Talk:Main Page/Archive 1

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General

I'd like to know why my last edit was reverted. I had fixed one link, and changed another for readability. If that's considered minor, my bad. --Bossman 19:26, 14 April 2006 (EDT)

  • I've re-fixed the link, since it's obviously broken. Other than that, I'll wait for Rorch's explaination. --The Writer2 20:27, 14 April 2006 (EDT)
  • It looks like there was a [diplomacy] that was changed to [Diplomacy|diplomacy] that also was reverted because the doubling is not required. I think that the link change just happened to go along with it (which was totally my fault but I blame it on typing with cold hands). Cathexis 15:45, 15 April 2006 (EDT)
Yep I was reverting the unnecesary [[Diplomacy|diplomacy]] but missed the other edit. Sorry. --Admin 16:20, 15 April 2006 (EDT)
  • O.o Your revert in fact added the unecessary piped-link...Bossman had removed it.

Bossman's Edit
Rorsch's Revert

Erm, since the course of action is so clear...I'll just fix-up the piped-link...and we can forget this sillyness. :) --The Writer2 19:57, 15 April 2006 (EDT)


Category Heirarchy

I'd like to propose a change in how we do categories. Right now in Category:Technology, Category:Races, and Category:Ship Sections we have sub categories that give more detail on the classification of the entries. But we still include the page as part of the top category which makes for potentially large numbers of entries especially on the tech and shp section pages.

Would it be more organized to only include the pages into the subcategories and the only the subcategories into the main categories? For example Red Lasers is in Category:Energy Weapons only and Category:Energy Weapons is in Category:Technology. It kind of forces a heirarchy where there really isn't one in categories. Considering we'll have ~140 technologies and at least that many ship sections I thought some heiarchy is a good thing. --Admin 21:24, 10 April 2006 (EDT)

  • I've thought about this many times since taking sections out of Ships. I agree. --Bossman 23:19, 10 April 2006 (EDT)
    • I agree. Makes sense. It's not worth the elongated page load time (noticable on dial-up) just to have a complete list of everything under one category. Editing-wise things may be a little harder, such as tedious tasks such as this that must be done manually to every page (I for one like to look at the category and just jump through alphabetically), but that's a slight inconvieniance. And, any improvement to the quality of the wiki for a user outweighs inconvieniance to editors, methinks...
Just one thing though, and I know this is probably because my work on the section, I'm not sure that the races category would require as tight a nuece as the Tech, Weapon, or Ship categories. There aren't enough pages really. But I'd be all for the removal of the races pages from the main category page. Eh.
However, one more major thing to take into account (sorry, typing as I go...you get to see how my thoughts work...confusing, eh?) is that we'll lose the link back to the main category at the bottom of each and every page related. So, we remove a tech page from the Technology category, we remove the conveniant link back to the Technology category at the bottom of said page. I'm not sure just how badly that would affect the flow of flipping casually though the wiki, but I imagine it may have a noticable effect...granted it could be solved by adding links manually, but that lacks a certain elegance...erg. As far as I know (I just went through the Categories section of meta.wikimedia.org; might have missed something, ya never know), there isn't a way to have the link at the bottom and still not include the page in the linked category...in other words, have our cake and eat it too. Eh.
Some things to think about. --The Writer2 00:20, 11 April 2006 (EDT)
  • I don't think that the length of the page in text is that big of an issue. The portion of category:technology that we are thinking about axing is about 6000 characters long (approximately 1 second @ 48kbps). Now, I don't know about you but I really like having a central location where I can find all of the techs and a small amount of inconveniance at times is worth having more readily available information. Granted I'm also a "breadth of information display" not "depth of information display" type person (I took a web programming class in college and my prof told us that when you're prototyping a website everything should be at most a logical three steps away from everything else) so this is positively dripping with personal opinion. Cheers! Cathexis 14:10, 11 April 2006 (EDT)
You're right, it proably wouldn't work for the Races category. As far as the techs will go you'll click on the Category:Energy Weapons link at the bottom and then that page will have a Category:Technology link to get back to the main page. So there's an extra click there, but I think that'll be okay. --Admin 01:14, 11 April 2006 (EDT)
  • I like it but I wonder about something. Is it usefull to have a central list for a new user who might not know that the AI Section is a Command Section, that Atmospheric Adaptation is in BioTechnology, that Cruiser Construction is in Industrial or that Shield Breakers are in Ballistic Weapons? We don't want to force the new user to go through all the subcategories to find the one Section, Technology or Weapon that they are looking for. An idea is to create a "Ship Sections Index" page (or a "Technology Index" page) that includes all the pages in that top level category and put it as a link on the page (or the only page categorized in that top level). The biggest issue with this would be that we would have to maintain it manually.
Anyway, Wikipedia's guideline is that "In straightforward cases an article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, for example Golden Gate Bridge is in Category:Suspension bridges, so it should not also be in Category:Bridges. However there are many articles which should be in both a subcategory and a parent category." you can find it here and the Wikipedia's take on Categories, Lists and Series boxes can be found here. We could also try adding a TOC (table of contents) by typing: 
   {{CategoryTOC}} - which adds a complete TOC (Top, 0 - 9, A-Z)
    {{CatAZ}} - which adds a TOC without numbers. This is for categories with members that only start with letters.
--Nspace 13:02, 11 April 2006 (EDT)
  • Technologies and ship sections can be found directly through the search function available in the sidebar of every page. It would require some browsing and guessing to find the right tech tree or section type if you're looking for the particular article starting at the top category. It's a change but not necessarily a deal breaker in my mind. I'm very against managing an index of links manually... rather keep eveything under one category if that's the case. --Admin 13:57, 11 April 2006 (EDT)
  • Another problem I just realized. Ship sections can't be sub categorized by command/mission/engine because some sections exist as both with the same name. For example the Deflector Section is a mission for DE and command for CN with the same name. We either need seperate entries for those differences or modify the current sub-categorization method. --Admin 13:57, 11 April 2006 (EDT)
    • The Shield Section and Cloak Section is currently subcategorized under both Mission Sections and Command Sections. We can just do the same with the Deflector Section, unless you think we really need to break it out into two pages. And your right, I had forgoten about the search function. I don't really want to maintain an index of links. Just an idea. :) Anyway, I'm for linking all the pages to just their subcategories. --Nspace 14:18, 11 April 2006 (EDT)
      • I was mistaken DE is deflector, CN is Point Deflector. Shield and cloak are the same in both cases though. If there's no issue having multiple sub-categories then I'm good. --Admin 16:07, 11 April 2006 (EDT)

Browser Issues

Can we add a "Best viewed in Firefox" line to the first paragraph of this page (with link to Firefox homepage, perhaps). The difference in the quality of the new skin between FF and IE is absolutely astonishing (FF takes the cake by far).
EDIT: On top of that, perhaps we can settle on a resolution that we can base future changes (specifically images, which will change how the page is rendered as resolution changes) on, noting that as the best viewing resolution aswell. --The Writer2 20:55, 4 March 2006 (EST)

Oh gah. Nevermind. Just take a look at the wiki headers in IE. *Shudder.* I'll go ahead and add a "Best viewed in Firefox" bit to the Main Page. This new skin deserves it. (If you thought linked headers were hard to read, well, take a look at it in IE.) --The Writer2 23:55, 5 March 2006 (EST)
The problem with the headers is related to tranparency in png and IE. We'll use GIFs from now on when we need a transparent image. I want to limit the use of images as formatting for the reasons you state above. If we stay in text and CSS it'll work in any browser (mostly) and any resolution. Finally and once more headers are the end point of a link from the TOC or another page. If you need to immediately have someone follow that linked header to the real information something is very, very wrong with your page orgainzation :). --Admin 01:07, 6 March 2006 (EST)


Race Head Icons

Me like, me like, me like! I'll be replacing all the icons on the races pages with these instead. They just are so much cooler...and linked. :) (Plus they blend better with the new style.) Thankyou Rorsch for finding-out how to make images link to somewhere other than the image page. The problem has baffled me for so long. --The Writer2 23:03, 3 March 2006 (EST)

  • Aw crud. I stopped myself. Is there a way to change the toolip? I tried the title attribute, but to no avail. It'd be far better to have the tooltip be the race name, e.g. "Hivers", rather than the link location. *Hunts W3 website for help.* (EDIT: Can't find anything about it...) --The Writer2 23:13, 3 March 2006 (EST)
I think the mediawiki software automatically sets the link name as the image meta-info.Cathexis 01:08, 4 March 2006 (EST)
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