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UESPWiki talk:Namespaces/Archive

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This is an archive of past UESPWiki talk:Namespaces discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Modding/Tamriel Namespaces

  • I'm bugging Dave to define a "Tes3" namespace which would be for Tes3 modding notes. He's concerned that this would be confused with Morrowind (Tes3 is commonly used a synonym for Morrowind). But I figure:
    • 'Tes3' is a lot easier to type and read. And it makes sense since Tes3 is really the platform for Morrowind, Bloodmoon, Tribunal, a bunch of TCs, etc.
    • To avoid confusion in the site quicklink area, the link to the Tes3:Tes3 (or Tes3:Main) can be labeled "Tes3 Modding", thus avoiding confusion.
  • I think that it might be a good idea to change "Tamriel" namespace to "Lore" namespace, which is more accurate. And less letters to type! Typing Tamriel every time gets a little old... But it's not a huge deal. I can live with "Tamriel". Just think that "Lore" would be better.
Wrye 21:42, 21 Feb 2005 (EST)

A lot of the confusion is about how namespaces are used (or abused as the case may be). I guess this is mostly my fault for being a new Wiki user as well as trying to maintain the tree structure of the original site. Almost none of the various CMS/Wiki systems I looked at had anything close to the organization design I'd like. When you have 1000+ pages of content (and likely to increase fast now), how things are organized will make or break how easily a new user can find things.

In the original site, if you wanted to find Daggerfall item hints you'd just go Daggerfall-Hints-Items. The file structure of the site mirrored the basic organization structure. I was thinking to try to maintain this structure somehow in the Wiki, for instance by using the article name Daggerfall:Hints:Items:Artifacts, but I'm beginning to think it would be better to just go Daggerfall:Artifacts instead and let the various portal pages and categories organize the content. I guess whatever we do it will be a work in progress for a while and we can tweak things as we see fit.

Also on the namespace issue, is the TES3 namespace Wyre has suggested. Originally I saw the game namespaces to simply hold everything relevant to that game (i.e., Morrowind: would hold everything related to Morrowind). I put Bloodmoon/Tribunal in seperate namespaces since a format like Morrowind:Bloodmoon: would get long too fast. The nice thing about this is if a user wants to search for just Morrowind articles its is simple to do. Originally I would have just done Morrowind:Modding:Article, though I'm being convinced this isn't the best way. I'd prefer a descriptive namespace like TES3Modding, or TES3Mod since the namespace shows up in the article title (I thought there was a way to use a different title in Wiki markup, but the Wiki site is down atm). Perhaps I'm just being too picky...;)

Similarily, I choose Tamriel as a namespace simply to reflect it contains content about the World of Tamriel. Lore is fine but it seems more vague (Lore of what?). I think you can change the namespace name since namespaces are referred to as numbers in the database, so you only have to worry about broken links if we really want to change it afterwards.

Perhaps once we get some Wiki experts online they can help settle this...:)

DaveH 23:18, 21 Feb 2005 (EST)

I don't think this takes a Wiki expert -- this is just site organization issue. Best determiner is to just type namespace links a bunch of times and see what's tolerable and is still readable. So, let's see...

Tes3:Dialog Tes3:Dialog Creation Tes3:Modeling Tes3:Scripting Functions Tes3:Gold
Mod:Dialog Mod:Dialog Creation Mod:Modeling Mod:Scripting Functions Mod:Gold
Mod3:Dialog Mod3:Dialog Creation Mod3:Modeling Mod3:Scripting Functions Mod3:Gold
MMod:Dialog MMod:Dialog Creation MMod:Modeling MMod:Scripting Functions MMod:Gold
Modding:Dialog Modding:Dialog Creation Modding:Modeling Modding:Scripting Functions Modding:Gold
Tes3Mod:Dialog Tes3Mod:Dialog Creation Tes3Mod:Modeling Tes3Mod:Scripting Functions Tes3Mod:Gold
Tes3Modding:Dialog Tes3Modding:Dialog Creation Tes3Modding:Modeling Tes3Modding:Scripting Functions Tes3Modding:Gold

I wish we could use Mod or Modding -- they're both easy to type and descriptive. But they don't leave room for Oblivion Modding. Mod3 doesn't anything over Tes3, and is less meaningful. I think that Tes3Mod and Tes3Modding are longer and don't add that much over Tes3. So, Tes3 still makes the most sense to me.

Hm... It may be that part of the reason "Tes3" makes sense to me is that I've been munging the data files so much. All of Morrowind's data files (esm, esp, ess) are Tes3 files. That makes me think of the platform as being Tes3 -- more so than an ordinary player/modder, I suppose.

Anyway, let's not spend too long on this. My vote's definitely for 'Tes3', but just go ahead and pick one and I'll live with it.

Wrye 00:44, 22 Feb 2005 (EST)

Same thing on Tamriel vs. Lore. It's a suggestion. If you're not convinced, then no problem. However, here's some additional arguments...

Lore of what? I actually think this makes more sense the other way around. Basically, the whole site is about Tamriel. Arena, Daggerfall, etc. all take place within Tamriel, right? So that seems more vague. OTOH, I think that Lore clearly covers the lore. I.e., not quests, not particular games, not modding, but the general lore or knowledge of the entire series.

Wrye 01:47, 22 Feb 2005 (EST)

Finally added the Morrowind Mod:Tes3Mod namespace...enjoy!

DaveH 18:50, 1 Mar 2005 (EST)

Travels Namespace

Add sections for the Travels series of ES games.

Daveh
What we have so far:
--Aristeo 19:21, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

Namespaces and Special Pages

There are some problems associated with using custom namespaces, these should be fixed if possible.

Yes, these can be changed by manually changing the SQL query on each page to remove the namespace restriction. Newer Wiki versions may also let you modify which namespaces are searched by default. Will check again after upgrading to 1.5.x. --DaveH 18:02, 23 Nov 2005 (EST)
Fixed a bunch of the Special pages to look for pages in the other namespaces. Currently it also includes the talk pages which can be good or bad I suppose. Will leave it as is for now and correct it as needed. --DaveH 21:10, 23 November 2005 (EST)
  • Can the organization of the checkboxes in the search page be organized into a table? Right now, it's hard to select which area to search.
Wrye 13:26, 13 Oct 2005 (EDT)
Yes, this was my original intention but I haven't got around to doing it yet. I may just hard code the table in order to get good formatting since namespaces rarely change. --DaveH 18:02, 23 Nov 2005 (EST)

Tamriel Namespace

I think there should be a link to the Tamriel namespace on the menu, so that this namespace is used by people. There has been very little use of it, although being the ideal place to put general info common to all instalments of the game, like e.g. races, history, geography, etc. Placing a link in the main menu would encourage people to use it and avoid duplicating the same info in various game pages. --DrPhoton 03:12, 30 March 2006 (EST)

Subpages

I've been reading alot about media wiki, and was wondering if there's a reason we've not been using the subpage feature? It's an ideal candidate for solving some of the issues with namespace (such as quests, locations, and the diferentiation between the two). It would involve a bit of restructuring some of the pages, but nothing that can't be done incrementally, and over time. I'm more than willing to put in the work to help. [Link to mediawiki's help page on Subpages] Fushi 23:10, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

Bogus Namespaces

Special:AllPages shows that there are a bunch of articles for DFRemake that are in the main namespace, yet trying to use (An apparently non existant) DFRemake namespace. Am I just reading that page wrong, or can that be fixed?

Yes, I see that those pages are attempting to use correct namespace, but are not. Still needs to be fixed. Fushi 21:57, 15 May 2006 (EDT)
Where should these pages be put? General:DFRemake/[Article]? Or Daggerfall:DFRemake/[Article]? --Aristeo 19:19, 28 June 2006 (EDT)

Namespaces vs. Flat Structure

Summarizing old discussions...

Early on Dave made a choice to use namespaces for each of the main sections of the site, rather than pile everything into the main namespace. There's some advantages to this, but also some disadvantages.

Site content needed to be divided up somehow. Morrowind mods need to be distinguished from Oblivion mods; likewise with Arena FAQ vs Morrowind, and even the Tamriel Hlaalu faction from the Morrowind Hlaalu faction. So, you would have to go with some scheme that would allow you to separate out those page article. So, if you do that with the page article then you have to do something like "Morrowind:FAQ" or "Morrowind/FAQ" or "Morrowind-FAQ".

So, yes typing "Morrowind:FAQ" instead of "FAQ" is a hassle, but you'd have to do it in some form or another. Moreover, the Morrowind:FAQ form allows you to type a link as ,"[[Morrowind:FAQ|]]", where the bar at the end strips the name down to "FAQ" in the text.

Then there's the automatic page listing problem. Anytime that a page is automatically listed, its listed in long format "Morrowind:FAQ", not "FAQ". But again, we have to stick "Morrowind" in there somewhere, so we're pretty much stuck with that.

Wrye 13:14, 13 Oct 2005 (EDT)

One might argue that Dave could have used the "Morrowind:" syntax, but not actually created matching namespaces. I.e., the pages would have gone into the main namespace. This would resolve the problems with page listings on the special pages, and would make it trivial to add new "namespaces" (since they're not real). And it would simplyify searching -- but also prevent you from searching in only one of the namespaces.

If this were deemed desirable, then I'm not sure how easy it would be to carry out. Clearly link text would be the same. But I think that when pages are stored in the database, their namespaces is stored also (as a number, I think). So fixing that would probably be non-trivial. (Though someone might have whipped up a php script that does it.)

Wrye 13:14, 13 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Since this was kind of died out, I'd like to re-open it with some new arguments. Basically... ok. Forget that. I can't type all this out... crap I want to help wikis but haven't got the motivation. Somebody shoot me. Peerless 02:16, 29 March 2006 (EST)}}

Aristeo's Opinion

I vote that the game namespaces should be deleted and the content put into the main namespace for the following reasons: See below opinion

  • Simply put, out system confuses the heck out of our readers.
  • An average wiki user will type in, for example, "Molag Bal" into the input field of the search engine, click "Go", and expect to be shown the "Molag Bal" article page. Instead, they are shown a list of articles containing the phrase "Molag Bal".
  • Articles would rarely conflict with each other. Yes, we would have to rename articles like "Morrowind:FAQ" to "Morrowind FAQ", but this would rarely happen.
  • We already have a way to seperate articles. We have a navigational system that leads the user to whatever page they want. We also have categories to seperate articles.
  • There is a problem about what namespace to put people, books, etc. Most of the time, we just put a dumbed down version of a page in the Tamriel namespace, and a detailic version in the game's namespace. Putting everything in the main namespace and putting <noinclude></noinclude> around what you don't want to transclude would iliminate this problem.
  • It's three times as difficult to type in a link like [[Morrowind:Caius Cosades|Caius Cosades]] than it would be to type in a link like [[Caius Cosades]].
--Aristeo (talk • contribs) 19:23, 30 June 2006 (EDT)

Aristeo's Alternate Opinion

Current Namespaces* Proposed Namespace Changes
Main
User
UESPWiki
Image
MediaWiki
Template
Category
Help
Tamriel
Arena
Daggerfall
Battlespire
Redguard
Morrowind
Tribunal (Merge into Morrowind)
Bloodmoon (Merge into Morrowind)
Oblivion
General
Review (Delete)
Tes3Mod (Merge into Morrowind)
Tes4Mod (Merge into Oblivion)
DFRemake (Create)
* Talk namespaces not included to save space.
Reasoning

I think my above plan, at this point, would have caused more harm than good. However, I think we have too many namespaces. It's not like we have a space limit with any of the namespaces, so why not combine a couple of them? I don't see any sort of conflict with merging the modding namespaces into their proper games, and deleting Review wouldn't hurt because it isn't being used. Tribunal and Bloodmoon are expansions of Morrowind and probally don't deserve a namespace. The main mainspace could be used to aid in searches, and would redirect to the correct content. What do you all think? --Aristeo 17:49, 1 July 2006 (EDT)

I think reducing the number of namespaces would be good. One advantage I find to having the namespaces is that when I do a search (i.e., to find pages discussing the "mundane ring") I can limit the search to just look at Oblivion pages. But having to unclick all the check boxes can be annoying.... having a few less would be helpful. --Nephele 20:16, 1 July 2006 (EDT)
I altered it a little. Put DFRemake up there. --Aristeo 21:02, 27 July 2006 (EDT)
I fixed Tes4Mod (it should merge into Oblivion, not Morrowind) --Nephele 21:05, 27 July 2006 (EDT)
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