Wiki Improvement Suggestion Thread

[TelTura]

So, sorry if I'm jumping the gun, but I figured I'd make one of these instead of gumming up the thread with a new topic every time I thought of something unrelated to previous suggestions that could be used.

[TelTura]

Now, the current idea that spawned this thread has to do with keyword filtering...I don't know exactly how the autolinker works, not having seen the code myself, but is it possible to add a clause that would automatically add double asterisks to either side of keywords?  I mean, not that it's an enormous hassle to write **Fierce** or **damage + 1**, but it just seems like it might be nice, and easily implemented to boot (unless I grossly miss my guess in how the code works). 

Taking a look down the list of keywords, none of the loaded keywords (except maybe damage) would ever really be used outside referencing the corresponding action, and very few of the unloaded keywords would be used on the wiki except how various cards would use them.  At any rate, if it did just reuse the autolinker code, then it's just a ! away from disabling anyway, if there is some fringe case where it looks ugly.

[TelTura]

Link color styles:  The green is fine (if unorthodox) in my opinion, but it overrides the purple "visited" color for pages you've already been to.  If we ever have a wiki fine enough to get lost in, people are gonna want to know what pages they've been to already at a glance. 

[Kralik]

Now, the current idea that spawned this thread has to do with keyword filtering...I don't know exactly how the autolinker works, not having seen the code myself, but is it possible to add a clause that would automatically add double asterisks to either side of keywords?  I mean, not that it's an enormous hassle to write **Fierce** or **damage + 1**, but it just seems like it might be nice, and easily implemented to boot (unless I grossly miss my guess in how the code works). 

Taking a look down the list of keywords, none of the loaded keywords (except maybe damage) would ever really be used outside referencing the corresponding action, and very few of the unloaded keywords would be used on the wiki except how various cards would use them.  At any rate, if it did just reuse the autolinker code, then it's just a ! away from disabling anyway, if there is some fringe case where it looks ugly.

This is something I could look into if anyone wants to get me a full list of keywords.

[TelTura]

check the wiki page <_<;;

Keywords

[Kralik]

Link color styles:  The green is fine (if unorthodox) in my opinion, but it overrides the purple "visited" color for pages you've already been to.  If we ever have a wiki fine enough to get lost in, people are gonna want to know what pages they've been to already at a glance. 

Standard blue and purple it is. Kinda liked the default green though.

[TelTura]

eh, I've no problem with the green.  Maybe green and purple?

[Kralik]

How about... green and darker green?

[TelTura]

so long as it's stark enough.

[TelTura]

Alright, I've found that the two colors you've picked don't work that well...the "unvisited" green is alright, but "visited" is so close to black as to be fairly indistinguishable when in a wall of text.  Try the green and purple; purplelink is well-established, and who knows, it might not look hideous <_<

[Kralik]

In that case, I'll make it green and dark white, so that the visited links are indeed QUITE distinguishable from the wall of text.

[TelTura]

dark white

isn't that another word for black?

[TelTura]

I just had an idea.  You know how the redlinks have the dotted line underneath?  Well, is there any way to have an unvisited link be green while visited is the current color but with the dotted line?  I think that will help it pop while still keeping a low profile.

[TelTura]

As far as the culture icons go, they seem to me to be a bit fuzzy...I'm trying to use them contextually in a sentence (like the cards do) and it's not coming out as clearly as I'd like (see Unloaded Keywords).  If it's just me, I'll deal with it, but as I've mentioned before, I have high-res vector versions of all the culture icons.  Is there any wizardry that can be done to display *.svg files?  If not, I can hack together a custom Ariel derivative that would then be as smooth as the cards and *.pdf's.  Is this feasible?

[EDIT:] At the very least, I could re-render some new *.png's to eliminate any *.jpg artifacts and hopefully preserve better clarity.  Let me know what would be best.

[Kralik]

If you want to make better versions of the culture icons, feel free. Those are just the ones we had from the forum, which I think? came over from CC days. BTW... the Boromir in Unloaded Keywords is running into the table.

[TelTura]

I suppose I'll work on that later today, then.  Any chance of vector support, before I go render and convert?

BTW... the Boromir in Unloaded Keywords is running into the table.

Not on my end he isn't.  What browser you in?

[Kralik]

Hmm... Firefox. Looks OK in Chrome. Also depends on screen width for Firefox. Widescreen he has trouble.

[Vroengard]

you guys having a duo show here? 

[Kralik]

you guys having a duo show here? 

Feel free to start contributing.

[Vroengard]

Wrote a bit for Throne of the Golden Hall, I didnt know how to make the culture icons tho

[Kralik]

Thanks!

Culture icons are the same as on the forums -- just use square brackets instead of round.

Code: [Select]

[Rohan]


[Vroengard]

Thanks for the info

I want to give my 5 cents for the design tho, all those SKIRMISH ARCHERY etc links make the wiki look like a candy factory tho >< just saying

[TelTura]

Well, once those articles are made and we stop having redlinks sprinkled everywhere it will likely look a lot better.

[TelTura]

Hey, what killed table of contents generation?

[Kralik]

Hey, what killed table of contents generation?

I turned it off because it was causing problems. It runs into the text in the new card pages and I need to find a way to fix it. Looks fine for widescreen users, but terrible at 1024 width (the minimum I'll support).

[TelTura]

What's up with redirects?  DId those get disabled as well?  Re: sets

[Kralik]

What's up with redirects?  DId those get disabled as well?  Re: sets

Just the autolinker interfering.

[Vroengard]

Im curious, who edited the 0P62-0P67 cards. I will re-edit Eomer, Forthwith Banished text....

[TelTura]

Oh, no one in particular... <_< >_>

[Vroengard]

Oh, no one in particular... <_< >_>

You sure are no fanboy of him! Hmpf >_>

lol

[Kralik]

Certainly other people besides TelTura and I need to be editing the wiki -- so take your best shots! Maybe I'll start throwing around some slanderous stuff to rile people up.

"...Cirdan... possibly the most useless addition to strategy since Lorien Elf..."

[TelTura]

1U162 has some issue with the autolinker; it's inserting an extra *

[EDIT:] Same with 4R52

[Kralik]

I'm not seeing it; I've tried searching the page for the * character as well. Where is the problem?

[ket_the_jet]

"...Cirdan... possibly the most useless addition to strategy since Lorien Elf..."

From an "addition to the game" standpoint, this wouldn't be completely inaccurate.
-wtk

[TelTura]

I'm not seeing it; I've tried searching the page for the * character as well. Where is the problem?

I put up a temp page at errortest showing the problem.

Text:  

**1U162**

**My Axe is Notched**

**6R109**

As you can see, it's inserting an extra * into the title of the link.  Both the first cards are unique; it's possible the star is a holdover for that somewhere.

[TelTura]

Also, you may want to go ahead and remove "box" from the autolinker.  One card causing so many misfires is just a headache.

[Kralik]

I'll remove box -- I thought I had before.

As for the others, I know the problem, and it is very simple: The autolink code parses *'s in the beginning of a card title as the unique dot, as some deck programs (SdA, maybe? Don't remember which) use them as such. Since the * is included in the card title when it links, the normal wiki markup of bold is lost. But... is there a particular reason one needs to bold card titles?

[TelTura]

I'll remove box -- I thought I had before.

As for the others, I know the problem, and it is very simple: The autolink code parses *'s in the beginning of a card title as the unique dot, as some deck programs (SdA, maybe? Don't remember which) use them as such. Since the * is included in the card title when it links, the normal wiki markup of bold is lost. But... is there a particular reason one needs to bold card titles?

the comprehensive rules has sections that are card titles and so are used as section references("See ruling on **My Axe is Notched**")...but it's also sticking the * in for the collector's info autolinker, which shouldn't be there anyway.

[Kralik]

Please give me a direct link to where you are seeing the issue. Are the *'s in the original text, or did you add them for some reason? All of the "rulings" information is in the card database already--at least, for the newest CRD. I'd have to go through the recently unearthed ones to see if there's anything I missed.

The collector's info is handled the same way as the card titles. Each card has one long line that handles the various shortened versions of the card, acronyms, etc. Examples:

*Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver
Pippin, Wearer of Black and Silver
Pippin Wearer of Black and Silver
Wearer of Black and Silver
Pippin WoBaS
Pippin, WOBAS
woBAS
7R324

It would be a major pain to split the regex.

EDIT: OK, I see now what you've done with comprehensive rules 4-0. Do the card titles really need to be bold? They will stand out as links anyway. I suppose depending on how picky you wish to be you could do the collectors info the same way Decipher does... with spaces. Like: 7 R 324.

[TelTura]

I put up a temp page at errortest showing the problem.

and 6R109 isn't even unique...

[Vroengard]

Someone also should link texts from same cards but different versions like, Merry, Swordthain has a text (it doesnt but its an example), the tengwar or in other cases the RF versions doesnt.

[Kralik]

and 6R109 isn't even unique...

Le sigh... it's generic code.

Summary:

1) After many hours of scripting, Kralik finishes a working Autolink that takes into account various spellings, shortenings and nicknames. Over 3500 lines of regex
2) Alas! SdA deck outputs a * for unique cards in its decklists and it looks hokey.
3) Kralik adds a quick snippet to link preceding *'s. All is well in the world.

...many years pass...

4) The wiki is here!
5) Apparently wiki markup for bold doesn't play nicely with preceding stars.
6) Kralik says, "Why bother with bold anyway? This doesn't seem to be a big deal."

Someone also should link texts from same cards but different versions like, Merry, Swordthain has a text (it doesnt but its an example), the tengwar or in other cases the RF versions doesnt.

I'm not sure what you are saying. Specific example?

[Kralik]

7) Kralik removes * code anyway since it doesn't really matter. errortest is happy again.

[TelTura]

Ah, I see now. So it was code used so that one could copy-paste the output of SDA to the forums, which then was inherited by the wiki. 

I know what pain it is to remove old code.  Your sacrifice will go down through the ages.

[TelTura]

Also, what happened to the Lore entry of Gimli, Son of Gloin and Gimli, Son of Gloin (T)?  I haven't noticed the lore entry missing for other cards, but who knows.

[Vroengard]

Someone also should link texts from same cards but different versions like, Merry, Swordthain has a text (it doesnt but its an example), the tengwar or in other cases the RF versions doesnt.

When I wrote a text for a card, for example, Throne of the Golden Hall, the R version has it but the RF and (O) not.

----> http://lotrtcgwiki.com/wiki/lotr17f13

I thought there was a away that they auto update the text or so but I guess you just gotta copy and paste 

[TelTura]

Ah.  for that, a manual entry just needs to be made, I think.  Look at 0P1, 0P2, 0P10 for examples.

[Kralik]

Indeed -- TelTura added the promos entries by hand, as well as the alternate versions links at the bottom of each card. There are still some that will need to be edited. Keep in mind that since they ARE different cards, there are reasons to have separate wiki entries, such as to explain promo details.

[Kralik]

Also, what happened to the Lore entry of Gimli, Son of Gloin and Gimli, Son of Gloin (T)?  I haven't noticed the lore entry missing for other cards, but who knows.

Special characters such as accented vowels, fancy quotes and apostrophes, etc. break the Dokuwiki parser. I need to find a way to fix it, but most likely it will have to be a case-by-case basis of editing my master database file.

"But wait!" you say. "Doesn't Dokuwiki support UTF-8?"

Yup... but apparently not as expected when it gets the data from my pre-generated card pages.

[Kralik]

I added the CSS class "fgbrown" which matches the brown from the rulebooks and replaced the ugly purple class I was using for rulebook examples. See cost.

I'll probably copy/paste portions of the wikified rulebook into new articles tomorrow and add a few links here and there.

EDIT: Should we have a link to comprehensive rules 4-0 somewhere in the index? It's currently an orphan.

[TelTura]

I stuck a reference in the rulebooks page.

[Kralik]

Here's a feature I thought you might like, TelTura:

You can now tell the wiki not to autolink a page by putting the text:

~~NOAUTOLINK~~

Somewhere in the page. See errortest for example.

Might be helpful with making those wiki rulebooks link nicely to their own sections.

An exception is that culture and twilight icons are still processed, which I thought would be nice to retain.

[TelTura]

Hmm, that may very well be useful for long in-depth articles; it's bittersweet for the rulebooks, I think, but I'll fool around with it and see what I come up with. 

[Kralik]

Hmm, that may very well be useful for long in-depth articles; it's bittersweet for the rulebooks, I think, but I'll fool around with it and see what I come up with. 

I figured at least you could make a rulebook with section linking if you wanted.

[eomund]

Wow ... I leave the forums for a few months, and now there's a wiki! This is awesome.

I have two suggestions for potentially improving the autolinking feature. I have no idea how it works code-wise, so maybe these are impossible, but could it be set up so that autolinking only occurs the first time a keyword (such as culture) is mentioned? Wikipedia works this way, and it makes the pages look a bit cleaner since there's more black text. If it's really important for the link to appear more than once (such as in a chart), the editor can just do it manually.

Also, can autolinks be turned off for the current page? What I mean by that is that on the culture page, the word culture links to the culture page, which seems like a waste since you're already on the culture page.

[TelTura]

note that autolinking can be disabled on a per-word basis by prepending it with ! in front.  This is kind of hackish for what you're asking, but it's all there is for now.  Maybe when Kralik crawls out of his hole we'll see what can be done.

[Kralik]

Maybe when Kralik crawls out of his hole

HEY! I resent that!

OK, here's the deal on the autolink: It's the same system as used in the forums to autolink card titles, replace culture icons, etc. It works best if it replaces all occurrences. Take a look at one of the set indexes, for example. If only the first occurrence of each card type was linked, it wouldn't be nearly as useful...

[nielsd1981]

Oversized promo 10M1 seems to be missing in the wiki. It's an oversized card of the tengwar version of Aragorn, Elessar Telcontar. I added a scan as an example. My copy of the card isn't exactly mint, nor a high-resolution scan, maybe someone has a better copy of the card.

[Enabran]

There is an Link-mistake

When you look at Twilight minions you can see it
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/wiki/lotr02085

Twilight should be a seperate Article. If you follow the Link you come to Twilight Cost

In other Wikis the problem is solved in this way:
Create a "Twilight" Article that gives a explanation, that tere exists more articles with a similar name with Links to all similar articles
Create a "Twilight Cost" Article
Create a "Twilight Keyword" Article.

All Twilight Minions should be automatically redericted to the "Twilight Keyword" Article

[Dictionary]

They resolved this for the "Fellowship" keyword via a disambiguation query. If you look at Gimli, Opinionated Guide, and click on his Fellowship keyword, it takes you to a page about the "Fellowship" but with a linked message at the top saying: "Were you looking for Fellowship Phase or Fellowship Keyword?" Twilight could probably be fixed the same way.