Hi all, would like to propose a few things on this thread. The basic proposal here is cleaning up all technical namespaces before both Final Fantasy VII Remake and the UCP (Unified Content Platform, i.e. MediaWiki update) release. This will be to ensure as few things break as possible, and that all templates we have are all user-friendly. tl;dr:
Firstly, I'd just like to go through all pages in template, module, and MediaWiki space, to ensure that all of them are used. This is basically to ensure the wiki's transition to UCP is as smooth as possible, so that when we update to the latest MediaWiki version, there are few things that break or need updating. That will mean deleting pages in these namespaces that aren't currently used, and preserving ones that we want to keep. It will also mean sorting through templates and their categories; I already categorized them before, but I may make some tweaks if I have a better way to do it. The second thing will be renaming of certain templates (mostly context-links) to use names similar to those on Wikipedia. For example, instead of "OtherUse", we would rename it to "For", as Wikipedia does. This is a fairly minor change overall and won't change how the templates appear, but will make it easier for crossover users coming from any other Fandom wiki or from Wikipedia to more easily know what's what. (Note: although the ref templates and foot template do use odd names also, I won't rename those for now; I intend to come back to them later). The third thing will be renaming stubs to "Section needed". This is because the wiki has used the term "stub" incorrectly for a long time. Stub is only supposed to refer to a page that has little content, and not to just a section needing expansion. The term can be very confusing to newcomers regardless, whereas "Section needed" explains purpose adequately. I'd therefore rename the templates from {{<name>-stub}} to {{<type>-section}}. Wikipedia uses Expand section, but if we're using type names here, I don't think we need the name to be as long. This would also involve changing the categories, to instead use "Section needed", and like other categories, it is better to put the game name as the last part of the category name than the first to make searching easier. The result would be changing "Final Fantasy VII stubs" to "Section needed (Final Fantasy VII)". A bot would mass move the categories and templates. The last thing is something I've proposed in the past but would like to bring it up again: creating template documentation on /doc pages, similar to Wikipedia's. My main motivation for bringing this back up is that the latest MediaWiki version will allow us to create separate documentation pages for Module namespace pages. However, there are many benefits with using the more professional template documentation that Wikipedia uses. For one, it makes the instructions better-presented and more user-friendly. Secondly, it makes edit history on template pages much easier; when you don't have to sort through edits that were simply made alter documentation, and only need to look through edits to code, it is far easier to debug and figure out what went wrong where and why. Thirdly, using /doc pages allows documentation to be reused if it applies to multiple templates, as can be done on navboxes. I these changes should be agreeable, and if so, I'll get working soon. Thank you! | |||
 Catuse says at 01:13, December 30, 2019 (UTC) "Somewhere a zealous god threads these strings between the clouds and the earth, preparing for a symphony it fears impossible to play. And so it threads on, and on, delaying the raise of the conductor's baton." | |||
I think these changes are mostly good. As usual, I will be behind the scenes writing bots that Techno can use to implement the changes as smoothly as possible. If you have time, Techno (and this isn't all written down somewhere already) could you outline what are the big changes with the UCP that would affect FFWiki the most, so we know what to expect will break? | |||
Good idea. Right now, we don't know all the details of the UCP except for the fact it will use the latest MediaWiki version. I imagine around the time of UCP there will be a document of changes that we (Fandom) will make, but I'll highlight the ones for this wiki for sure around the time. In the meantime, I'll just note any changes related to the MediaWiki update. | |||
I'm in the process of doing this now. Thus far, I've removed templates that weren't used on mainspace (or a relevant place like categories or pojects) and seemed to just be conceptual. After writing documentation for all templates, the next goal will be to clear out user/walkthrough templates from the template category -- they will be uncategorized, and moved to their respective correct namespaces (either Walkthrough: or User:). This will keep the template categories used for templates with a practical purpose in a main namespace. For talk bubbles though, to relink them all would be a monumental task, and frustrating for those users. Therefore, I instead propose a new policy: All talk bubbles must live in userspace, but a redirect at templatespace can exist, on the condition that the template redirect does not clash with a name we'd use for a mainspace template. If it were to clash, we would relink. | |||
The new template documentation has been implemented, and all templates have been named properly (names agreed upon per Discord). There's only a few things that need doing now:
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