Hey all, I would like to propose a few overhauls for our category system: namely, I would like to reorganize/clean them them, rename them to {subject} in {game}, add consistent content on the Category pages using a template, and categorize redirects to list pages, as well as creating redirects with tags which will be categorized. To give you the background to why I'm doing this, category pages (much as it pains me to say) are increasingly treated on the Desktop and Mobile versions of the site as front-facing navigation. As examples, categories are used on the Mobile Main Page, the article navigation header, in the "See also" sections below pages on new skins. In FANDOM's the Community Viewership Report for Marvel's Spider-Man Wiki (which I founded), I was recommended to more prominently use categories as navigation (though I did not agree in all cases). This isn't new, as MediaWiki have suggested they be used to browse pages for a while, but it's clear that for SEO reasons, and the fact it's easiest to make categories the main navigation across all wikis for mobile, that the sooner we clean up categories and treat them as a front-facing navigation system, the better. My first proposed change is simply reorganizing categories based on subseries. This is something I've wanted to do for a while but never had the energy to really implement it, but basically, organize them the way
This will also involve a little cleanup to tidy things up, possibly deleting useless categories here and there. The goal is to tidy them up so they are easy to navigate. I'd also just remove any instances of non-maintenance categories added through templates and not through just adding to the page normally, making them easier to handle. My second change is renaming the categories, from names such as Final Fantasy VI locations to Locations in Final Fantasy VI, and from Final Fantasy VII player characters to Player characters in Final Fantasy VII. For a category name, the topic is more important than the game itself. Therefore, the topic makes more sense to be used first, whereas the game name is the distinguisher. It should even help cases where people accidentally add both "FFVII locations" and "Locations" at once. Also, this is simply more natural to say in a sentence; "Narshe is a location in Final Fantasy VI" makes more sense than "Narshe is a Final Fantasy VI location". I'm also guessing we should use the full game names for these categories. Thirdly, adding content to category pages using a Category template. Category pages benefit further in SEO from having content explaining what the category is about, and to make sure this is consistent (as we wouldn't add more than a few sentences anyway), I suggest we use a category template like I used on R&C Wiki, J&D Wiki, and Marvel's Spiderwiki, as this one is easy to configure and get used to. Finally, a bit more complicated, creating and categorizing redirects to simplify linking and populate categories. This would mean we'd create a redirect titled "Buster Sword (Final Fantasy VII)", which would redirect to "Final Fantasy VII weapons#Buster Sword", and contain the "Weapons in Final Fantasy VII" category. For a similar concept, a good example is what we did on R&C Wiki: these skill points don't have enough content for their own page, but will redirect to the relevant section on the skill point list page, and anyone reading the skill points category can see them all. It allows a category for things like abilities, weapon, or armor per game to be fully populated (instead of categorizing recurring pages which shouldn't have game-specific categories), and also means that we can make it significantly easier for editors when linking to pages (and bots for relinking). Plus, should we ever need to create a page for that weapon, we can without changing many links. I was considering applying the same to different translations, but that might get messy, so I'll default to "no" unless people want that. All of this can be done using several bot commands if people are in favor. Let me know your thoughts! | |||
Yes category overhaul. Categories are great, but they're extremely unwieldy. We've needed someone and a bot to do something for a long time.
Yes yes YES linking to (and creating) redirects. We'll be creating a billion redirects but relinking will be so much easier when we move content, and categorising them will make per-game ability and item categories direct to more useful places and be listed by the actual names of the abilities. JBed (talk) 00:53, December 14, 2018 (UTC)