Talk:Item Namespace

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Past discussions archived to...

• ...Talk:Item Namespace/Archive01 Archived 22:45, April 24, 2012

Time to revisit this idea....

SOO!!! Now that Turbine-DDO has changed half of the way everything works, it is time to revisit this idea... I've been recently trying to update items, and quite frankly it is a pain in the rear... Using the bot to update things that are mass changes is difficult because I can't isolate the Items from the rest of the pages that link or transclude parts of items... So, there are lots of erroneous bot edits causing us to have to go back and check every bot edit and revert the ones that shouldn't have been made... Although this is still faster than sorting through every page on the wiki and just updating the ones that need it, it is not efficient. "Item:" no longer shows anywhere on the wiki except save the URL bar at the top of your browser, so it doesn't look ugly what-so-ever. This namespace will make searches for items with XXxxXX enchantment faster and return less junk results. Categorizing templates will function much more efficiently. We're only two weeks away from the three month mark since the topic/idea was discussed, and Update 14 has encouraged me to work towards the goal of making any Joe be able to make edits and have most of the formatting, style, and categorizing automatically apply itself while improving search times and offering better results...

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 22:02, July 10, 2012 (EDT)

Personally, I have no problem with an Item namespace. I can see a lot of the benefits, and very few of the concerns - IMHO, the biggest one is a user creating a page with just "itemname" rather than "item:itemname" or however it should be, and that's not really a big one - easy enough to redirect.

MY concern is linking to stuff. This old dog doesn't learn new tricks very well, and I've gotten used to just itemname (Yay, an intentional redlink!)... though I suspect most of the current items would include a redirect for it (assuming they get moved instead of some weird thing that directly turns it into an item page without redirecting...). Although that would actually make it HARDER for me to learn the new trick of linking items *g*

LrdSlvrhnd (Contributions • Message) 01:26, July 11, 2012 (EDT)

I see that the linking issue is somewhat unpleasant. What is the Item namespace doing what the [[Category:Items]] can't do? "Just" automatically filing things correctly?
I spent some time looking at User:Yoko5000/Category_structure. It looks like the main cause of the erring bots is that the Category: Items contains articles which are not describing items, but item enhancements and other Item related stuff. Wouldn't that be solved in an easier fashion if we moved all the non-items out of Category: Items? It looks like [[Category:Item enhancements]] is the main offender. I'd rather try to fix the categories than to introduce a meta-feature which tries to iron out the flaws of the categories. Also it's odd to have only the item namespace, but not Quest:, Enhancement:, and so on.

Krlkch (Contributions • Message) 04:35, July 11, 2012 (EDT)

To answer your questions, categories are an automatic function of the wiki. It is not as simple as moving this category here or there. It is much simpler to move all of the pages classified as item pages to an Item: namespace than it is to go through and try to clean up every instance of every category on every page. It's a difference of moving 1/3 - 1/2 of the pages on the wiki to the new namespace as compared to editing every single page on the wiki. It's a difference of moving 10K item pages to editing 28-30K pages to fix the category structure and manually categorize every page instead of letting the templates do what templates are suppose to do and make the editors lives and job easier. New editors (we have had a LOT of them recently) wouldn't know to categorize and keep everything in order, so in order to accomplish your suggestion, we would have to restrict editing to senior editors that know all the template and know how to navigate the entire category structure (I know maybe 4 people on the wiki with these qualifications). I already have the workings of most of a unified Template:Named_Item which in conjunction with the Item: namespace and a modification of the current "add a page dialog section" in the middle of Home, all any one has to do is type in the name of the item in the box, and hit a button that creates the page and preloads the blank Template:Named_Item. They fill out the template which is very similar to a form (with complete instructions for what each line is intended for encapsulated in html <!-- --> comment out tags so they just have to follow the directions to fill out what they can. All new items then will be added to a list of categories / pages monitored by administrators to check for formating and mistakes. So, in summary... With this Item: namespace, I can create all of the background templates and behind the scenes workings so that ANYONE can create a new item page and have it look EXACTLY the same as a person with 10K+ edits...

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 15:23, July 11, 2012 (EDT)

The following conversation about this topic is copy and pasted from the wiki's IRC Chat channel.

11:45:44	PCrazee	2012-07-11 14:50:50 karl_k0ch is it sensible that "Armor-Piercing" has the category "Items"?
11:45:47	PCrazee	2012-07-11 14:58:09 karl_k0ch so here is my counter-proposal to the item namespace
11:45:50	PCrazee	2012-07-11 14:59:05 karl_k0ch Move [[Category:Item enhancements]] out of [[Category:Items]]
11:45:53	PCrazee	2012-07-11 14:59:48 karl_k0ch (and other sub-categories which include non-item articles, if there are any)
11:46:07	PCrazee	i think he also posted that on the talk page
11:47:23	Shoe|Work	it can't be moved out... There are thousands of pages that are transcluded through one another and the category structure doesn't work that way.
11:49:13	Shoe|Work	Even if it was directly moved out as a sub-category, it would be transcluded into C:Items by the thousands of pages that use any one of over 100 templates that categorize things... \
11:50:28	Shoe|Work	The "Item:" NameSpace allows all of the templates to include a switch that says ONLY categorize as this IF page is in Item: namespace... There is NO other reasonable way of doing it without converting the entire wiki to the symantic forms version...
11:51:22	Shoe|Work	Which according to our host Xevo, doesn't seem currently changeable... Well, not without losing everything and starting over from scratch... Which is not something we want to do...
11:52:12	Shoe|Work	Besides, the search engine will not allow you to filter by category, by namespaces will... So, with the item namespace, you can filter your search to JUST items, if that is what you are looking for.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 15:04, July 11, 2012 (EDT)

With the mess the categories are, it actually seems to make sense to put in a hard-coded criterium for items. I think it's not a bad idea. Also, some of my questions had already been answered in April. :)

Krlkch (Contributions • Message) 16:49, July 11, 2012 (EDT)

uh, User:Yoko5000/Category structure dates back to 2008 or so, it is super old and needs to be reworked probably (at least for item section).

https://ddowiki.com/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages&from=&to=&namespace=500

so, these pages are the ones currently stored under the new namespace. instead of doing it form A to Z, why dont we experiment 1st at say, Crystal Cove items and U13 items to see what happens? that way we can evaluate merit and disadvantage more precisely.

yoko5000 (Contributions • Message) 02:27, July 12, 2012 (EDT)

That structure does indeed date back to '07 BUT it is not completely the structure. I think the original structure that was drawn with Dia+ might with some huge luck be somewhere stashed. Problem was in that text representation that it does not show none of the horizontal dependencies/relations/connections. BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 06:27, December 26, 2012 (EST)

I have no issue making it a modular change, and actually that was the way I was implementing it when I was moving things (started with epic items, one pack at a time).

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 10:21, July 12, 2012 (EDT)

(Sorry if this post seems a bit disjointed, a bit tired)
If this provides us with a better search feature and a better classification for items, then I'm all for it.
How would this be implemented? It seems simple moves from "PAGENAME" to "Item:PAGENAME" would do the trick, then simply cleanup the links/redirects. Would there be a cleaner way to do this, or would we need to do this in smaller modules/botting to make sure it's done right?
Another thing to think about is would we want to remove the "PAGENAME" pages - The main reasoning being for simple linking to pages without needing to put "Item:" in every item link we wish to post, or would this issue be addressed with the new namespace? "Tauro" (Contributions • Message) 00:05, July 18, 2012 (EDT)

Modules/chunks/sections is best way... Most of the "PAGENAME" pages can be deleted and any links to them replaces with {{Item|PAGENAME}} which is a template a created to save us time / typing / and memory... Without the template we would have to type [[Item:PAGENAME|PAGNAME]]. This is why I created that template.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 01:18, July 18, 2012 (EDT)

Update: I started a modular move by pack / item level, and it wasn't going so well... I rethought about it, and decided to try a different approach... Then, I decided to start moving things modularly by item enhancement and started with Absorption items  / Template:Absorption and I think it was very successful and the modular by enhancement is the way to go...

I'm currently in the process of moving to a new apartment, so the move on my part has stalled until I am settled into the new place.

Anyone interested in helping move, please talk to me about it before starting to move things. This move is very touch and needs to be done as cleanly as possible and I have formulated a fairly simple method to do this that I would be happy to share on a one-on-one chat basis. Thank you.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 12:19, August 31, 2012 (EDT)

documentation please when you have time. im still a bit fuzzy on how this relates to category bleeding, which is one of the biggest criticism on this wiki. i will help moving articles once we are ready.

yoko5000 (Contributions • Message) 00:53, September 2, 2012 (EDT)

My understanding of how it will help with category bleeding is as follows : 1) The item pages are going to get moved to their own namespace 2) The templates defined for item properties will ONLY inject category declarations if the calling page exists in the item namespace. This will mean that a page like Update 14 items which lists items and their properties calls the template, it will NOT add that page to the category in question. ( Example: Breach,_The_Dividing_Blade uses shatter template to show it has shatter +10 property, the template is currently defined to add any calling page in to the category 'shatter +10' items, Breach is added to the category. Update_14_named_items lists Breach along with it's property of shatter +10 by using the template. Current setup means that update item list page gets added to category 'shatter +10' items when it shouldn't be.) After logic is put in to templates, and items are moved to their own namespace, any page that references an item property that is NOT in the item namespace will not be put in to any categories. ( Disclaimer: This is only what i've been able to tell by glancing at the template source and various other item pages )

joenuts

There are templates that miss behave or are used badly and those need to be fixed as people either don't understand what a template is and how they work or simply create/use templates with huge depth of other templates. Instead of going through that the templates work correctly and are used right - a new namespace would be created. Namespace, a feature that is reserved in wikis for maintenance of the wiki (platform) itself, that would have prefix of item. A "item" label that is used in multiple times already in a page that handles about a item by categorization alone. e.g. The word item is used and hyperlinked 29 times at Breach, The Dividing Blade. A namespace that DDO is also using and also enforces people to use search every time, even when they know to letter what they are looking for. Or if they don't and the namespace was not correctly choose, zero hits and back to Google. Namespace that is tested and used presently by DDO compendium without no real benefits but with much more complex and heavier pages.

The namespace workaround does not fix broken templates, fixing broken and enforcing correct use templates does fix the bleeding category problem. New namespace increases complexity and gives more worries than solves. Personally, DDO's official wiki is only a load time leap away from me. Both wiki's suffer from bad UI, heavy loading times and chaotic categorization and information. I use this wiki mainly because it has (presently) better interlinking and I can access the info directly through URL. I vote against additional namespace for items.

BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 17:09, December 25, 2012 (EST)