edited 4th Nov '12 2:01:39 AM by MorganWick

Just made some changes to that page. Manhwa and Manhua are Korean and Chinese renderings of the same word, but are treated as separate mediums. "Manwah" was just a misspelling which I've put on the Cut List.

A few notes on Sandbox.Namespace Sorting:

• A few of the media namespaces are for specific shows. We are currently trying to remove these. So I think they should stay off the Official Namespace List.
• I'll ask in Writer's Block on the Character Development Thread namespaces. I feel that a WritersBlock/ namespace for these and Unpublished Works might do well, but it's a separate discussion.
• Main/ should not go under Page Type Specific; there are indexes, redirects, disambigs, tropes and misplaced pages in there.
• I'm fine with Sandbox/ and SlidingScale/ being subpages.
• In "Subpages of Specific Pages" some pages could go into subpages, but others will have to be turned into the Page - Page1 format since they are split example sections.
• "Other" will have to be split between subpages and namespaces.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Are you referring to the "namespaces used as though they were media" section? I put it there because that's where it best fits; whether or not something belongs in Main is determined primarily by what type it is, assuming it's not misplaced. That's why I said "and some others". Okay, then what's Sandbox.Namespace Sorting a subpage of? Wait, I'm confused. I thought all subpages were moving to the Page - Page1 format? What difference are you trying to draw here? In any case, pretty much all the trope and work namespaces are example sections with most of the exceptions being splits of the Characters page that work on the same principle (and maybe a few fanfic-related pages).

edited 7th Nov '12 8:18:24 PM by MorganWick