Talk:Main Page

Navigation
(distilled from previous discussion)

Some special pages have been linked in the footer of the main page. I used the noun name of the page used by other wikis rather than the adjective name used by MediaWiki, since it's shorter, and (IMHO) more concise.

A list of all special pages can be found at Special:Specialpages which has a link in the toolbox at the bottom of the quickbar (at left by default).


 * Index / Allpages: Alphabetical index of existing pages. See the Index link in the footer of the main page, or the Allpages special page.


 * Phantoms / Wantedpages: Pages which have wikilinks to them, but do not exist. See the Phantoms link in the footer of the main page, or the Wantedpages special page.


 * Orphans / Lonelypages: Pages which exist, but are not linked to from any other page. See the Orphans link in the footer of the main page, or the Lonelypages special page.


 * Shortpages: Pages which exist and are linked, but have very little content, likely needing more info. See the Special:Specialpages special page.

How do you...
We are looking for ways to modify the navigation and toolbox boxes.
 * http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Help:Navigation Has to be done by admins.  Or was this question asking for suggestions for modifications? --Guppymomma 06:03, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Delete a page?
 * http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Deletion Deletion needs to be done by admins. --Guppymomma 05:09, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Pirate Talk?
(moved to http://yohoho.wikicities.com/wiki/Puzzle_Pirates_talk:About)

More categories?
I'm a Wiki novice. Do we want to create categories for Flags, Crews, and Islands? Can we subcategorize (i.e., Category:Flags:Viridian)? --Barrister 08:02, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it's possible to subcategorize. See Alchemistry and go up its categories for an example, and Wikipedia's Categorization policy could be useful. -- Blinkoing

I've been tinkering with the flag section. --Featherfin

I've converted the Islands to be ":" instead of " ()". Should I do the same for flags? I'd like to get this settled before I convert my blockade histories to Wiki. --Barrister 21:16, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, lets be as as consistent as possible. --Callistan

Okay, I've changed every occurence of () I could find. If you find any others, please change them. --Barrister 22:13, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Note that it is also ": island". So Midnight:Jorvik island and can be piped to just Jorvik. Though I have to wonder why we are putting in the extra "island" part. Why not just the name?--Lessah of Midnight 22:19, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Adding the extra 'island' is the isles proper name. Some islands don't have that, such as Flow or Waterbury. --Callistan 22:37, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

...Though I think it makes perfect sense to redirect the short names to the full names. --Callistan 07:49, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Good idea. How do we redirect for Cobalt/Viridian islands that map to different pages?  --Barrister 07:50, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking making short and unambiguous short names point to full island names. e.g. Jorvik and Midnight:Jorvik redirect to Midnight:Jorvik Island. Though there was an Azure:Jorvik, it's not likely to be sought, so perhaps a "See Also" link on the Midnight:Jorvik page would be enough.

In thinking about ambiguity (disambiguation We should probably make pages like Dragon's Nest be a disambiguation page for the Cobalt/Veridian versions. This helps searches, but allows disambiguous links to be shorter too. Also adds lots of redirect pages though. --Callistan 09:19, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I like diambiguation page thingee and the format of the sample Mercury on that page. I think it's simply the nature of a wiki to have lots and lots of pages.  --Guppymomma 14:32, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

While adding to Midnight:Eta Island I used : : when adding the section for buildings to Eta. Which led me to the Midnight:Silver Dawn page where I linked the crew names with placeholders, using :crew: because : is bound to cause conflict with :. Any suggestions? --Clinton 16:04, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Is there enough information to justify a separate page for each specific shop? --Barrister 19:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Some shops have a lot of history, and some pirates love them very dearly. We'll either need a "policy" to deal with them or be ready to get admins to delete them. I don't care for the latter. --Callistan 19:09, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * We certainly don't "need" them and I wouldn't bother with it for most purposes. But trying to restrict a wiki is just futile and will drive the admins batty. If people want to link them then I don't see a problem so long as people stay civil and factual. Silver Dawn has a couple of people, including myself, that would like to see this be very encompassing. The only thing that I would like to see is that shops get namespaced to the island that they're on. Makes the link longer but helps make the organization clearer. --208.60.252.108 16:48, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Conflicts happen (as opposed to barnacle?)! I don't expect the casual wikizen to use namespaces. They add quite a bit of effort, folks won't know about it, and it sullies the nice mechanism of just wrapping ... around some text to get a link. I say let the good wikizen (with plenty of time) place things in agreed upon namespaces, but to always leave redirect or dismbiguation page in it's wake, and to (less importantly) qualify links that point to disambiguation/redirect pages. --Callistan 19:09, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Island Building Info
Do we really need a detailed list of which building is upgraded and which isn't for every island? It's so prone to change, and does little use. I'm mostly interested in the History section, myself. -VPeric

Right now, I'm just experimenting with the island format. I think maintaining building information will be pretty easy once the initial data is entered. As for the History sections, please feel free to start entering text if you've got the information. --Barrister 23:26, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I both agree and disagree with you VPeric. On the one hand, yes, dynamic info easily gets out of date. I've already said on the Flag Talk page that I'd like to use Y!PP Flag Tracker (if it still worked) to track things like current monarch, captain, allies, etc and use this mostly as a "histories" page. Much of the island info is no different.

On the other hand, the information is useful, and by putting it here, it is accessable without logging on, and without walking around the isle to find it out. Yes, it will get out of date, but that's why we wanted a wiki in the first place: so anyone who notices discrepancy can update.

I suspect a basic format for island pages will evolve, where it's easy to update dynamic info, and it will be current than not, so I'm in favor of it. Of course it's a community driven process. Time will tell. --Callistan 23:04, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've (temporarily) categorized the estate agent and market under Category:Infrastructure Buildings. If someone has a better idea, feel free to recategorize. --Yaten 01:16, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Administrative perhaps? Just brainstorming. --Featherfin


 * I don't agree with that. The market and the Estate Agent are very different. --VPeric
 * How about a Category:Buildings, with subcategories Shoppe (for general shoppe types and descriptions, Shop [for specific shops across oceans (questionable if it's necessary)], Administrative (for governorial buildings. No idea where to put the estate agent, though.--Yaten 18:04, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I guess that can work. Estate Agent could be linked in both "shoppe" and "Administrative"? I'm not so sure if we need those shop pages, but it seems to have already been "decided" (by people adding them). It's a different topic, anyway, and already disscussed elsewhere. --VPeric

Wiki customization
Does WikiCities let you swap the logo in the top left corner? I've done it on the MediaWiki we have set up at work, but I also can get to all the files from the file system side. Makes a big difference as far as making the wiki look your own.

--Mercano 04:21, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, it does. http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Start_a_new_Wikicity There's a Change the Logo section. Maybe Ihope or another Admin would like to run a contest on the Y!PP Forums looking for potential logos to choose from? --Guppymomma 04:56, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Templates
How To for templates http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Template

(for comments on individual templates go to their discussion pages)


 * Template:Commodities - for non-endpoint commodities (includes spot for image)
 * Template:Fn - footnotes
 * Template:Island - for colonised islands
 * Template:Island 2 - for uninhabitable islands
 * Template:Paint 0 - for unpaintable bits
 * Template:Paint 1 - for single color areas
 * Template:Paint 2 - for areas with two regions
 * Template:Ship - for ship information
 * Template:Ooo_image - for images taken directly from in-game.

Pirate names
Should entries for individual pirates use the Ocean:Name format? My gut reaction is yes. Anyone else? --Barrister 20:49, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Yep. Should also help in reducing confusion with accounts. --Shagie 21:09, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Then again, I'm not sure if there's THAT much content to be put for pirates, but hey! --VPeric People are adding the governor's names for various islands, so it's begun. I do think we should leave Cleaver, Nemo, Peghead, :etc. as global names. --Barrister 21:30, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) We should probably encourage a difference between User: and :. However, the distinction between them won't be easily grokked by the casual user. In many cases : should reference : (what a hackery of language/code that is!).


 * I like the idea of disambiguation pages/redirects at pages, but realistically, nearly every word in the dictionary is a pirate name by now. I like the idea of using ocean names as a namespace. --Callistan 11:32, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, defienately sort by ocean names. Now, through, could we have some guidelines as to what's enough for one to get "listed"? Governor of island, past/present, ok... King/Queen of a Flag that did something... I mean, I don't think shoppe owners and people like that "deserve" to be listed. --VPeric


 * Deserved or not, they'll start appearing. Limiting the domain of a wiki is difficult at best. --Callistan 21:39, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

One thought, relatevly related. Currently, flags use the format of Ocean:FlagName (ie. Cobalt:Vilya), right? I've seen the same thing for players, and for islands. Now while I doubt a player would be called "Olive Island" I think it's not impossible for a flag to have the same name as someone (ie. Euterpe the pirate and Euterpe the flag (as little sense as it makes, something like that could happen)). Should we have name "templates" such as :Pirate:; :flag: etc? Or keep the flag without it, and add stuff for everything else (shop, pirate...). Thoughts? --VPeric

Images?
How much webspace do we have here? I'd love to upload some images of commodities, islands, pirates, etc. --Yaten 00:52, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Help:Images Doesn't mention an exact disklimit for the whole site/image pile, but it does state "there is a size-per-file limit of 5MB." --Guppymomma 05:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Do we have or need a statement reguarding copyright?--Tyroney 19:04, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Yaten has created a nice template for image copyright from Puzzle Pirates Template:Ooo image. You can pop it into your image page by using   We should be okay with copyright if the images folks put in link to their respective image pages with their respective copyrights. --Guppymomma 16:23, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mailing List
I've noticed that wikicities also provides an accompanying mailman list for their wikis. The one for this wiki is at http://lists.wikicities.com/mailman/listinfo/yohoho-l Maybe this would be an easier way of discussing some things during the initial figuring out what's going on phase? Since the wiki is just beginning and there is a huge flood of changes/additions, chit chat about purpose, mission statement, and all those kinds of broad issues can easily be missed in the flood of listings in Recent changes...talking about such things via a list could be beneficial. --Guppymomma 05:35, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I completely agree. I've signed up for the list now.  --Barrister 06:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New Player Guide
Now that we've got the bones of the economy, politics, game-play and geography laid out, do we want to start creating a new-player guide that starts referencing the pertinent sections. --Fiddler 08:17, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * That's a terrific idea. Do you have an idea for how you want to structure it? --Barrister 08:54, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd imagine start with pirate creation, move onto the Pollywog, and then onto an island. Deal with missions, making money, social behavior on land, expectations when working at sea, etc...  Towards the end include bits about buying new clothes or purchasing new swords.  Later sections could include stuff about officership, ship ownership, trading and mercantile playstyles, and other high-end game content.--Fiddler 15:57, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Resources and producables
Anything that can go into a hold needs a template that has the image, classification, mass, and volume. Anything that can be produced likewise needs a template that has the ingredients for it. --Shagie 23:35, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Singular or Plural pages?
I just renamed the Ship page to Ships and put a #redirect for ship. The page talks about all ships, multiple types even! As I started fixing links, I noticed most prose says simply "ship" so would use the redirect. We should definately have pages for both, one being a redirect. What should "policy" be on which is the actual page? I'm inclined to go plural for ships, skellies, and other things that are generally discussed in plural. Part of my logic is that this is like an encyclopedia, describing things, not a dictionary defining the word. Thoughts? --Callistan 17:44, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I think your logic for the ship redirect is sound. Swords, skellies, etc. should probably be plural.  I think either singular or plural is fine, depending on what is used in-game most often.  For instance, I used elderberries rather than elderberry.--Yaten 17:50, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm a little concerned about using plurals for the page names. There are lots of times when the phrase "board a ship" would be useful, for example.  It seems like extra work to have to write "ships|ship" all the time.  Especially since Wiki makes it easy to write things like [ship]s to add plurals.
 * In the end, if there are redirects for the singular and the plural, it won't matter too much, but it does seem like a lot of extra entries. As for "elderberries", I'm sure there will be a few exceptions like that, but I'm really in favor of using the singular whereever possible.  --Barrister 18:38, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)