YPPedia talk:Style guide

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Wikicities Migration
This page migrated from Wikicities (now Wikia) in July, 2005. The following contributors agreed to relicense their material here:
  • Barrister
  • Callistan
  • Guppymomma
  • Tyroney
  • Yaten

Singular vs. Plural

I'm not sure whether or not we should do the singular/plural - if we're doing a page listing all the puzzles, Puzzle may not be appropriate, but if we're talking about the concept of a Puzzle, then we should use singular. That's something we should probably discuss :)

--Lizthegrey 20 July 2005 10:34 (PDT)

"It's all about the linking. Compare the two phrases, "the bilging puzzle" and "the duty puzzles." In a singular scheme, they are linked using "the bilging [[puzzle]]" and "the duty [[puzzle]]s". However, in a plural scheme, the first one becomes "the bilging [[puzzles|puzzle]]". Simplicity is definitely a goal in a Wiki.

I hope that clarifies the issue. --Barrister 20 July 2005 13:03 (PDT)

I think a list of all the puzzles should still be singular. It's more practical, as Barrister said, and a list of puzzles could easily fit under the definition of a puzzle. --Ihope127 21 July 2005 12:04 (PDT)

Bringing up this issue again - am I the only one that finds it strange that our file prefixes mix-and-match plurality? Notably, it's "Pirates-" but only "Avatar-" --AtteSmythe 09:11, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

I would guess it's probably one of those "it's not entirely consistent, but it doesn't really bother anybody, and it would be a lot of work to change it" issues. Like with stubs. (Look at the bottom.) --Emufarmers 09:15, 23 June 2006 (PDT)
Well, the reason I bring it up is FF has been changing all the Pirate- files to Pirates- files, recently, so the work's being done. It's a policy that will come up occassionally. Should user photos be User- or Users-? Icon- or Icons-? &c. --AtteSmythe 09:25, 23 June 2006 (PDT)
I'm usually an advocate of homogenizing plural-singular things, but it might be difficult here: All the building images seem to be named as building-, for instance. It pains me to say this, but maybe we should just leave building- and what have you in singular, and move pirate- to the plural wherever it isn't already so, since that's actually dictated by policy. --Emufarmers 09:38, 23 June 2006 (PDT)
The naming scheme for portrait images covers multi-pirate portraits. For example, Pirates-Barrister-Insomniac.jpg. We haven't had nearly as many of those as we expected. --Barrister 12:56, 23 June 2006 (PDT)

Bold Titles

Generally speaking, is it better to make the first instance of the article title bold using '''article title''' or [[article title]]? I can see the [[ syntax, since someone copying the text gets a free link (and no possibility of an accidental bolding). I can also see the ''' syntax, since the intent is clear in the source. Finally, I realize I'm probably making foothills out of a mole's tunnel entrance. Prefs? --AtteSmythe 23:57, 1 August 2005 (PDT)

We've been consistently using the apostrophes. The problem with linking is if it's a disambiguated page. Or if it ever becomes one. Then you have to edit the instance of the article title. --Barrister 23:59, 1 August 2005 (PDT)
Ah, a very good point. The rank template made me aware of the issue (I was wondering how a template with no variables had one, appropriate, bold item), so I thought I'd ask. --AtteSmythe 00:03, 2 August 2005 (PDT)
Self-link bolding also gets thrown off by redirects, which get set up automagically when a page gets moved. It'll rear it's head, for instance, when Notice Board gets renamed Notice board. (Note caps.) I've always thought of self-links as booches that MediaWiki tries to make the best of.--Mercano 17:18, 18 August 2005 (PDT)

How to deal with historical game mechanics

While updating the historical notes for the navy article, I linked training ship without a second thought (training ships have always been of importance to me, because I have seven training routes memmed on Midnight). Afterwards, I got to wondering about our official stance on historical game mechanics that no longer exist (like training ships, foraging as it used to be, money reports, etc). Do we need entire articles for these mechanics, or should we just blend them into historical notes sections? If we create entire articles, should we have a category (something like, and I'm just throwing out a random name, Category:Defunct) for the articles? – Yaten talk 00:09, 2 August 2005 (PDT)

If it was a big enough feature, then yes, it deserves its own page -- with a big DEFUNCT spread across the top. Small features that are gone should probably just get merged in, as you suggest. Training ships are probably just one the edge, but I could think of enough historical stuff to make a full page of them. --Barrister 00:55, 2 August 2005 (PDT)

Comment templates

I've made a third person template. I also switched the cleanup template to use the little pencil icon. I figure the pencil can be used for the comments that pertain to rewriting or even writing kinds of things. --Guppymomma 10:49, 13 August 2005 (PDT)

Island Names & the Island Header Templates

I cloned your island image templates to create Template:Island image o-header and Template:Island image o-header 2 to differentiate between Cobalt and Viridian islands. First example can be seen at Corona Reef (Cobalt).

Gah. We should've left the islands as Eta Island (Midnight), with a redirect from Eta Island. Avoid all this mess... --AtteSmythe
Well, we're almost there. Do we want to do this? Only Sage has unique island names. While Azure is closed, the Island_Name pages can redirect to Midnight instead of being a Midnight/Azure disambiguity page. It would mean that we only have to maintain one set of templates. --AtteSmythe 09:39, 22 August 2005 (PDT)
A single set of templates would definitely be nicer.... --Guppymomma 10:56, 22 August 2005 (PDT)
Alright. Well, we should probably move discussion to the style page, not my user talk page... --AtteSmythe
I agree we should move to the Island (ocean) convention and a single set of templates. As it is now, we have templates for Cobalt/Viridian, Azure, and the rest of the oceans. Unless the next subscriber ocean clones Sage, and then we need to switch them all anyways. Ultimately, if we have a single set of templates so that we could point new users to them and say "If you want to add your crew/flag/business, use this template and fill in the blanks," then it'll make everyone's job so much easier.--Fiddler 06:35, 28 August 2005 (PDT)
I'm a little confused about what's being proposed. I thought we were just talking about the island templates. Are you also proposing a change to a single template for all flags and crews? If so, I oppose that. On the original topic, we should be able to boil this down to 2 active templates: Cobalt/Viridian and Midnight/Sage. (Azure's templates will never be reused.) If the goal is simplicity, perhaps we can put some smarts into the template code so that the oceanname is appended only for Cobalt/Viridian. I'd much prefer that than tagging all the Sage and Midnight islands with their oceanname. --Barrister 10:05, 28 August 2005 (PDT)
That could work. I can look into it. Since we're moving toward the island image header, that's the one I'll fool around with for things. I think the suggestion is just to figure out a way to only have one set of templates. --Guppymomma 10:11, 28 August 2005 (PDT)
Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear. Right now, there exist two seperate templates to add your flag info, depending on if you're on Cob/Vir or any other ocean. There are two templates for regular shoppes, and two templates for manager-less shoppes. Done. The only difference is that the Cob/Vir templates have (oceanname) appended after the name of the island. I believe it would make everyone's lives easier if we made it easier for the standard "This my first and only edit to add my flag to the wiki" user to find the appropriate templates. I figured the easiest way to do so, and to head off any future problems coming from a Sage-clone ocean, would be to re-name the other 123 islands in Mid, Ice, and Sage now. If we could modify the template code to only append (oceanname) when it's needed, then great. That's beyond my scope of understanding of the template workings, so it didn't occur to me to go down that route.--Fiddler 10:39, 28 August 2005 (PDT)
Hmmmm...I've started working on it, but for some reason it's not wikiing the islands correctly even though infobox flag is specifying the oceanname from what I can tell, although maybe I'm wrong. I'll try futzing with it more later, but maybe someone else can also try their hand. --Guppymomma 14:30, 28 August 2005 (PDT)
Okay after way too many new pages made then deleted, I figured out for some reason I could do it with infobox flag-ocean, but not infobox flag, so I just copied ocean over to the plain one and it seems to work okay. Feel free to switch any of the infobox flag-ocean instances over to infobox flag. --Guppymomma 18:56, 28 August 2005 (PDT)
I believe that the names are fine as they are today. It's quite rare that people would search for the Azure version of an island. By comparison, it's about 50-50 for Cobalt/Viridian searches. My philosophy is that the user should only click on disambiguation links when absolutely necessary. This is why the "cleaver" link brings up the sword, not a disambig page. --Barrister 09:54, 26 August 2005 (PDT)

Sage/Ice/Midnight "migration"

BUMP: There's been some off-Wiki discussion about making all island and archipelago pages have the ocean name. This will affect Ice, Midnight, and Sage. Sage will almost certainly have to change when the next subscriber ocean opens. Midnight already has two other oceans with the same islands (Azure and Indigo). To do this, the first thing that must happen is that all Ice, Midnight, and Sage islands and archipelagos be moved to "<name> (<ocean>)". Then, the following can happen in any order:

  • update chart templates
  • update individual island pages (because they have links to their neighbors in the opening paragraph)
  • update commodities
  • update flag/crew/business/island templates
  • add new disambig pages where the redirects are now

Opinions? --Barrister 20:02, 4 October 2005 (PDT)

I'm all for it. I just moved the Ice islands. --Guppymomma 20:28, 5 October 2005 (PDT)
I've basically finished the Ice migration. The individual pages need to be bumped to update the "what links here", but that's not really worth it. The only thing I didn't do is the commodities pages. I figure we'll migrate all the oceans first, and then update each commodity page just once. --Barrister 14:43, 7 October 2005 (PDT)

Universalizing Commonly Used Ocean Doohickeys

Sorry for all the spamola, but we're trying to go for a little standardization so that if any changes (like Sage's island names being used for a future ocean) occur it will be easy to alter for all templates.

So far the "universal ocean templates" include:

  • Template:Header <oceanname> - the background/font color info for table headers
  • Template:<oceanname> - linked thing with whether or not the thing needs an (oceanname)

*Template:Arch <oceanname> - linked arch which adds Archipelago and whether or not the name needs an (oceanname)

More tweaks to come to universalize the island name one throughout the templates, but I think I got most of the header instances. --Guppymomma 19:55, 28 August 2005 (PDT)

Just a note that the Ice/Sage/Midnight migration will actually fix some issues with universalization of templates, so Yay! I will rework the universalization stuff if need be, but I think it will actually work for the most part with a few tiny tweaks. --Guppymomma 20:30, 5 October 2005 (PDT)

Most of these things besides the header ones are rather obsolete. Yay! Azure is the only one that I can't incorporate into this (well at least when it comes to island infoboxes due to the map name issue). I'll be removing from use the ones that aren't needed after I alter the appropriate templates that used to need 'em. --Guppymomma 16:23, 18 October 2005 (PDT)

With the advent of standardization of the island (ocean) thing, it looks like we've completely managed to obsolete

  1. Island header (Usage) - for colonised islands
  2. Island header 2 (Usage) - for uninhabitable islands
  3. Island o-header (Usage) - for colonised islands (w/ocean)
  4. Island o-header 2 (Usage) - for uninhabitable islands (w/ocean)

as far as I can tell everything uses Island image header. If someone else can double check this, we can zap those four templates and remove 'em from the style guide list. I can also double check the island image header for streamlining due to the consistent island naming thing. --Guppymomma 06:12, 22 November 2005 (PST)

Actually I just managed to purge the island pages to get their listed templates used up to date and it does look like the ones I list above are no longer used so I'm going to just zap 'em. --Guppymomma 07:34, 22 November 2005 (PST)

Obsoleting Azure Islands?

Should we {{obsolete}} the Azure islands? --Guppymomma 20:22, 1 September 2005 (PDT)

I'm thinking not—and I should probably remove the {{obsolete}} (Usage) from the Alpha and Beta development stage pages, too. I think in can be inferred from "was an island" that the island no longer exists in-game. For an extreme Wikipedia example, the Roanoke Island page doesn't contain a notice that the colony no longer exists. – Yaten talk 07:42, 3 September 2005 (PDT)

Capitalization

This is a heads up. I'm tired of some pages looking like ransom notes. I will be removing unncessary capitalizations over the next week.

  • Captain Cleaver (correct)
  • the Captain of our crew (incorrect)
  • Governor Hades (correct)
  • the island's Governor (incorrect)

Ditto for Senior Officers, Fleet Officers, etc. --Barrister 16:45, 8 October 2005 (PDT)

Okay, I didn't really succeed with this. That being said, I think we need to discuss the overcapitalization of in-game items. For example, "Short Sword", "Treasure Drop", "Skull Dagger", etc. By comparison, the furniture items seem to be named correctly: "Broken barrel" and "Tall hemp stack." I just feel like I'm reading a ransom note when I see the excessive capitalizations used in sentences and paragraphs. Obviously, crew/flag names and island names should be exempt from this, but are there really any other exceptions? --Barrister 14:26, 28 March 2006 (PST)
Personally, I've always kinda got a feel for when there should be capitals, at least in my head. For example, in listing buildings on an island, we are using "Commodities market" (for example) when it really ought to be "Commodities Market" in my view. I think of it as a first name and surname basis. In that instance, as well as Iron Monger, I treat it more like a proper name, such as John Smith. You wouldn't type John smith, would you?  :) --Redbeardsage 14:33, 28 March 2006 (PST)
I'm concerned about the following sentence, "Guppymomma went to Redbeard's Iron Monger Stall to buy a Skull Dagger and a Short Sword." I think it should read, "Guppymomma went to Redbeard's iron monger stall to by a skull dagger and a short sword." --Barrister 14:50, 28 March 2006 (PST)
I agree, that's what it should read. Is it possible to distinguish between using things that should be capitalised in sentences or standalone? I don't know enough about wiki policies and rules to tell. --Redbeardsage 00:37, 29 March 2006 (PST)
Treating simple things as proper nouns is exactly the problem. John Smith is a title. John's Smithy is a title. John's Smithing is a title. The forge and anvil that John uses in smithing are descriptions (forge, anvil, smithing are not titles), as is the smithy (aka iron monger) in which he works. You don't shop at a Grocery Store; I think the tendency to capitalize things like iron monger is due to unfamiliarity. "Name" is a bit ambiguous, because the name of this thing sitting on my desk is a "pen". However, you'd never say it's titled "Pen". Objects in the game are often capitalized because items in a list or a hover-tip are fragments - it looks unprofessional to have items in a list start with a lowercase letter. My 2p --AtteSmythe 11:20, 29 March 2006 (PST)
To answer Redbeardsage, for the moment, I'm trying to solve only the terms used in full sentences. Lists are different and may need some tweaking, but those don't bug me nearly as much as the ransom-note-syndrome I've described. With that in mind, does anyone have a list of exceptions to lower-casing everything (in sentences)? --Barrister 03:51, 31 March 2006 (PST)
Question: What's the preferred capitalization for portrait backgrounds? "I took a portrait with the Beach Cove background." or "I took a portrait with the beach cove background." I suspect it's the former. --Barrister 12:04, 2 April 2006 (PDT)
Former. --Guppymomma 14:43, 2 April 2006 (PDT)

Why atlantean blue and not Atlantean blue?

Compare capitalization with Prussian and Berlin blues. Not particularly for or against one way or the other but am seeing some inconsistency (as if English isn't full of inconsistencies...). -- Faulkston 16:50, 6 April 2008 (PDT)

Because the in-game capitalization is "atlantean". For example, I have an atlantean/atlantean swash jacket. When I hover the mouse over it in the wardrobe, it reads, "Swashbuckler's jacket (male, atlantean, atlantean sash)". Perfectly good question though. I've been overthinking the whole color name issues for the past couple months. (That's also why the word "blue" isn't in the color name.) --Barrister 22:58, 6 April 2008 (PDT)
I must have gotten confuzzled by some players referencing atlantean/blue (primary and secondary colors, not a single color). -- Faulkston 20:23, 7 April 2008 (PDT)

Default values for parameters

Are we able to include these in the definition of a template? -- Faulkston 22:52, 13 December 2005 (PST)

I think we'd need a newer version of MediaWiki. We have Version 1.5.2, for default template parameters you need at least version 1.5.3. – Yaten talk 06:34, 14 December 2005 (PST)
That's OK; I thought I might have the syntax incorrect. -- Faulkston 18:04, 14 December 2005 (PST)
According to Special:Version, we have 1.5.6 now. --Thunderbird 15:01, 26 February 2006 (PST)

Requesting help

I was wondering if it might be possible to have a template that indicates a request for assistance that could be placed on the article page that could then add that page to the 'help' categories in the same way that NPOV etc do? I suggest this because I have added an image that I would like help resizing but it relies on you active people noticing that a comment has been added to the 'discuss this' page for that article rather than being able to refer to the categorised areas to see what needs work. In my small efforts to help out I use the 'Help' area all the time to see what needs work. To me this would make the user more proactive and take a little weight off of your (plural) shoulders. Or do you think stub meets the same ends in these instances? Or is there some mechanism to do this that I'm missing? Jezabella 15:08, 16 February 2006 (PST)

We could add a help request template, sure. Just FYI, the thing that gets watched is the Recent changes list and that will show who edited what and also what they filled in the Summary line to describe the edit - if you mention needing help in that, it's more likely you'll get noticed immediately instead of waiting for someone to check a category that a template would add. --Guppymomma 15:53, 16 February 2006 (PST)
Ah yes, I use the Recent Changes list myself.. I just thought that it would be easy to miss something on there. But yes adding a request for assistance in the edit summary is a good idea. Thanks. Jezabella 15:56, 16 February 2006 (PST)

Move?

Is there a reason this page isn't in the YPPedia: namespace? Seems as though it should be. --Yaten talk 13:38, 13 March 2006 (PST)

No reason that I can think of. I support moving it. --Barrister 14:44, 13 March 2006 (PST)
I support moving it, but leaving a Style guide redirect because I think it's helpful for folks searching. --Guppymomma 15:14, 13 March 2006 (PST)

Proposal for new naming schemes

I think it's time to revist the category names. For example, Category:Islands:Midnight should perhaps be Category:Islands (Midnight). Or perhaps Category:Midnight Ocean islands. Similarly for crews and flags. The use of the extra colon isn't really giving us much, and is not consistent (in my opinion, of course) with the Wikipedia. And, yes, I'm volunteering to make the necessary changes if we reach consensus. --Barrister 14:11, 28 March 2006 (PST)

I'm all for more natural language category names. I kinda lean toward Midnight Ocean islands since that uses the full ocean name. --Guppymomma 14:19, 28 March 2006 (PST)
Aye, but isn't that overkill? Wouldn't it be obvious that we meant Midnight Ocean just with the word Midnight? --Redbeardsage 14:35, 28 March 2006 (PST)
It's still more natural language than something in parentheses. --Guppymomma 14:39, 28 March 2006 (PST)
I was planning on disagreeing, but then I remembered that browsing by categories sucks in Mediawiki anyways. Changing it to something like "Midnight Ocean X" would probably be best, because then the category pages would list the subcategories in some sort of meaningful list.
Ideally, Categories:Flags:Midnight Ocean would only show "Midnight Ocean" in the subcategory portion of the Categories:Flags page. Mediawiki doesn't do that, though, and Flags:Midnight Ocean is rather redundant there. --AtteSmythe 14:58, 28 March 2006 (PST)
I still think this is a good idea. And now that there are more administrators and more active volunteers I think we'll be able to stay away from the awful "random Capitalization Errors" that make mekiawiki a pain to work with.--Fiddler 19:54, 28 March 2006 (PST)

Let me list out what I think should change. I'll use Midnight in my examples. We'd still subcategorize, but wouldn't use the colon as the determining factor.

  • Archipelagos:Midnight -> Midnight Ocean archipelagos
  • Buildings:Midnight -> Midnight Ocean buildings
  • Commands:Dealing with problematic pirates -> Commands for dealing with problematic pirates
  • Commonly Discussed Ideas:<foo> -> ???
  • Crews:Midnight -> Midnight Ocean crews
  • Crews:Midnight (Defunct) -> Midnight ocean defunct crews
  • Events:Forum -> Forum events
  • Familiars:Midnight -> Er, why do we have this category?
  • Flags:Midnight -> Midnight Ocean flags
  • Flags:Midnight (Alt flags) -> Midnight Ocean alt flags
  • Flags:Midnight (Blockade) -> ???
  • Flags:Midnight (Defunct) -> Midnight Ocean defunct flags
  • Houses:Midnight:Cabins -> Midnight Ocean islands with cabins
  • Islands:Midnight -> Midnight Ocean islands
  • Navy Colors:Aqua -> Islands with aqua-colored navies
  • Ocean:Doubloon -> Doubloon oceans
  • Pirates:Midnight -> Midnight Ocean pirates
  • Spawns:Hemp -> Islands spawning hemp

Comments? --Barrister 17:53, 29 March 2006 (PST)

Anyone? --Barrister 03:49, 31 March 2006 (PST)
I like most of your suggestions, however if we're aiming for more natural language, some of them still feel a bit stilted. If I may offer a few ideas:
  • Crews:Midnight (Defunct) -> Defunct Midnight Ocean crews
  • Flags:Midnight (Defunct) -> Defunct Midnight Ocean flags
  • Flags:Midnight (Blockade) -> Blockade paticipating flags on Midnight
  • Commonly Discussed Ideas:<foo> -> I think this should be left alone. The best I can think of is "Commonly discussed ideas about <foo>" which isn't enough gain or difference for the effort involved.
  • Pirates:Midnight -> I'd like to say "Notable Pirates on the Midnight Ocean" but I think your suggestion is much simpler.
  • Houses:Midnight:Cabins -> I think we should do away with the ocean designation altogther on these and instead split it into two seperate categories. In this case, Category:Cabins and Category:Midnight Ocean housing. Given your point that all island names include the ocean, I see no good reason to have these so subdivided.--Fiddler 06:35, 31 March 2006 (PST)
I like most of your counterproposals, especially "Defunct Midnight Ocean crews". That really is more natural. As for the housing, if we collapse the two ideas, we should be getting, "Islands with cabins" since the island names are what's listed in the housing categories. "Islands with cabins" can then be placed under "Lists of housing" or "Islands with housing" depending on whether we want a list or a more-encompassing category. I'm not sure what the contents of "Midnight Ocean housing" would look like since that would require pages for each of the relevant building. --Barrister 10:39, 31 March 2006 (PST)
I'm not hearing any objections. So, I'll probably start doing this soon. I'll start by changing the various templates but not bumping the affected pages. Many of the pages use multiple templates and have multiple categories, so it's worth getting the templates changed over first and then doing a single bump/edit after that. --Barrister 14:27, 3 April 2006 (PDT)

And so it begins.... Just as a reminder, please don't bump any pages. I still have templates to edit. --Barrister 02:16, 5 April 2006 (PDT)

Well, I've finished nearly all of the ones listed above. I didn't do the Events categories and a few other minor non-ocean-related ones. Someone else can do those. --Barrister 09:18, 12 April 2006 (PDT)

Flag / Crew naming schemes

Note sure this is the 100% correct place, but here goes. I think the naming schemes of all flag pages should have (Oceanname flag) appended to them, and also crew pages (Oceanname crew) appended to them. Also some new simple templates like the {{Oceaname|xxx}} template for example {{Viridian|xxx}} in the form of {{Oceanname flag|xxx}} and {{Oceanname crew|xxx}}. This would allow the use of these templates to link to the appropriate crew / flag without having to double check to see if you aren't accidentally linking to a flag or crew of the same name on a different Ocean. There are some pages for Flags that are multi ocean, but these are the exception, and it would be simple enough to put redirect pages in place to the combined page for those exceptions. Another side benefit is that the search results would then also clearly show which Ocean the result belongs too. -- Vorky 15:52, 4 March 2007 (PST)

In fact thinking about it further it should not just be crews and flags, but also any other named things, so possibly it should be {{Oceaname|type|name}} where type can be flag, crew, pirate, building, island. Of course moving everything to the proper names and changing all the links would be a mammoth task unless this could be done with a search and replace. -- Vorky 21:33, 23 April 2007 (PDT)
It would have to be done manually, including the changing of thousands of links. What do you do about things that are on more than one ocean? I like the current system. Disambiguation for article names that are more than one type/ocean, but plain article names for things that are singles or that are the most likely to be searched for type with the disambiguation line in italics on the top. I don't really see the advantage in changing it due to the onerous workload to do so and the multiple ocean issue. --Guppymomma 06:05, 24 April 2007 (PDT)

Bump me!

Okay. The crew and flag pages are ready for bumping, if people would like to help out. The island pages are not yet ready. --Barrister 13:16, 6 April 2006 (PDT)

So forgive the ignorance, but I don't understand what you're asking here. Bump for what? For the sake of bumping? --Fannon 14:07, 6 April 2006 (PDT)
I believe he means the new templates proposed in the above section, which will require changing the category tags on a lot of pages. --Emufarmers 14:09, 6 April 2006 (PDT)
Actually, many of the crew and flag pages will require nothing more than a simple bump. (Add a space somewhere harmless and save again.) This will populate the new categories and de-populate the old ones. There's some editing required only if there's a category tag explicitly on the page. This requires either updating the tag for the new category (in the case of sorting) or just deleting the tag (in case it's gratuitous). --Barrister 14:17, 6 April 2006 (PDT)

I've updated Shatterstone Island. Note the lower-case for the navy color and for the housing types. Also, the category "foo-spawning islands". Comments? --Barrister 16:22, 6 April 2006 (PDT)

Looks slightly odd to have the - in there to me. "Foo spawning islands" would work just fine I think, and leave less room for frustration over figuring out red links. --Fannon 16:26, 6 April 2006 (PDT)


Time to update the style page itself. Is this a good explanation? Ex: "Crews should use [[Category:<Name> Ocean crews]]". Or is "Crews should use [[Category:<Oceanname> Ocean crews]]" better? Thoughts? --Fannon 23:48, 6 April 2006 (PDT)

Actually, I think we should encourage people to use the templates, not the category tags. --Barrister 00:46, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
Regardless, there should still be an explanation for inserting manual tags. They are still needed for category sorting after all. Also, they are easier for new editors to figure out than infoboxes can be at times. While we'd love for infoboxes to always be used, at the least I think we'd all agree knowing what ocean something goes on is still helpful for proper cleanups. --Fannon 09:47, 7 April 2006 (PDT)

Are bumps necessary, or can the page be purged? Purging would eliminate the Recent Changes clutter. --AtteSmythe 11:53, 7 April 2006 (PDT)

I don't know what you mean by purged. Can you give an example? --Barrister 12:23, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
Sure - the YPPedia:Recently_created_admins page has an example (purge here). Basically, you tell the server to get rid of its cached copy and generate a new one. My understanding, anyway. Instead of going to http://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/BumpPage, you'd go to http://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/index.php?title=BumpPage&action=purge
It sounds like more, but you could probably get someone to code up a quick javascript link for your favorites bar - click it, and you'd get a popup. Enter the name of the entry to purge, and it'd load the page. Click the button again. --AtteSmythe 16:03, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
I think we tried the purge route for something or another and it didn't work. I'll give it a try and see. --Guppymomma 16:10, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
And the answer is no, purge doesn't reload the template. Back to bumping! --Guppymomma 16:12, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
Boo for a purge that doesn't...purge. :/ --AtteSmythe 19:05, 7 April 2006 (PDT)

I'm tired. Anyone feel like bumping everything in Category:Islands:Azure? No other edits need to be done. --Barrister 21:12, 7 April 2006 (PDT)

We're closing in on having bumped everything. There's still Crews:Sage and Flags:Viridian, and then it's on to the Pirate pages. I'm still contemplating a good template solution for the latter. --Barrister 12:21, 10 April 2006 (PDT)
All crews and flags are done. Thanks to everyone who helped. I'm still toying with ideas for the Pirate pages, so please don't start those yet. --Barrister 02:09, 11 April 2006 (PDT)

Infobox tag

So as I've been going through pages, the lack of infobox is striking. However, I hate marking cleanup on pages that have no grammar, linky or other errors and are fairly solid just because there is no infobox. Would it be possible to make a new commentary tag of some sort that we could stick on pages without having to mark them for cleanup that would sort them into a category as well? I know some people would jump at helping by adding infoboxes while they may be weary of diving into grammar and format fixes. Thoughts? --Fannon 16:22, 7 April 2006 (PDT)

Technically it's a form of cleanup and the cleanupfor|adding an infobox works well enough & allows for adding whatever else is needed in the article. That said, an infobox tag with a link to the infobox instructions would be a useful tool. --Guppymomma 16:31, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
Well I know it's technically a cleanup, but I've found a few really great pages that just need an infobox. Cleanup tags are misnomers in that case because it encourages people to mess with other things for the sake of "cleaning up" when it isn't necessarily needed. It also goes back to the helping issue for editors. There are some I wouldn't want touching grammar/format fixes because they can just create more work, but infoboxes are fairly easy to do, and easier to fix. It would save the time of having to page through every cleanup entry just for the ones with infoboxes. --Fannon 18:05, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
That's more of a problem with the editor than the marking of the article as needing an infobox though. --Guppymomma 18:33, 7 April 2006 (PDT)

New Stub Tags

I'm not really a fan of having separate stub tags. Is there a reason this was done? And I thought we generally discussed changes that would require large amounts of page bumping. --Fannon 09:45, 3 May 2006 (PDT)

I assumed it was to more easily recognize what type of stub it was, so that when looking through the stub list for each category, it isn't so huge and unmanageable. Makes sense, logically, but the amounting of bumping involved is a killer. --Rixation 11:08, 3 May 2006 (PDT)
I made the new stub tags because more stubs were requested on the YPPedia Wishlist.--Zyborg22 11:34, 3 May 2006 (PDT)
Rixation's pretty much got it. However, there's no pressing need to edit/bump all the existing stubs. I just want to get some control over Category:Stub as time goes on. There are nearly 1,000 entries in that category right now. --Barrister 12:50, 3 May 2006 (PDT)
I went ahead and made a {{buildingstub}} (Usage) template, since there seems to be a sizable amount of building related stubs. I would have done the same for the island related stubs, but I'm not sure whether to put the archipelago related stubs in the same category as the island stubs.--Zyborg22 14:09, 3 May 2006 (PDT)
Ah, I didn't even see the wishlist addition since it was only yesterday. I wasn't particularly against the stubs, just the idea of making a decision to bump 1000+ pages with no prior discussion. And can the specific stubs be subcategorized under stub, to make my brain happy? Maybe? Also, why would we even have island stubs? --Fannon 14:28, 3 May 2006 (PDT)
I was thinking about adding the island stub category because there's about 66 island related stubs, and a lot of these island stubs are for the Azure islands. Since Azure no longer exists, it would be difficult to flesh the Azure island articles out. Because of that, I thought it would be best to separate them from the rest of the stubs.
Of course, we don't need to have an island stub category if we don't need it or there's a reason we shouldn't have it.--Zyborg22 08:48, 4 May 2006 (PDT)
Okay, I thought we weren't going to bump all the stub pages at one time. Maybe I misunderstood that, but I think it's really silly to do it. --Fannon 09:32, 5 May 2006 (PDT)
I read it to mean that we didn't have to bump them, but we could if we wanted to. Of course, it's very possible (or even likely) that I read it wrong. If so, sorry about that. Either way, I'll stop bumping them for a bit.--Zyborg22 09:37, 5 May 2006 (PDT)
I have a preference against bumping. However, if you do go ahead with bumping, I insist that you mark all your edits as "This is a minor edit." It doesn't look like you were doing that at all. --Barrister 12:56, 5 May 2006 (PDT)
This can be done automatically - From Preferences, go to Editing, and select "mark all changes minor by default." Make a bunch of bumps, then deselect the option again when you're done. --AtteSmythe 13:28, 5 May 2006 (PDT)
I apologize for clogging up the Recent changes page. I'll keep this in mind from now on.--Zyborg22 08:43, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Unused files

I took a look at Special:Unusedimages and there are nearly 1,500 entries. Much of them are avatars and other user-drawn artwork. Tagging them with categories doesn't take them out of this list. I don't have a suggestion for reclaiming this page, but I'm hoping someone else has some ideas. --Barrister 15:19, 11 April 2006 (PDT)

Look at who uploaded each and leave them a message enquiring as to the images purpose or current use externally. Failing a response or any clue as to an images use or potential use within x days = deletion? or... one assumes that if the image is uploaded, the user that uploaded it has a copy of it on their computer somewhere. Then we just delete the unused items, assuming that any image that were of importance or in use could always be re-uploaded. --Sagacious 15:24, 11 April 2006 (PDT)
Many of the images Barrister is referring to are only listed in the various art and avatar categories. The reason they're on the wiki is to archive the art and avatars created by the playerbase. Short of creating a page that copies the category pages, there is no other purpose to them.--Fiddler 15:28, 11 April 2006 (PDT)
For reference, Category:Fan art, Category:Avatar art & Category:Avatar artists, and Category:Contest entry images.--Fiddler 15:30, 11 April 2006 (PDT)
That's the reason I came up with the whole naming standard, especially for art and avatar pieces. I looked at the options last fall and this was the only one that was doable without specialized addition to the Mediawiki software. At least this way we can skip over those images while scanning the list. Granted, it'd be easier still if the list was alphabetized, but we do what we can with the software we have.--Fiddler 15:28, 11 April 2006 (PDT)
Surely the artwork should appear in somekind of gallery page, thus removing the Unused tag. *scratches head* If some of the unused ones are avatars, in-use avatars shouldn't have an Unused tag, and unused avatars should be archived in a gallery page. --Sagacious 15:34, 11 April 2006 (PDT)
The idea was that the categories are the gallery pages, conveniently broken down into 200 image chunks (800 images for a "Fan art" gallery could potentially crash someone's browser) and automatically updated when new images are added. Also, keeping track of who's currently using what avatar doesn't seem worth the bother.--Fiddler 15:51, 11 April 2006 (PDT)
And that still needs to be implemented and arranged? --Sagacious 15:57, 11 April 2006 (PDT)
No. Click on the category links above to see what I'm talking about. Creating a gallery page that duplicates that functionality is too much effort for not enough gain.--Fiddler 16:00, 11 April 2006 (PDT)

Capitalization of Puzzle Names

I'm importing this discussion from Talk:Treasure Drop:

The wiki is inconsistent when referencing treasure drop. Should it be:

  1. "Bob enjoys playing Treasure Drop."
  2. "Bob enjoys playing treasure drop."
  3. "Bob enjoys playing Treasure drop."

The third one looks completely wrong, but I'm amenable to either of the first two. --Barrister 05:56, 6 July 2006 (PDT)

It's "Treasure Drop". At least, that's how the background image capitalizes it. --Rixation(t/c) 06:58, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
Yeah, but I consider that a case of "title case." Just thinking along the lines of all the other puzzles and how people generally don't capitalize them, I would say go with all lowercase. Otherwise it'll be sailing, gunning, carpentry, distilling, swordfighting, drinking, shipwrightery, Treasure Drop, and rumbling. --Guppymomma 07:24, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
The English language says no. 1 is correct. --Sagacious (talk) 07:30, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
It does? Well, I'll have fun at Poker night. We're playing a game after we watch some Football (or Soccer, or whatever they're calling it these days). At least there's something interesting on, not just Tennis or Golf. --AtteSmythe 08:44, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
IMO, the most appropiate reference here is board games: "Game of Life", "Axis and Allies", "Trivial Pursuit"... --Ponytailguy 08:55, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
I was just coming back to say something about "Monopoly," actually, but you beat me to it. Still, it makes me wonder how much of the iron monger argument applies. I still feel that treating them like titles is problematic. Books and periodicals are underlined and italicized. In your example, even, you quoted the names of those board games. Is that how we're going to expect puzzle names to be treated? --AtteSmythe 09:03, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
Good question. As far as I know, the puzzles represent copywritten works of original (or mostly original) production, and as such are proper nouns in line with the board game examples I've provided. "Iron monger", until it gets an original puzzle (and even then, only when referring to the puzzle) is still just a job title, and to that end, capitalization may be inappropiate. --Ponytailguy 09:06, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
While I want to entertain myself by posting that we're changing all the titles of the puzzles to things like "omgtrasurdropz," so capitalization is moot, I shouldn't. I checked, and the official word is: capitalize it if it's a noun, but not if it's a verb. "I did the Bilge/Bilging puzzle. I am bilging." --Eurydice 10:52, 6 July 2006 (PDT)
That makes quite a bit of sense. So, I think the list of verb/nouns would go something like this. Part of this is taken from the names at the top of the puzzle backgrounds.
  • Duty
    • navigating / Navigation
    • gunning / Gunnery
    • sailing / Sailing
    • bilging / Bilge or Bilge Pumping
    • carpenting / Carpentry
    • rumbling / Rumble
    • swordfighting / Swordfight (background says SwordFight)
  • Crafting
    • alchemizing / Alchemistry
    • distilling / Distilling
    • shipwrighting / Shipwrightery
  • Parlor/Carousing
    • drinking / Drinking
    • -- / Treasure Drop
    • -- / hearts
    • -- / spades
    • -- / poker
Uh, not to burst anybody's grammatical bubble, but aren't the -ing forms all gerunds (a verb used as a noun)? If I say "I am bilging," there's a subject, linking verb, and a predicate nominative, right? I don't know if that actually changes anything, but I don't think it's quite correct to say that the -ing forms are verb forms. :) --Emufarmers 02:47, 10 July 2006 (PDT)
Not if used in the sense of a proper noun. Saying 'the Bilging puzzle' changes the word Bilging to a noun context. --Sagacious (talk) 02:52, 10 July 2006 (PDT)
Well, it might actually be a participle (a verb used as an adjective) in that case, but my point was merely that "bilging" wouldn't be a verb. --Emufarmers 02:58, 10 July 2006 (PDT)
If anything, it's a noun used as a verb, not a verb used as a noun. Interestingly, "to bilge" is a verb with meaning opposite of the YPPedia usage. Pirates should be "pumping the bilge" - "to bilge" is to spring a leak. There's no question about "distilling" being a verb - it's probably best to treat the verbized nouns as invented words, but verbs nonetheless. Regardless, I don't think we'd treat the capitalization and usage of gerands and verbs differently. ;) --AtteSmythe 09:21, 10 July 2006 (PDT)

Here's my proposal: As per Eury's comment, when referring to a puzzle as a noun, it should be capitalized. Verbs, gerunds, etc. should be lower-case. Hearts, spades, and poker should always be lower-case. Are there any objections? --Barrister 16:28, 10 July 2006 (PDT)

Sounds right to me. --AtteSmythe 17:09, 10 July 2006 (PDT)
I object to objections, sounds fine to me too. --Sagacious (talk) 17:27, 10 July 2006 (PDT)
I guess, going by that standard, the way the official documents do it almost seems consistent (although I've always gotten the feeling that capitalization wasn't the top thing on the doc writers' minds, by the way they tend to skip around between different schemes; check out Official:Carpentry; it still doesn't match this perfectly, although it seems to be following this idea—sort of). And it works, I suppose. Probably not going to do any better than that. :) --Emufarmers 21:11, 10 July 2006 (PDT)
Seeing no objections, I'm going to add this to the Style Guide. --Barrister 00:34, 12 July 2006 (PDT)

If the puzzle is the first word in a sentence, it should be capitalized. That seems like a potentially confusing snippet; you mean to say that normal rules of capitalization apply, right? I'm not sure if that's worth the potential confusion mentioning it may cause. --Emufarmers 00:54, 12 July 2006 (PDT)

I don't see anything unclear or confusing about that sentence. It mentions a specific instance in which puzzle names should always be capitalized. --Guppymomma 05:50, 12 July 2006 (PDT)
It's saying that you still capitalize even, say, spades if it's at the start of a sentence, right? That's implied for all matters of capitalization, isn't it? Or am I misreading this? --Emufarmers 22:23, 12 July 2006 (PDT)
The sentence or two before it says that xyz puzzles should be done in lowercase and the sentence simply serves as a clarification that they should still be capitalized when they begin a sentence. I think the sentence is far more understandable than a vague comment about "normal rules of capitalization" as it is evident that many of our users are not familiar with normal rules of spelling, grammar or capitalization. --Guppymomma 06:28, 13 July 2006 (PDT)

Tagging for "Update needed"?

I didn't see any tag for "Update needed" or to otherwise bring a page or image to people's attention. I was looking for this when I noticed how out-of-date Terra's picture has become.

Is there such a tag? Did I miss it on the style page? --Behindcurtai 13:21, 29 August 2006 (PDT)

I don't think we have such a thing, but I would not find one unwelcome. --AtteSmythe 13:54, 29 August 2006 (PDT)

Infobox Pirate Redesign

Discussion on how to make pirate-page infoboxes usable, maintainable, and of some sort of uniform design is taking place at Template talk:Infobox_pirate. --AtteSmythe 13:28, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

Adding {{clear}} to the stub templates

Just pointing out a message I posted a few days ago which seems to have been pushed off Recent Changes before anybody had the chance to take notice: Template talk:Piratestub -- Covenant7 (t/c) 04:39, 4 March 2007 (PST)

I would love to see the {{clear}} tag added to all three stubs. --Arminius 10:21, 4 March 2007 (PST)
There are more than three stubs... Stub, Piratestub, Crewstub, Flagstub, Buildingstub... probably more... Anyway, I heartily endorse this product and/or service (along with this bump). -- Thefirstdude (t/c) 12:21, 27 March 2007 (PDT)
I second that. --Arminius 11:41, 29 March 2007 (PDT)

Disambiguation Pages For Terms With 2 Articles

Proposal

To be honest, I don't think it's at all necessary to create a disambiguation article when a term only has two articles in the YPPedia. Users don't like ending up at disambiguation pages because they're boring and really just an extra roadblock on their way to the information they're after. Additionally, when there are only two possible articles, linking directly to one of them with a disambig link to the other is actually superior to a seperate disambiguation article, since (presumably) half those coming to the article get the information they want sooner, while the other half are no more inconvenienced than they would be by a regular disambig page.

I'm therefore going to propose that we do not create disambiguation pages where there are only two (this would not apply to terms with more than two connotations) articles to differentiate between. The article about the more established concept should get precedence, while the other article should be linked to at the top of the first. --Ponytailguy 16:22, 29 March 2007 (PDT)

Discussion

I can see one issue with this. When someone create a link without checking to see if it is going to the right crew/flag, it won't get picked up easily as the link will shop up as blue, as it is actually linking to an existing article. However if they create a link and it points to a disambiguation page it is usually quickly picked up. I'm not sure I get a vote as I'm not an admin. -- Vorky 16:27, 29 March 2007 (PDT)
Why would non-admins not get votes? And, again, provided the link is at the top as it should be, being sent to the "wrong" page is no worse than just being sent to a disambig page. I'd actually suggest users would rather see "real" pages than disambig pages, as I have yet to see a disambig page that didn't look incredibly (!!!) technical, dry and anemic. --Ponytailguy 16:33, 29 March 2007 (PDT)
I agree that disambiguation pages should not always be the number one tool for dealing with two pages. I'm not sure if you meant this or not, but both articles need to link to each other, even if one is more prevalent than the other. Also, I still support disambiguation pages for, say, Sakejima Island and other pages where there's no clear preference between the two articles. In cases where there's a pirate with a name that also matches a game mechanic, or other cases that are very clear in preference, I fully support crosslinking them (any technical term for it?). --Darkaardvark 16:30, 29 March 2007 (PDT)
Yes, I did mean that both articles should be interlinked. In the case of an island, I'd actually suggest we could do better than disambig: Have Sakejima Island by itself be about the island itself; distinct features, how the creator created it, etc, and have the main Sakejima article link to the oceanic articles. --Ponytailguy 16:33, 29 March 2007 (PDT)
That's a separate yet related issue to the changeover of disambiguation schemes for 2 or more than 2 articles. It's a very good idea to hoist common information out of existing pages into a "higher level" article to avoid repetition. -- Faulkston 12:11, 6 May 2007 (PDT)
Also see Flag / Crew naming schemes which I proposed a few weeks ago, that would reduce the need for disambiguation pages for flags and crews. It could quite easily be extended to include pirates, buildings, in fact anything that can occur on multiple oceans.-- Vorky 16:36, 29 March 2007 (PDT)
Let's look at the amount of editing (which impacts upon maintenance) involved. Start with the case of two articles with the same base name. Under the disambiguation link scheme, the only edits are putting disambiguation links at the top of both articles. The disambiguation page scheme requires moving one of the articles to a new name and putting multiple links to the disambiguated articles on the new disambiguation page. If there's ever only 2 articles with the same base name, the link scheme saves work. It just gets deferred to when there's more than 2 articles, which is a good thing. -- Faulkston 12:11, 6 May 2007 (PDT)
I think that the issue is best decided on a case-by-case basis. If one of the articles is clearly more established and fleshed out, I favour the linking scheme. If however the two articles are more on an equal footing, or if it is to be anticipated that the importance of the articles will change (crews/flags going dormant) I favour the disambiguation page scheme. --Alfwyn 04:13, 23 February 2008 (PST)

Support (2)

Oppose (4)

  • I agree with Vorky's first point that it is easier to pick up on a wrong link if it goes to a disambig page instead of straight to the article. Also, I think it is rarely evident which article is prevalent - whichever article gets given the actual name is inherently being given priority. Additionally, what would you call the "secondary" article? Finally, disambig pages are really, really easy to just add another link to - if you want to add a third item of the same name, you would need to create a disambig page, and you would end up needing to change all links to the ex-"primary" article. -- Thefirstdude (t/c) 10:31, 24 April 2007 (PDT)
Establishing a disambiguation page with three articles is, by your own argument, little more work than establishing one for two. I also think it's relatively easy to judge prevalence: a "pecking order" could easily be established. --Ponytailguy 08:33, 27 April 2007 (PDT)
  • As per my comments above -- Vorky 11:23, 24 April 2007 (PDT)
  • The point that sells me is the fact that ambiguous linking would be harder to identify if we just cross linked two articles sharing the same name.-- Haywoodx(t/c) 13:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
  • --Top90 19:40, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Neutral (0)

Added Brigand Kings template

I created a Brigand King template for naviagting the different kings. I put it under Inventory Navigational Templates. --Jeffer 2 13:44, 19 May 2007 (PDT)

Categorisation of Templates

Considering the Templates namespace has (so far as I can tell) somthing in excess of three thousand pages, I was thinking it'd be a good idea to categorise some of the more commonly-used templates so that users can easily find a template. To give an example, supposing I wanted to add some sort of infobox to a page, but didn't know the name of the template - how would I find it? Easy, by going to some hypothetical Infobox Templates category, and looking through that shorter list for the one I wanted. Some have already been categorised, but there's still a lot of templates in common usage out there, and I know that on a few occasions, I've only been able to find some template I wanted by guessing the name, or finding another page which also used that template. Basically, I'm thinking something similar to the Category:My_pet_templates and Category:My_trinket_templates.

I'd attempted to make a start with the templates that relate specifically to the wiki software itself (rather than page content), calling it Category:Wiki_templates - things like disambiguation templates, as opposed to infobox or pet/trinket templates. However, as Barrister pointed out on the talk page, my idea as it stands has some shortcomings, starting with the slightly ambiguous category name. For one thing, I'm not entirely certain as to what templates are notable enough to be included in a category - for example, I obviously wouldn't categorise the Booty or No Booty templates, but do I want to make a catergory of the templates that are used to make the ocean maps? Et cetera.

As per Barrister's suggestion, I'm posting a proposal here to see what others think. So what do you think? =) --Belthazar451 03:35, 3 May 2008 (PDT)

Perhaps you should look through the categories first. There is a Category:Disambiguation and redirection templates already. The Booty or No Booty templates have a category as well. Generally people likely don't look to categories to look up most templates. The often used ones should be linked to from the style guide and other documents like the image tags one. Since the categories namespace and template namespace are not included in the default search, your project really wouldn't work for the example you give. For that example, a new to editing person would click on the style guide on the left and notice "Everyday Infoboxes" or they would see an example on another page or they would ask on the forum. It is unlikely they would know how to search in the template & category namespace. If that's your real aim, then it may be better to try to do things directly related to improving the style guide by adding a few categories that you can link to from the usage notes, as is done with My trinkets and My pets. --Guppymomma 08:34, 4 May 2008 (PDT)
That's a good idea, but before we can link categories to the Style Guide, we still need to make them first. As for the diambiguation category already existing, I had seriously no idea, and that there is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve. Ok, granted, I didn't realise until about ten seconds ago that it's also possible to look through the categories namespace, but possibly a category of templates should also be categorised in the Templates category for ease of finding. As for the BoNB templates already having a category, that wasn't exactly the point I was trying to make, but simply a poor choice of examples. Pretty sure they don't have one, though, but it doesn't really matter, since there's only a couple of people who are going to use those.
(Mind you, looking through the category namespace now, some of them could possibly be weeded out. For example, the Category:Charts only has four pages, Charts, Yer known world, a third-party program called YPP Maps, and the page for a user who's simply copied the charts page into her sandbox. The first two pages could just as easily go in Category:Inventory exclusively, the third on Category:Third-party tools, and the last just de-categorised entirely.) --Belthazar451 21:41, 4 May 2008 (PDT)


It's a good idea, and one I've had myself a few times before. Before embarking on it though it'd be best to plan out the top level categories and the main sub-categories. There are far too many templates to make searching the whole namespace practical and a logical sorting of them could make it easier to find an already existing template that accomplished the goals you have in mind. Several times recently I've seen people try to create a new, ultimately redundant, template--Fiddler 10:36, 4 May 2008 (PDT).
I agree with Fiddler. I'd like to see a list of the proposed categories. Then we can discuss what we like and don't like about them. Thanks! --Barrister 14:04, 4 May 2008 (PDT)
Let me see... I'm still not entirely sure what to call a lot of these things, and I don't really relish the idea of wading through the Template namspace to see what gets used regularly, but here's a couple of thoughts:
And that's just from poking through the first five hundred templates or so. Again, I'm not entirely certain on what would be needed and what wouldn't - clearly, you wouldn't need to collect together templates that aren't in common usage, such as Template:Alloceantable, templates that are embedded within other templates, such as Template:Infobox_flag/2005/12, or templates that you'd only expect the original creator and maybe a couple of others to use, such as the BoNB templates. Whew, that took a while to write. --Belthazar451 21:41, 4 May 2008 (PDT)
Do we really need to add categories for a good chunk of those items that already appear on the Yppedia:Style guide? Infobox templates are all there, either listed in everyday templates and or static infoboxes. Article/Image sources provide a link to all image tags. The Style guide is a good source for anyone to go to as a starting point. Maybe it just needs some items added to it, rather then creating categories for everything to fall into. -- Cedarwings (talk) 23:28, 4 May 2008 (PDT)
Actually, Alloceantable is one that either ought to get categorised or be added to the Style Guide. Mostly though I'm interested in seeing a proposed category scheme for what you were previously calling "wiki templates". Things such as ifdef, extnavimg, navimg, and the like. Also, it's not a bad idea to create a sub-category if a main template has lots of sub-templates, like we did for Infobox Pirate.--Fiddler 07:19, 5 May 2008 (PDT)

Some clarification required on the portrait image file naming scheme

It looks like outside of the single portrait which appears in the infobox on a pirate, crew or flag article, there are some ambiguities in the current portrait image file naming scheme. This issue came up as misnamed portrait image files were being sorted out.

For example, it is currently stated that Flags-flagname should be used for portrait images illustrating flag articles. Does this mean any portrait image used in a flag article, group portraits of pirates from the same flag or only the single portrait image which goes in the flag infobox?

It's been pointed out (I or someone else will look for a reference) that for individual pirates, there should only be a single portrait, namely the one which goes into the infobox. Pirates already have galleries; crews and flags do not. The only declaration about the number of portraits in a crew or flag article is the one about 10 or more portraits being placed in a show/hide box.

For group portraits not in a crew or flag infobox, the scheme Pirates-Pirate name 1-Pirate name 2-Pirate name 3...jpg allows the image to be found via search for individual pirate names. This can be quite handy. Admittedly this scheme becomes somewhat cumbersome when there are more than 3 pirates.

As all portraits in an article can't be named Crews-crew name or Flags-flag name, perhaps only the infobox portrait image should be named so. Any additional images would be named according to the previous paragraph's scheme.

-- Faulkston 21:18, 29 May 2008 (PDT)

I'm still rather a fan of calling extra images on a flag page Flags-flagname-imagename.jpg. That or Gallery-pagename-imagename.jpg. I just think Pirates-pirate1-pirate2-pirate3 et al is too clunky, though I suppose Pirates-imagename.jpg could work too. Say Pirates-Belthazar's Group.jpg, or whatever the in-game name of the portrait is. Pirate names could possibly be included in the image's description text. --Belthazar451 21:36, 29 May 2008 (PDT)
In an effort to kick off a discussion, let me make some proposals. As an example, I'm going to use Image:The Royal Court.jpg to demonstrate - it's one of the images displayed in the EAC gallery. If anyone from EAC is reading this, don't think I'm picking on you, I just think it's a good example. The options we have are as follows:
  1. The current standard, Pirates-pirate1.jpg. For the example image, the name then becomes Pirates-Northstar-Thepet-Crush-Duckling-Squirt.jpg (which in my opinion is somewhat unwieldy).
  2. Modify the Pirates type to Pirates-imagename.jpg. The example then becomes Pirates-The Royal Court.jpg (but is unchanged for single-pirate portraits)
  3. Expand the Flags/Crews type to Flags-flagname-imagename.jpg for any images past the first. The example then becomes Flags-EAC-The Royal Court.jpg
  4. Create a new Gallery type, Gallery-pagename-imagename.jpg. In this case, the example becomes Gallery-EAC-The Royal Court.jpg
Personally, I prefer option 3. The Pirates section of Category:Portrait images is already humumgous, so I'm not sure if it really needs any help from giving mutiple-pirate flag portraits the Pirates prefix. --Belthazar451 23:10, 31 May 2008 (PDT)

Disambiguation Links

I'm talking about links on top of a page in the style of

If you are looking for ...

Such links aid the reader if he ended up on the page via a search or bad link, and the editor by helping in disambiguating links to the page.

I propose that such links:

  1. explicitely mention their target (e.g. not piped)
  2. don't contain links beside their main target

This is in part prompted by links that I found particularely confusing (see illusion). On that page it is not clear if the link 'flag' or the link 'same name' will lead to the target.

The first point can be found for a similar situation (disambiguation pages) in the wikipedia style guide and would avoid confusion about the target link (an editor for example will see at once which way the disambiguation goes). The second point would eliminate links for which it is highly unlikely that a reader wants them, but have a chance to be used accidently.

Ideally I would like the same for disambiguation pages, but I fear that the massive precedence on YYPedia to the contrary makes it infeasable (but yes, I often accidently klick on 'Sage Ocean' when given the choice between 'foo' on Sage and 'foo' on Midnight). --Alfwyn 15:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Massive precedence only happened because the same "you are looking for" text style was replicated for sake of consistency. If there's a better way to do things, then it surely can replace older ways which are confusing. -- Faulkston 01:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

OceanMaster vs. Ocean Master

Although YPPedia favors the spelling "Ocean Master", the forums and the in-game help appear to favor "OceanMaster". I propose that YPPedia adopt the "OceanMaster" spelling for consistency. (Redirects from "Ocean Master" would be established, of course.)

  • Support. --Barrister 19:26, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Support for sake of consistency. -- Faulkston 03:24, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

The in-game help text has been modified to use the "Ocean Master" spelling. So far, it's on Ice only right now, but I expect that we should stay with the spelling we've got. --Barrister 01:23, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

How much of MOS:DATE do we observe here?

Wikipedia's MOS:DATE says, in part, Wikipedia does not use ordinal suffixes, articles, or leading zeros. Wikipedia does not insert a comma between month and year; however, a comma is required between day and year. I noticed that Faulkston always changes dates to have an ordinal suffix. Can we standardize on one format please, and codify any divergences from standard Wikipedia practice somewhere? Chupchup 05:17, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia has chosen a different standard date format to what I am used to using in everyday writing/typing. I guess we can always follow the format of the date that's inserted by the ~~~~ markup. It's not that big an issue to me. -- Faulkston 05:55, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Section headers

Wikipedia says to use == Section == for top level sections, and to capitalize only the first word. Most pages here seem to have = Section =, which makes them the same size as article titles, and many are all words capitalized. Is this the way we do it here? Gail 09:51, 13 July 2006 (PDT)

We went over this a long time ago (at wikibooks?). At that time, I think the consensus was to use level-1 headers, but recently, I've seen almost exclusively level-2, especially from new editors. Personally, I much prefer level-2, and when fixing a mixed-level article, I've switched back to level 2 unless there was a compelling reason. For articles without multiple levels, I don't see that there's any significant difference between 1 and 2, but for articles with nested headers, using an l2 after an l1 results in visually chopping up the section with a horizontal break immediately after your introduction paragraph. --AtteSmythe 10:21, 13 July 2006 (PDT)
Back at wikicity, we agreed on level-1. Since that time, we've mostly used level-1, but occasionally level-2. Frankly, I no longer care too much, as long as an article is internally consistent. --Barrister 12:42, 13 July 2006 (PDT)
I use level-2s by default. It isn't an intentional thing: I think I just picked it up from what I saw in my early days of trawling over crew pages. Atte's words are convincing enough that I might make a conscious effort to use level-2, although it's probably a meaningless distinction for the most part. --Emufarmers 21:00, 13 July 2006 (PDT)
Bumping an old discussion here. Let's standardize on the OP's suggestion, as we have already begun changing them in some places, and add the change to the project's style guide. Or we don't have to add it, since it is identical to Wikipedia's MOS. Chupchup 12:54, 25 August 2011 (PDT)

TOC right and NOTOC

Ahoy, I would like to solicit opinions about a stylistic decision being made here with some regularity. User:Franklincain has been adding __NOTOC__ and {{TOCright}} (Usage) directives to articles (example), and I am sure of neither the rationale for using them at all, nor the stylistic criteria for applying one or the other in the first place. I attempted to discuss this with him directly at User talk:Franklincain, but I did not hear anything back, so I made a difficult decision to revert him once (and only once) and was subsequently criticized in private by an administrator. So I would like to open discussion on this, to me not a very important matter, but I feel it should be resolved so that we are not stepping on each other's toes here, and we continue to improve YPPedia in aspects of usability and user-friendliness. Thank you. Chupchup 18:02, 1 July 2012 (PDT)

I have two basic criteria that I've been using: 1) necessity; and 2) intrusiveness.
I would argue that the criteria used by wiki-code for generating a table of contents (TOC) is too low -- just three section headers. I would argue that the vast majority of articles in this specific wiki do not merit a TOC, that a TOC for them is more intrusive than useful. I do not have the actual numbers, but basing just on my experience, I believe a tally would show that over half the articles here are about individual pirates and their crews/flags. I'd further argue that the majority of those articles (specific pirates, crews, flags, islands, and buildings) do not generally have the depth or breadth to merit a TOC. (Individual exceptions will exist, of course, such as pirates who have made extensive contributions to the game, or flags with a very active blockade history.)
For those articles that -do- merit (and indeed, absolutely -require-) a TOC, I find the default execution more intrusive than helpful. That is, your typical such article starts off with an introductory paragraph or two, and then -*BLAM*- here's a TOC directly in front of the first section header. In many cases, having the TOC off to the right-hand corner (i.e. using the TOC-right template) is a more elegant and more professional approach (in my opinion).
My apologies to Chupchup/LJ for my delay in responding to him.  ;-) Sometimes, it takes my little grey cells a while to find just the right words for me to use. -- Franklincain (t/c) 05:14, 2 July 2012 (PDT)
I disagree with the continued adjustments of table of contents for a couple of reasons. One (and this is the big one), the table of contents is such a minor part of pages that there is no reason to edit a page solely to adjust a TOC. It's not adding enough value (I personally don't find it's adding any value to adjust a TOC, but that's just me) that it merits spending that much time doing it. Two, suppressing the TOC from a page is a value decision on the part of the editor that doesn't necessary reflect the views of other editors, and doesn't reflect the future potential of a page. While the vast majority of crew/flag pages may not have a ton of information right now, it is not outside the realm of possibility that someone may decide to add that information, at which point it would necessitate the TOC, and it is unlikely anybody will think to remove the NOTOC addition. Three, again, the right TOC v. normal TOC alignment is a value decision on the part of an individual editor. For this one specifically, I think it merits an actual discussion and decision by the community of editors because otherwise the pages are inconsistent, which renders them less "professional" looking. What looks worse than some pages feeling clunky because of the standard TOC is when only a handful of pages have a right alignment. --Fannon 13:57, 5 July 2012 (PDT)
Is it possible then to increase the trigger/threshold value? Up from three sections to ...say, four? or five? Or better yet, where the accumulated total number of (sub)sections is five or more, regardless of how divided. -- Franklincain (t/c) 10:57, 7 July 2012 (PDT)
For what it is worth, here are Wikipedia's guidelines on floating the auto-generated table of contents. There have been past discussions on Wikipedia about that particular template and even a request to delete it (no consensus was reached). -- Faulkston 18:18, 5 July 2012 (PDT)
So far, looks like we've gotten opinions from just four of us. One "pro" (me), two "con" (Chupchup/LJ and Fannon), and one abstaining (Faulkston didn't say if he was for or against). Did anyone else want to chime in? How many do we need for a formal consensus? Thanks! -- Franklincain (t/c) 10:57, 7 July 2012 (PDT)
I don't have a problem with three headings (sections, subsections, sub-subsections etc) being the trigger value, though it probably should be something customizable in Mediawiki user preferences (whether to show table of contents at all is already an option).
The standard positioning of the table of contents (left-side and not floated) also requires the least amount of fine-tuning to ensure that layout problems don't occur e.g. narrow web browser windows and/or screens with the {{TOCright}} (Usage) template. Table of contents placement could also be something for user preferences though there's the risk of causing layout problems. -- Faulkston 12:25, 7 July 2012 (PDT)
(Faulkston said, "whether to show table of contents at all is already an option")...Where, please? This would be of great interest to me, if I could know how to trigger that for myself. Thanks!! -- Franklincain (t/c) 12:31, 7 July 2012 (PDT)
Top right- my preferences - Appearance, scroll down to checklist at bottom where you'll see the option "Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings)" --Fannon 12:38, 7 July 2012 (PDT)

File-name standard

Is there a standard for file names of images that one wants to show on a pirate page that depicts them in an outfit they prefer in a certain situation? Example on Arladannon. Gunnerfreak on Cerulean 11:16, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

That's not really something anyone has ever wanted to encourage anyone to add to their page, so probably not. There may be a precedent for adding a few favorite portraits to a page, but I'm not sure. Sorry. --Budclare2 17:29, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
This issue and some related ones were raised here. One suggestion: Portraits could have their in-game caption set to indicate particular favorite outfits and the pirate article could refer to those captions instead of needing the portrait image uploaded to the YPPedia. -- Faulkston 02:09, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
That sounds reasonable. So the player can, instead of having uploaded the portraits, link to the specific YoWeb location where it applies? Gunnerfreak on Cerulean 14:44, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
No, the pirate article could have text like "She can be seen wearing this wonderful outfit in the portrait titled 'Wonderful outfit' in her gallery". -- Faulkston 02:40, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
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