Talk:Item Namespace/Archive01

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Have to ask you Tech13 why are you moving pages to start with item:? The pages seem fine already. Was this thought out completely and it overall effect on the site and passed with the others for such a major change? Bladedge (Contributions • Message) 22:25, April 10, 2012 (EDT)

We now have a new "Item" namespace which should streamline many of our categorization functions. It has been approved by Xevo (Contribs • Message • Email) (Since he had to manually create the Namespace in the wiki configuration files). I understand the massive amount of work that will be required to get all of the items into their namespace, and will be working diligently to get them there and clean up any messes caused by the move. Once the moving part of the process is complete (a fair amount anyways), I can start to revamp the auto-categorizing functions of many of our template opening the doors to be able to use "item only" templates anywhere because they will only add things to the category if they are in the item namespace. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 22:54, April 10, 2012 (EDT)

Calling it a night.. Still a long ways to go. I'll not get much time to work on it tomorrow, although I'm sure I'll get a few. I'll really start digging in on Thursday. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 23:15, April 10, 2012 (EDT)

This seems like a pretty big project. Are you just moving the pages from "PAGENAME" to "Item:PAGENAME", or is there something a bit more complicated to this new namespace? I suppose I'll look more into it in the morning, but if you need some help, give me a shout. Taurolyon (Contributions • Message) 01:25, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

From what I've gathered/seen, its just that. So I've started moving all the named weapons. Should be done in 30 minutes Yawgmoth (Contributions • Message) 03:36, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

That is not "all" that is entailed.. It is also very important to clean up all things that link to the items being moved and in some cases, such as epic items, fixing the cat-sort so that not everything is Cat under "E".. While you are on the pages checking things out, perhaps update the templates used for the new ones and make any fixes as needed. You can see what I started doing with the epic items last night. -- Again, I understand this is a HUGE project, however, I have no issue working my way through this and expect it may take me a month or so, but I strongly believe the end result will be very desirable and uniformly more simplistic for all. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 10:31, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

"Item namespace should streamline many of our categorization functions"? plz elaborate. this is a big change to how we have stored info on our wiki and im not sure if i like it. are we really going for heavy namespace usage like Turbine's horrible Compendium does?

yoko5000 (Contributions • Message) 05:49, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

Shoe and I may have jumped the gun on this one. I think we should stop moving pages until we all decide as a group what to do.

Shoe sent me some templates with examples of how he wanted to improve them with the new Item namespace. I'll let Shoe explain them though. I think the main benefit of the namespace would be the ability to only search through pages in the Item namespace.

Yoko brings up a really good point though. Where does it end? I definitely don't think we should add any more namespaces beyond the Item one. Things could quickly get out of hand. --Xevo (Contributions • Message) 07:35, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

How many times have you all complained about Category bleed for this or that.. Most of (99% by my observation) has come from using templates that were designed as 185 Item description templates  for use only on {{Named whatever... being used on loot pages or what have you that look great, but cause those loot pages to be categorized where they do not belong. Example Template:Stat is one of the biggest offenders; in this template I had made every attempt to prevent this bleed, and the best I could do up until the introduction of this namespace is:

{{#if:{{#pos:{{lc:{{PAGENAMEE}}}}|loot}}||{{#if:{{#pos:{{lc:{{PAGENAMEE}}}}|named}}||{{#if:{{#pos:{{lc:{{PAGENAMEE}}}}|reward}}||{{#if:{{#pos:{{lc:{{PAGENAMEE}}}}|named_items}}||{{#ifeq:{{lc:{{TALKSPACEE}}}}|{{lc:{{NAMESPACEE}}}}||{{#switch:{{lc:{{NAMESPACEE}}}}|category|file|forum|help|template|user=|#default=<includeonly>[[Category:{{ #ifeq:{{lc:{{{3}}}}}|exc| Exceptional ||}} {{#switch:{{lc:{{{1}}}}}
|str|strength = Strength
|dex|dexterity = Dexterity
|con|constitution = Constitution
|int|intelligence = Intelligence
|wis|wisdom = Wisdom
|cha|charisma = Charisma
|ability = Ability
|Stat (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha)
}} {{ #ifexpr:{{{2|0}}}< 0|{{#expr:0+{{{2|0}}}}}|+{{#expr:0+{{{2|0}}}}}}} items]]</includeonly>}}}}}}}}}}}}

This caught "most" of the bleed, but not all because of the way that transclusion works.. With the new namespace I/we will be able to go through the templates and add:

{{#ifeq:{{lc:{{NAMESPACE}}}}|item|<includeonly>[[Category:{{ #ifeq:{{lc:{{{3}}}}}|exc| Exceptional ||}} {{#switch:{{lc:{{{1}}}}} |str|strength = Strength |dex|dexterity = Dexterity |con|constitution = Constitution |int|intelligence = Intelligence |wis|wisdom = Wisdom |cha|charisma = Charisma |ability = Ability |Stat (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha) }} {{ #ifexpr:{{{2|0}}}< 0|{{#expr:0+{{{2|0}}}}}|+{{#expr:0+{{{2|0}}}}}}} items]]</includeonly>}}

This will catch ALL of the potential item bleed, because if the page is not in the item namespace, it doesn't get categorized. This will allow people to use Template:Stat to their discretion on loot pages and enchantment description pages to their hearts content and not place those things into Ability +?  where they do not belong. There are many enchantment templates that could and would be able to take GREAT advantage of this.

Furthermore, it would make it so that guy that is looking for all items with "Some Uber Enchantment" doesn't have to farm through 20 pages of "Some Uber Enchantment" description, "some quest" with "Some Uber Enchantment" loot, "some special event that can drop a "Some Uber Enchantment" potion.

Also, to answer Yoko's initial question, I currently feel that item is the only one that needs to be done where-as a great majority of the bleeding and issues comes/came from there. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 09:25, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

I'm against this. It's just yet another example of techs attempts to add complexity to things that should be as simple as possible. The pros just do not outweigh the cons for using namespaces in this manner. And yea, for such a massive change involving 2k+ pages, and nearly every other page on the site in some way too, you really should of discussed this with the majority of the active editors before diving in. Especially one like this which breaks our Naming policy, all changes to that should be discussed first.

Xevo's job is not to decide things like this. Here's here to help provide us the tools we need to get things done, so yea of course hes not gonna decline your request. It's the active editors that should decide major changing to the sites, and Xevo currently isn't one of them.

The cons just outweigh any positive for the REAL users, that matter the most:

Cons:

• Our category listings look horrible. Every item says "item:".. Treating the user like hes a moron that needs to be told every 0.0002millisecond that hes looking at items.. And this is something I put a lot of work in to simplify and clean up to look nice recently.
• Adds a bunch of typing that should not be necessary.. Whenever we type out new items, we now would need to type Item:name, then pipe that crap out the name, more then doubling our workload there.. UGH.
• Item pages already use a huge amount of transclusions. Having most of our links be a redirect = yet another transclusion. And the alternative of removing them would be worse - it would completely break searches, indexes and tons of other stuff.
• Search will NOT work as smoothly. Clear evidence of this problem is available right now at turbines compendium. They use namespaces like crazy, so unless you hard-lock specify the type of article your searching for, there search engine just plain doesn't work.
• It will also break the nice DDO wiki:Firefox search plugin. I use that a lot, plus just typing in item names in the url bar works nice too as it is.. This will ruin that.
• Reduces site uniformity. Just items get a namespace? What about quests? wilderness? challenges? etc.. Slippery slope imo, soon enough we will have become the dreaded compendium we are meant to exist to be different from.
• Another 2k +edits and site disruption when we decide it should be "Items" and not "Item".
• Templates that use {{PAGENAME}} will look poor with the dumb item: suffix.

Pros:

• You can use techs silly autocat templates designed only for item pages, elsewhere. Maybe.
  • And even you can can - in many cases you should not. The most common place they get misused atm is in item indexes.. Item indexes tend to be long lists of items with short description players can quickly browse through. If we fill these with too many templates, the pages will get laggy and eventually break as we've seen happen on our Vaults of the Artificers loot page.
  • And being this is a change that reduces functionality for the users, but helps editors - it should have a low priority. We should work behind the scenes to improve the site, not in the face of it.

We need to make smart use of as few templates as possible, not destroy the sites structure in the name of using more pointless templates - we could easily achieve the same thing where we could want it with the simple longpopup template instead, and suffer a lot less performance issues.

So yea unless you get some support for this project tech, I don't recommend you proceed. And from the discussion so far, no one seems to support it.

At the bare minimum you should of debugged this first before proceeding. The compendium at least doesn't have a huge mess in its categorys filled with namespace:article.. It has code to clip that in place.

Shade (Contributions • Message) 10:56, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

Let's answer Shade's (Contribs • Message • Email) concerns..

Cons:

• Our category listings look horrible. Every item says "item:".. Treating the user like hes a moron that needs to be told every 0.0002millisecond that hes looking at items.. And this is something I put a lot of work in to simplify and clean up to look nice recently.
  • I'll work on stripping the visual "Item:" namespace from the visible part of the C: structure. I find it a slight eyesore as-well, however, C: sorting is unaffected by it so other than the visual eyesore of it, there is no adverse effect.
• Adds a bunch of typing that should not be necessarily.. Whenever we type out new items, we now would need to type Item:name, then pipe that crap out the name, more then doubling our workload there.. UGH.
  • WRONG: I already thought that through. Simply use {{Item|<item name>}}, which coincidentally is less work than including a link to a category on a page ({{Cl|1=<cat name>}}
• Item pages already use a huge amount of transclusions. Having most of our links be a redirect = yet another transclusion. And the alternative of removing them would be worse - it would completely break searches, indexes and tons of other stuff.
  • Transclusions are a normal part of a wiki. I do not see these tiny transclusions as being even slightly page breaking.
    • EDIT: Furthermore, I can offer the option to eliminate any additional transclusions by offering a C&P setup for {{subst:Item| in the edit toolbar at the bottom of the page (Done). Looks like Extension:CharInsert is installed now or getting there, just waiting on confirmation from Xevo. At that point you'll just have to click a button and that part will be put in for you.
• Search will NOT work as smoothly. Clear evidence of this problem is available right now at turbines compendium. They use namespaces like crazy, so unless you hard-lock specify the type of article your searching for, there search engine just plain doesn't work.
  • Turbines compendium is not a fair comparison to DDOwiki.. The "Item:" namespace is included in the default search parameters, so unless you're implying that the users that visit this page are complete morons (Which according to your other posts, you do not), then they are not stupid enough to uncheck search Item: when they are looking for an item.
• It will also break the nice DDO wiki:Firefox search plugin. I use that a lot, plus just typing in item names in the url bar works nice too as it is.. This will ruin that.
  • How exactly does it break the Firefox search? I use it constantly and it searches through Category:, DDO_wiki:, MediaWiki:, as-well-as *: without a care..
• Reduces site uniformity. Just items get a namespace? What about quests? wilderness? challenges? etc.. Slippery slope imo, soon enough we will have become the dreaded compendium we are meant to exist to be different from.
  • Items are pretty much the only thing that completely breaks template's ability to auto-cat and without that auto-cat you would have months of editing every item page placing them in all of the applicable categories.
• Another 2k +edits and site disruption when we decide it should be "Items" and not "Item".
  • I originally suggested it should be Items: and Xevo set it to Item: Which is fine for me, each page is implicitly an item. I see no reason to change it and if I had an issue with it, I would of had Xevo change it before starting to populate it.
    • EDIT: As another option, Xevo can simply set up "$wgNamespaceAliases" so that Items: = Item:
      • This leads me to wonder if he was to set up "$wgNamespaceAliases" to make Item: = *: would that have the same end result without requiring us to move and edit any pages? I have sent him an email and asking if we can test out that theory on the sister wiki that gets virtually no use except from bots and Xevo and my's attempts to remove said bot posts.
• Templates that use {{PAGENAME}} will look poor with the dumb item: suffix.
  • {{PAGENAME}} is not {{FULLPAGENAME}} and the Item: prefix is not displayed.

Pros:

• You can use techs silly autocat templates designed only for item pages, elsewhere. Maybe.
  • Without those auto-cats you would have months of manually typing in on every page the 5-20 categories it belongs in.
  • And even you can can - in many cases you should not. The most common place they get misused atm is in item indexes.. Item indexes tend to be long lists of items with short description players can quickly browse through. If we fill these with too many templates, the pages will get laggy and eventually break as we've seen happen on our Vaults of the Artificers loot page.
    • Ah-hah! A perfect place for an uniformly agreed upon policy to be set in place..
  • And being this is a change that reduces functionality for the users, but helps editors - it should have a low priority. We should work behind the scenes to improve the site, not in the face of it.
    • I see improved functionality for all, and I have been working as much behind the scenes of the visiting editors making sure to complete one chunk at a time before working on the next.. Like I said above, it is not enough to "just" move the pages, redirects and such need to be cleaned up.

I hope this this addresses most of your complaints Shade (Contribs • Message • Email). I am totally willing to discuss any specific part further. -- ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 11:48, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

Think I see what tech13 is up to, a big undertaking and there are probably other matters of more concern that should of been address.

• discussion and vote before a project of lets moved 2k pages and not a Surprise party.
• Setting up formalizing up guidelines. Its getting there still needs some work. Like file names for icons screenshots, page names, IP ban times, deletions, moves, what should/not be on a page, put large info boxes below or above save page upload button, pro/demotion easy to find location of the guidelines has I cant find them w/o a bookmark.
• Simplifying, documenting and standardize the many templates across this site. Like what to do with upgrade tier items so we don't have 100 pages on 3 minor upgrade bonuses. Got 2-3 collectible temps, 3-4 ingredient temps. But there are No potion, non eternal wand temps.
• Standardize how certain sections of pages are setup. Have your been to the crafting pages, TOC at top, toc at bottom, TOC non existent. This type of TOC for this another for that. Ingredients here, there, MIA.
• Categorizing, updating and adding, hunting, begging for missing items and its information.
• DDO Forum presence for asking for assistance on information and images
• Update and simplify the Creating new page with included templates and uploading of files.

This is the stuff that should be done before major move since non of the pages are broken.

Not sure how many of your read general/advice chat in game on all the servers or join random pugs. They talk about the wiki, read the wiki but rarely add anything to the wiki. WHy??, its gets to complex at times. We should be watching over, keep things inline make sure the visitors can easily add and update information. We should not be the only source of the information and the only ones that know how a feature works.

• Upload a image: do they use file is it FILE: or IMAGE:??? on the page without looking for examples.
• Create a new page: ughhh how do I add info, Whats is this so called template Iam to use? Where do I find it? Humm this 100s of them is it this one or that one. How do I fill it in with. Screw this Ill just create the page and upload the pic!!

If the end user cant do the simplest thing like create a page upload a file or find the damn edit button (due to sections headers that point to templates or _NOEDIT_ on pages) to change update the information this wiki will fall.

Closet site to ddo wiki (thats not part of wikia) would be http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Main_Page please visit it, explore it with a open mind. They are in better shape then we are.

Bladedge (Contributions • Message) 14:24, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

Yes, Bladedge, this is a HUGE undertaking. I'm fairly certain I can handle it however. I like big projects, and do not fear them.. When I do not have a big project, as Neouni (Contribs • Message • Email) will tell you, I get bored. As far as guidelines that need creating, Shade (Contribs • Message • Email) has been doing a fairly bang up tit job with those and has few objections or injections from me.
This change will allow me to standardize and fix the numerous broken templates across the site. It is part of the project I have started in my opinion.
As far as Categorizing, updating and adding, hunting, begging for missing items and its information. goes, that is the major part of what this change is.
Forum presence? I think we have sysops here with plenty of forum presence. I believe that Yoko, Shade, and Backley are fairly large forum presences unless I am mistaken.
Updating the create new article section is an overhaul I should be able to start now that Extension:CharInsert is installed.
All of the item pages are currently broken in my opinion. Have you ever looked at the horrible mess of a Category tree at the bottom of the item pages, or the massive numbers of pages that are placed in the item category that in NO way belong there.
I watch general and advice channels often, and I've found that those people are too lazy or don't have the time and claim it is because the wiki is too complex. Yes, there are many parts of the wiki that are fairly complicated to change or add stuff too. I've spent a great deal of time trying to make the end user part of it as simplistic as possible even if the inner workings of the templates are extremely complex. That is the point of a template in my opinion. To process a possibly extremely complex process with minimal input from the end-user and get a very specific output that all can understand.
There is a link on the file upload page that takes them to the file naming and usage policy, which needs to be consolidated. I believe I have seen all of the parts in various locations, and the critical ones are on the file naming and usage policy page.
I hope this answers at least some of your questions Bladedge. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 15:31, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

/rant on

Honestly, I'd have to agree with Shade and Bladedge on this matter. I am no stranger to wiki's and have been doing edits on various wiki's over the years to include Wikipedia, and some of the template's do get a little ridiculous as far as complexity goes. I have spent a considerable amount of time away from the game and my guild to try and make some useful contributions on the wiki. My sole purpose was to come here and add locations of scrolls, wands and potions throughout the world. I have since been sucked in trying to help out on projects, which I don't mind at all.

But I agree that before starting a massive project like moving a ton of pages from one namespace to another, the admins need to take a look at the casual user and the casual editors. My first few edits were back in 2009 and I for the life of me couldn't figure out why the content I just added was almost immediately changed and updated (format). It's because when opening the edit page, there are absolutely NO indications of how to edit and maintain policy with naming conventions, format uniformity, etc... The Help: namespace needs to be more prevalent and easier to access for new editors so they don't get disgruntled. And everything in the Template: namespace needs a complete re-vamp, adding documentation on how to properly use the template, erase deprecated templates, erase templates that nobody use. There, IMHO, should only be a handful of templates:

• Number Formatting - only one template, can be used to add commas, for currency; would only require a flag as a first variable to determine what the format is being used for
• Quest Template - think this is pretty good now; maybe have 2, one for quests and one for raids
• Weapon Template - for all types of weapons
• Armor Template - ditto for armor
• etc.....

You see where I am going with that... Anyways, I guess my biggest gripe would be the lack of good documentation on editing. The Mediawiki is great for general editing, but if everything is going to be passed through a template, then there really is no need to explain the basics to the end user/editor. Templates need a lot of work, and I think this is more of a big deal than shifting things over to a new namespace.

/rant off Ague (Contributions • Message) 17:27, April 11, 2012 (EDT) The reason I proposed this project, and started it, was because of the walls I was hitting in my attempts to fix the current templates. I understand (for the umpteenth time) that this is a massive project and undertaking. I'm not asking for help in completing it. The wiki as it is is fairly dysfunctional. There is way to much category bleeding and complicated layouts. I am working on simplifying this. This is a paramount step in the process of simplifying this. Sure, this process may take me a month or two, which at the end of, there will be negligible category bleeding and a simplified template layout(as-well-as less templates as some will be consolidated to simplify use). There is no need for a number formatting template where-as this is part of the Extension:FormatNum installed on this wiki. The current two templates that I have for currency, if attempted to be combined into a single template would be MASSIVE in size, and that would increase the complexity of them at this time. Template:Named Weapon, Template:Named Armor, Template:Named Clothing, Template:Named Jewelry, Template:Named Shield will all be able to be easily consolidated into Template:Named Item once I complete the move into the namespace. I had quit working on the project due to RL issues (I had a baby) and have not yet picked the project back up due to all of the complications of categorical bleeding complaints and other issues. Template:Bind, Template:Skills, Template:Stat, Template:Res, Template:Seeker, Template:DR, and the list goes on.. Without the ability to auto-categorize in these templates, the editor would have to manually place the item in all of the correct categories without misspelling or mis-capitalizing the cat names. Let's pick an example.. How about a middle of the road Ornamented Dagger (Level 12) (Tier 2).. The user that wants put up this item would have to verbatim type in:

[[Category:Minimum Level 12 weapons]]
[[Category:Binds to account]]
[[Category:Binds on acquire]]
[[Category:Steel items]]
[[Category:Treasure of Crystal Cove reward items]]
[[Category:Treasure of Crystal Cove loot]]
[[Category:Daggers]]
[[Category:Piercing weapons]]
[[Category:One-handed weapons]]
[[Category:Simple weapons]]
[[Category:Light weapons]]
[[Category:Weapons]]
[[Category:Concentration +11 items]]
[[Category:Crafting]]
[[Category:Items]]

This would be the only other way to eliminate the same amount of category bleeding that putting the item in Item: namespace and me going through the 49 templates and setting them up to automatically categorize this item in all of those categories will do. I'm sure the average user/editor would prefer auto-cat over having to type all of that in. *sigh* ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 18:07, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

How about a middle of the road [[Ornamented Dagger (Level 12) (Tier 2)]]..
  The user that wants put up this item would have to verbatim type in:

Or we leave things as is, and then - no they don't, as all that page already autocat all of those. And in this case, it's all done by 2 templates - Named Weapon and bind - As does nearly every item page, after my recent work, the item pages categorization is fine. Your trying to tell us your fixing a problem that doesn't exist.. 99.9% of item pages now have very clean and accurate categorization.

The problem exists only when you try to apply templates designed only for item pages, to non-item pages. EG: You use bind template in an index. That's the ONLY thing your new namespace could potentially fix, but its also something I believe you can fix without such a huge amount of work. In fact it seems easier:

• A) Integrate bind into Named Weapon and other Named templates.
• B) Clear the auto-categorization functions out of bind.

Now you can use the bind template where ever you want.

Personally I think item indexes should be kept fairly clean and devoid of templates anyways. For years most players relied on a simple forum post telling them stats of item, and it worked fine.. The wiki doesn't need to go much further.. When the users wants to get more detail on an item, they link through to the item, simple, efficient.. All we need. We don't need a gillion item-page template popups with advanced code that prevent there auto-categorization in the wrong area.

And by me saying you can do it manually already, I didn't mean the obviously backwards way of doing the item pages manually.. I mean the opposite.. When u want bind popup, do that manually. Else fix it as I said, or create one that doesn't auto cat. All simpler solutions, and often the simplest solution is the best one imo.

Far as the purpose of MORE auto-categorization you might be after.. I don't see the point, we already have a good variety. Only spots we have lacking are "Found on X" items.. And personally I think that should be done as simple as possible. I like how ACCwiki handles it (Asherons call, turbines first mmo): http://ac.wikkii.net/wiki/Epic_Endurance

As you can see, they direct link all enchantment names (and that game has a vast amount much like DDO) Then redirect them to a page explaining each tier. And provide a "what links here link, to the redirect page.. So with 1 click, without any messy auto cat, without any editor intervention what so ever, they have a nice table and link to all items with said enchantment, easily searchable by the user. To add some xtra functionality they also use unique items to specify if an enchantments only from a spell, or from an item, etc.. We could do the same, and create icons to show an enchantments unique from an item, from a spell, or a common random lootgen prefix/suffix.

EG: http://ac.wikkii.net/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Epic_Endurance .. Shows all the items with epic endurance itself.

No namespaces needed, no worries of category bleed, and it's all automatic without editor/user intervention. It's a simple, elegant solution.→ Shade (Contributions • Message) 19:10, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

Your bind suggestion creates more work for the end user.. Using your suggestion, we would have to edit all six Named ... templates to require the end user to enter:

| bound to = 
| bound on = 
| exclusive = 

instead of simply

| binding = {{bind|btc/bta/no|boa/boe|1}}

Makes them enter three lines instead of the current one line. Leave the auto-cat as it is right now? Have you seen all of the non-items in the item categories? I fully intended to adjust Template:Skills, Template:Permspellamp, Template:Dmg, and many of the others to auto-cat so users can look at a single Use Magic Device items  or Ice damage items  but stopped with Template:Stat because of the mis-population of the C: created by it. There need to be many more distinguished ways to look things up without having to know what item you want when you get here. For years most players relied on a simple forum post telling them stats of item, and it worked fine.. The wiki doesn't need to go much further.. is a conservative view-point that simply does not work with the ever-changing technological world. We have new features and abilities available to us, and history shows that if we fail to take advantage of them within a reasonable amount of time to adapt to the new, we will get stuck with a broken site full of deprecated workings.. We need to move forward and progress, not sit still and watch the world pass us by. I'll make a case in point. The Truglass skin on this wiki for example.. I'm sure it was the cat's meow when Elliott Cable created it, however, with the CSS and HTML advances since then, there are many places that are now simply broken. See User_talk:Technical_13/truglass.css for one of many examples of this. This skin needs to be brought up to date or simply removed and reset back to Vector or Mono or some other default WM skin as the default for all users using it. your method uses more links, more redirects, more risk of double or triple redirects, more confusion. It's not a clean solution in my opinion. My solution suggestion using templates, is simple, and with a properly formatted MediaWiki:Edittools, filling in a template for a new item or anything for that matter will be as simple as working through a set of buttons and typing very little.. Will be so simple a cavema.. Umm.. monke... Hrrmmm baby could do it.→ ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 20:25, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

Or a gecko Yawgmoth (Contributions • Message) 20:57, April 11, 2012 (EDT)

You fail pretty severely on understanding the most basics of concept if you think my idea has anything to do with relying on redirects, much less double redirects. It's the completely opposite and the most simplest and straightforward solution. Thte only reason redirects are used are to amalgamate pages, which was never my desire in the first place, just something we work with to simplify like-named enchantments.

Your idea requires:

• 2000+ Page moves
• 2000+ redirects created
  • Undoubtedly a good amount of double redirects creating in the process.
• Many complex template modifications most users and editors won't even understand
• Many more categories created
• Many more unnecessary over-templification of item indexes slowing down said pages.

or

• We don't go ahead with it, given the majority of the active editors aren't supporting it.

My idea requires:

• Zero edits whatever so ever. It's a built in function of the site that's already implemented.

or

• Optionally: Any editor, at his leisure can optionally add some links to the whatlinkshere tool, to help users find items/spells/etc.

Nothing could be simpler, and it has zero to do with redirects. It's simply pointing to a dynamically generated, unmovable page that can never be redirected itself, but does understand and layout redirects in an easy to read format. So you're making a pretty nonsensical point to even bring up redirects as some con to it. Single redirects serve many purposes on the site, most of which I think we agree on, their vaguely related in some cases, but have no negative impacts on my idea.

RE: your over-complication of the binding.. ugh. First off, 99% of bound items are either BTCoa or BTAoA.. Bind on equip is ultra rare and thus should be a special case. So no it wouldn't be like that, I'd design it to be as simple as possible - simpler then the current bind template: | bind equals btc .. shows up as Binds to character. Don't even waste the space for on acquire, as its automatically understood by anyone smart enough to visit a wiki (and would show up in the category list and itempic anyways). | bind equals btc .. shows up as Binds to account. | bind equals btcoe .. shows up as Binds to character on equip, etc.. We both well know its not that complicated to suddenly require 3 fields for what you can do in 1, that's insane, merging templates is not that complex. If anything, it would simplify it as I explained. I avoid using it as it, as it doesn't do what a template should - EG: Be as simple as possible to save us time, bind|btc should be all that's required to generate bound to character on acquired, yet more input is necessary for whats a common default, that's not a good template design.

RE: making item templates easier to fill.. Sure sounds good. Also sounds off topic to what were talking about. → Shade (Contributions • Message) 03:42, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

Been reading up on namespaces. Unfortunately there were a number of problems that arose including but not limited to

• a detail plan and timetable
• notifying the other editors and the users of any problems that may occur
• renaming /moving numerous pages before documented test case showed no major problems.

Found this on my searches this was a proper move

• http://www.uesp.net/wiki/UESPWiki:NMP.
• http://www.uesp.net/wiki/UESPWiki_talk:Namespace_Move_Project
• http://www.uesp.net/wiki/UESPWiki:Archive/CP_Namespace_Move_Project_-_Final_Phase

Unless something detail like this can be written,review and approved, moving pages to Namespaces should stop completely and all pages that were move go back to their original main namespace. This does not mean Iam against the namespaces, after what I read and seen from other wikis, I may be for expanding its use but only if it can be done right, minus surprise party.

 whats wrong with this :( I used something similar on my temps, you made me sad
| bound to = 
| bound on = 
| exclusive = 

| bound to = if yes , place y otherwise leave blank
| bound on = if yes , place y otherwise leave blank
| exclusive = if yes , place y otherwise leave blank

May be more lines but yes/y/true or no/n/false/blank vs pick two from the following btc/bta/no/boa/boe and dont forget the {{}}??\\||. This a foreign concept to sword wielding jhon doe who just wanted to say it was a bound on eqip item and just decided to type bound on eqip and be on his way. I should know I was that John doe till I had the patient and time to read, copied and understand the pages that came before.

Now to edit and upload more pics. Bladedge (Contributions • Message) 15:29, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

"May be more lines but yes/y/true or no/n/false/blank vs pick two from the following btc/bta/no/boa/boe and don't forget the {{}}??\\||. This a foreign concept to sword wielding john doe who just wanted to say it was a bound on equip item and just decided to type bound on equip and be on his way. I should know I was that John doe till I had the patient and time to read, copied and understand the pages that came before."

However, the three lines can not be accomplished with the new setup I am working on.. There is a new customized edit toolbox in MW1.18+ of which we will be likely upgrading to MW1.19 or MW1.20 this summer depending on what is the latest stable version. The new set-up offers "Leroy Jenkins" a simple edit box choice where they click a button or link, no thought required. That section of the box may look something like:

{{Bind| • No BtC BtA • |BoA |BoE • |Exclusive}} }}
Start   •   Bound to   •   Bound on   • Exclusive?

Now, I admit, it'll take a little formatting and spacing and placement to make it all line up and be as simple as can be, but I think you can get the idea now. This makes the simplest thing for "Leroy" to do is click a bunch of quick links and work his way through, leaving virtually nothing to type (except the description perhaps). ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 15:58, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

I think we might be complicating a bit. Personally, I like the subtemplate idea (as I'm used to it and know it, and if memory serves, I think I had a hand in the {{bind}} template at some point.), and I know it eases things on the coding side, but to the novice or newbie editor, they might be a bit intimidated by seeing a lot of template-within-template recursion. Taurolyon (Contributions • Message) 16:38, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

I honestly don't understand how

{{Bind| • No BtC BtA • |BoA |BoE • |Exclusive}} }}
Start   •   Bound to   •   Bound on   • Exclusive?

is intimidating? Click a button above start, pick a bound to if applicable, pick a bound on if applicable, exclusive or not? Will take a user two to four mouse clicks, no typing, no remembering, no case-sensitivity, no manually forced to put everything in a cat, no quest pages in item enchantment categories even if they go template wild. I don't always have two hours to go through a long page of edits such as if someone edited Named_chest_loot and templated the crap out of everything and remove all of the templates that didn't belong, and it wouldn't be fair to the editor that spent 4 hours making corrections and putting all the templates in for any of us to revert all of his edits when some of them are valid. However, with the current setup, we would have to pick one if we only came on for 15 minutes and no-one else was around to do it because it would reek havoc on our category structure until it was fixed.. This also makes it more simple for us to maintain our naming policy.. Reduces the crap out of the human error element by setting it up as a set of links (and more likely when I get the broken skin customization issue figured out, see User_talk:Technical_13/truglass.css, it will be a simple set of a handful of buttons). ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 16:52, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

There's also a reason we can patrol edits, even if they don't know our templates or royally mess the page up (by our standards), we can fix it. But, the only thing complicating about this issue, would be this talk... If Tech13 wants to make things simpler for the average Joe, let him. As for the Item: namespace issue (which this originally started as) currently searching for a named item brings up dozens and dozens of results. Item:XXXX would simplify that, and bring you to the item faster. If we want to later, we can shift to Quest:XXXX, but that is a different story. Yawgmoth (Contributions • Message) 17:28, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

I honestly don't understand how

{{Bind| • No BtC BtA • |BoA |BoE • |Exclusive}} }}
Start   •   Bound to   •   Bound on   • Exclusive?

is intimidating? Click a button above start, pick a bound to if applicable, pick a bound on if applicable, exclusive or not? Will take a user two to four mouse clicks, no typing, no remembering, no case-sensitivity, no manually forced to put everything in a cat, no quest pages in item enchantment categories even if they go template wild. I don't always have two hours to go through a long page of edits such as if someone edited Named_chest_loot and templated the crap out of everything and remove all of the templates that didn't belong, and it wouldn't be fair to the editor that spent 4 hours making corrections and putting all the templates in for any of us to revert all of his edits when some of them are valid. However, with the current setup, we would have to pick one if we only came on for 15 minutes and no-one else was around to do it because it would reek havoc on our category structure until it was fixed.. This also makes it more simple for us to maintain our naming policy.. Reduces the crap out of the human error element by setting it up as a set of links (and more likely when I get the broken skin customization issue figured out, see User_talk:Technical_13/truglass.css, it will be a simple set of a handful of buttons).→ ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 16:52, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

Take no offense, I feel you're doing great work, but I'm coming from a tech support background, where my users would be more at home with a greatclub than a keyboard. I personally feel if they see {{ }} and extra acronyms where there doesn't need to be, they tend to get frightened like little forest animals. I'm probably over emphasizing, but I'd like to see more people editing and less people scared to edit because all they see is code, acronyms, and syntax. Taurolyon (Contributions • Message) 17:09, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

I almost missed Shade's post from this morning.. Your method.. Seeker +4, Seeker +6, Seeker +8, Seeker +10 all redirect to Seeker as an example.. You would create a redirect for every variation of every enhancement and redirect them all back to the main enhancement page.. Excessive, unnecessary, and impo improper use of redirect function.. You claim that the Category structure is nice and clean after all your edits and none of this is necessary, however, how many of the 644 pages in the root Items by ability change  are not items? I see 12/41 non-items on [[:Category:Strength_+6_items|]]  alone.. That is ~30% non-items in an item category.. Using that as an average, there are ~194 non-item pages total in there, when are you going to sort through 92,216 pages on this wiki to find them and fix them and all of the other mis-categorized entries? The alternative without this namespace is to remove the ability of the templates to categorize these things, that seems counter productive and like more of a task going through and manually placing the 450 pages that belong in a sub-cat of Items by ability change  in the correct cats manually. OR, we simply use the Item namespace, the template auto-sorts and auto-cats everything for us. No requirement to sort through and remove usages of templates on hundreds of random pages, no need to manually place hundreds of items in a template, no need to keep your eyes peeled for a new item to make sure it is placed in all the right categories.. Also, as I said WAYY back at the beginning, it's not just moving the pages to the new namespace.. They all need to have all there What's links here's sent to the right place and the auto-created redirects removed.. Which, I have no problem doing myself.. One item at a time moving them where they need to be and cleaning them up.. Finding, taking, uploading new screenshots and tidying up as I go.. Sure, it'll take me months to get through the entire database. Isn't that my prerogative? It requires no additional work from anyone else to move them.. As for your complaint about "Item:" showing up as a prefix for all items in the C: structure. It has been noted and requested by a few people on bugzilla (Bug 29975 if you care to follow it) and I'm certain it will be addressed before I have gotten to complete the project. It breaks nothing being there in the mean-time other than looking ugly. Taurylon, please see This Forum Thread where I'm working on that concern as well. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 17:20, April 12, 2012 (EDT)

So I have a question. I was asked to redirect links from my alt MyDDO tool to redirect to the corresponding item's page on the wiki. So, with the pending move of all these pages into the Item: Namespace, what naming convention is going to be used? Exactly what item types are being moved to the namespace? Ague (Contributions • Message) 11:07, April 14, 2012 (EDT)

At this point the primary focus will be just moving anything using a {{Named (type}} template. The naming policy of the pages will be exactly as it is now, with an "Item:"pre-pended to the front. You will likely have to set it up to look for the item without the namespace, if 404 try the item namespace, if 404 do whatever you were going to do to break out it's crafting parts for now. I would be happy to communicate in every way that possible can when the project reaches the ~50% mark so that you can switch case 1 and case 2 so it looks in the item namespace first then outside of the namespace. Sound good, any questions? ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 11:24, April 14, 2012 (EDT)

I've come up with a work-around patch to make the "Item:" prefix "disappear" on the category pages.. If you want it to "disappear" any place else, let me know and I will make adjustments. Be advised that the universal fix does not work be default with the BUGGED Truglass skins as they currently are, in order to make the "Item:" prefix to "disappear" when using a Truglass skin, you will need to include {{CssStripItemNs}} on the category page -- Do nothing see following post.. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 23:48, April 19, 2012 (EDT)

Ague (Contribs • Message • Email) took it one step further and created a JavaScript that actually removes the namespace from the parsed page.. Thank you very much Ague. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 19:23, April 20, 2012 (EDT)

I just counted and recounted, and it seems 5:2 in favor and 1 non-definitive.. That is ~71.5% in favor which is enough for me to move forward since no more discussion has been made in five days. If you have a valid reason why I should not proceed that has not already been addressed, speak up now or I will be moving forward on this project. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 22:32, April 24, 2012 (EDT)

Obvious valid reasons:

• You're counting neutral comments as supports, when they simple are not.
• Your recent questionaly activities.
• It violates the naming policy. Violation of policies because a discussion supports a discussion isn't an accepted next step. The next step would be to edit the naming policy to accept it.

And I do not see anyone at all agreeing with this except Yawgmoth (who conveniently was promoting on your recommendation and agrees with everything you post lately).

To me it clearly appears to 5 against 2 (IMO, tho 3 seem neutral). No one has clearly supporting your cause beside yawgmouth. Aside from me and Bladedge - Most others were neutral. So really it's 2 against 2, with several neutral parties.

So no, until there are at least a 3+ majority, of CLEAR votes for, no this shouldn't happen. → Shade (Contributions • Message) 22:45, April 24, 2012 (EDT)