Talk: Article type

Article Type Proposal

Proposal

See WoWWiki:Article type.

Note

I'm making this a proposal, since it is too much of a mess to be {{grandfathered}}. --Fandyllic

Votes

No:

1. No Fandyllic 4:36 PM PST 3 Mar 2006 - (See below.)
2. No Ralthor 09:39, 7 April 2006 (EDT) - (Seems redundant with categories, I can't see how the work to overhaul all of this would provide much benefit)
3. No TheMaster42 21:21, 5 May 2006 (EDT) - (Article summary should suffice.)
4. No Athenn 13:20, 8 June 2006 (EDT) - (Seems to create additional work without corresponding value.)
5. No Mikk 18:37, 10 June 2006 (EDT) - (see comments)

Comments

• As currently written, I vote No, because it need a massive overhaul to be useful. Proposed types don't match up well with categories or represent non-ambiguous context to the reader. The listed article types at the top don't match the examples farther down. It just needs alot more work before it can be thought of as any type of guideline. And yes, although I'm calling it a policy proposal, it is really a guideline. --Fandyllic 4:30 PM PST 3 Mar 2006

• For a fleshed out article, the summary should give the reader an idea of what they're looking at. I know this utterly fails on the numerous stubs and tiny articles on the wiki, but the stub templates and categories should (in a perfect world) serve this function. Adding another category-ish template wouldn't help those stub articles anyway. -- TheMaster42 21:21, 5 May 2006 (EDT)

• Though I sort of appreciate the idea in general, I'm not sure its usefulness outweighs the work involved to empose is on every page already in existance.   As currently written, it also conflicts with practices long adopted in various areas of the wiki. There's plenty of places that use informative headers. Hardly any of them come from this list.   Perhaps we should just document what's actually in use rather than reinvent the wheel. --Mikk 18:37, 10 June 2006 (EDT)

Alternative Approach?

If the Wiki template for "Category:" could be modified to appear at the top of the page, and IF the Category was used only to list the PRIMARY CATEGORY, this template could be used to identify the Article Type instead. See WoWWiki:Article_type/example1 this example.

-- Schmidt 16:13, 30 Oct 2005

---

{{itemtoc}}

---

So, I'm just curious...how is this better than the regular Categories thing? At the moment, I think it'd be preferable to put the Category box at the top of each page instead of the bottom (if it's possible), but I'm willing to change. --FeldmanSkitzoid 22:26, 25 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Please see my User Talk page. -- Laisren 08:07, 2 Aug 2005 (EDT)

---

I like the idea but from what I can gather you really are simply redoing what can already be done with the category ability. From what I can tell you basically just want to have the category display at the top and you would like it to link to the root category as well if it is a sub category.

The category displaying on the bottom rather than the top that is a function of the way the "theme/layout" for the site is designed it can be changed but the admins would need to do this. The gategory displaying on the bottom is because the article is the important part not the area it belongs to. If a user is unsure what what an article is about then the article is not writen very well. Categories are mearly a way to help the reader find more information in the same area. --BaldMonkey 00:48, 1 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Moving Categories to the top of the page isn't a bad idea. Like Laisren points out, it isn't always immediately obvious what type of article something is about. However, that would also mean that the categories would need to be reorganized from most to least specific.

For instance, Ironforge would need to be Category:Alliance City, Category:Cities, Category:Alliance, Category:Dun Morogh, Category:Eastern Kingdoms, Category:Azeroth in that order (or something similar to it). Right now, those categories are in the exact opposite order.

--Powerlord 21:31, 7 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Added an example of what you might be talking about to the top of this page (pretend this belongs to the items catagory) --BaldMonkey 01:57, 1 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Something else I just thought about would be that there should be away to have the template I used at the top Template:Itemtoc take a variable so that when you use it it could add the article to the correct category as well. So that when you add the item to an article the code would looke something like {{Template:Itemtoc|Plate Armor}} and the item will be added to the :Category:Plate Armor page as well as having the above template listed on the page. Hmmm Okay now I'm really thinking to much about this so I'm going to carry on talk of this over at the Items Talk page. --BaldMonkey 21:33, 1 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Sorry for taking so long to respond, but there appears to be issues with adding Categories from a template. MediaWiki doesn't seem to recognize that a category has been added. I've heard that this can be fixed by manually reloading the page, but it didn't work the last time I tried it.

--Powerlord 05:44, 14 Oct 2005 (EDT)

You need to "purge" the page, e.g. http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php?title=WoWWiki_talk:Article_type&action=purge

--Mikk 04:55, 7 June 2006 (EDT)

Additional Article Types

I'd like to propose three new article types:

• Spells
• Abilities
• Game Terms

I was thinking that the first two could have an additional argument to the template to tell it which class it's for. For example, {{spell-article|Druid}} would produce [Druid Spell].

--Powerlord 05:40, 14 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Deprecated by the Category system

This is deprecated by the Category system - there are *specific reasons* why the categories are by defualt listed at the bottom of the page - for that matter, moving this display to the top is about the hardest thing to do on a Wiki - my members requested the same thing, took me about 6 hours to make it work nicely, then we ended up reverting anyway, because the users saw the use of the Categories system in the end. I would be willing to take up the specific merits of the system with anybody who views this differently, but not right now - there is too much productive work to do to worry about this. It is WoWWiki policy to use the Category system - someday it might be moved to the top of the page, and you can feel free to add area-specific TOC templates (although it might just be easier to link back to the Items:Plants category for instance instead of using a TOC - the toc, you have to update if you add a new plant) and feel free to put items in any catagory you like as long as you think it fits - just please keep them in official categories per the category policy.

[[User:SilverSide| ^Silver[[Template::User:SilverSide/sig|\]]_Side]] 12:44, 2 Dec 2005 (EST)

I'm not sure you understand the full proposal. This is already effectively a "wowwiki policy". It is not a replacement for Categories (though it works in conjunction with Categories). It is essentially a header tag that identifies at a glance what an article is about (e.g a place, a character, an AddOn, etc.). HTH, - Laisren 06:14, 19 Dec 2005 (EST)