DDO wiki talk:Category policy

Overview
I got tired of chasing 8-12 conversations around on multiple NS and losing focus. I have consolidated them all here, feel free to re-arrange them chronologically or move other conversations pertaining to anything to do with a new Category policy that we seem to be building. Thanks, ShoeMaker (Contributions &bull; Message) ShoeMaker (Contributions &bull; Message)

Discussion moved from CT:Server

 * I'm not entirely sure what is trying to accomplish, but I am monitoring his project and will clean it up when he is done.

ShoeMaker (Contributions &bull; Message) 13:03, December 24, 2012 (EST)

Discussion moved from UT:BlackSmith#Category:Server

 * I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you ; whereas these items are in a category, which is by definition plural, it is more natural to describe it in the plural form. To expand on  point, we currently have  System Operators (List of System operators), not to forget about our  DDOwiki VIPs (List DDOwiki VIPs) &  Super Users (List Super Users); with a total of  active editors out of  total users . As far as "Mr. Cable" goes, I do not believe that anyone who's aware of his contributions has forgotten him.  When he threw his temper tantrum and rage-quit, as is my understanding of what happened when the DDOwiki went down for almost a year when I first started editing, well the wiki went down for almost a year and a lot of good people were lost in the interim.  I am thankful that  took it upon himself to resurrect this wiki, and I have made every effort possible to make the wiki as user and editor friendly as I can.  Some of the templates I have created to make the user interface more pleasant were extremely complicated to write, took me days (or weeks) to debug (and some are still on-going because they are so massive).  There have been some that have required me to petition for extensions to be installed to make them possible to write.  I'm just finishing up my first pass at an intro PHP class in school, and intend to take an advanced course on the subject when it becomes available with the intent of writing an extension or two to add to the wiki for even more functionality.  Your changes were not massive changes, and are easily reverted by Yoko or I, and will very likely be reverted as such.  It just makes no sense to say "There are 9 server in the server category."  It makes even less sense to say Category:American or Category:European.  Ummm. American or European what?  WAY too vague.  I see you have made some other talk page posts, which I have still to read through.  I look forward to your input and hope that you do not feel discouraged from contributing in the future because of a negative reception of an idea or concept of yours.  I like your idea about the adding the current version of DDO to the "This page was last updated..." text on the bottom, and think I can implement it in the Mediawiki namespace directly, but I will need to play with it a little bit.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 19:55, December 25, 2012 (EST)


 * The response that I get from most people is that they don't want light pages where they have to follow this link to that link to some other link to get all of the information they want about a subject. They want ALL of the information about a subject on one page so they don't have to click and wait four times whatever to load and get all of it.  I'm getting noise that navigation is undesirable and if they want to know what Skills are, they don't want to have to also go back and forth to read Balance, Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Disable Device, Haggle, Heal, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Listen, Move Silently, Open Lock, Perform, Repair, Search, Spot, Swim, Tumble, and Use Magic Device in order to have a full understanding of what Skills are.

The reasoning is why navigate to and back from 20 different pages for ONE subject (that being skills). I can't say I blame them. The same thing applies to the category structure (Which I will admit, I just made a TOTAL mess of Category:Items that I still need to figure out, build a tree for and clean up), they don't want to have to navigate three or four sub category levels deep to find a piece of information. There needs to be balance in the Category names... C:Artificer level 3 auto-granted feats is to specific of a category name and I think would only have one member, this is unproductive. Navigating through a tree structure such as C:Feats → C:Artificer → C:Auto-granted → C:Level 3 is too long and drawn out and will deter people from the wiki... They just want to get their information and get out. C:Feats → C:Artificer feats and one the associated page it can be typed out or transclude the feats page for Artificers and break it down as a god page...

God pages on topics are GOOD things, not evil things like you think... They are good if they are properly built. By that I mean you are correct, all of the pieces should probably have their own page, but all of those piece pages should be transcluded together on the general concept pages. Using my Skills example above, All of the sub-pages for skills are good, as you would have it; however, on the main Skills page itself, all of those sub-pages should be transcluded to off all of the information in one place that is relevant to skills. People should never "have to" navigate to the individual pages, but those pages should be available if someone wanted to do a search for Search and only cared about search.

Okay, so now that I have rambled on for a good 5-10 minutes. I'm just going to shut up and go back to my school work and projects that I am working on... ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 14:40, January 21, 2013 (EST)

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be spread out and broken down with the great amount of detail. I'm saying that there needs to be offered both options. Your pointing out that we currently have three pages relating to skill (Skill, Skills, and Skill_usefulness). Two of those are near identical as far as what information they are offering with slightly different formatting/layout and the third one is improperly named in my opinion... Skills and Skill_usefulness are nearly identical pages and should be merged together. Skill isn't as much about the different skills as it is about what a skill point is and it should be renamed Skill Points or something of the sort, and then transcluded into the main Skills page. It would reduce the confusion and hunting/searching required as-well-as any conflicting/outdated information. I'll admit, I'm not great at examples, it's a weakness of mine, but considering I'm only half-minded into these responses while I chase my 15 month old daughter around it's going to have to do.

My response to your comment at the end of your response, "Simply based the way you like god pages, I guess your professor is going to tell you to prune down your bachelors thesis subject, when you get there." is this: (S)he will want me to turn in one final report with one thesis and not six papers with six theses about one topic.

If you would like to type up a proposal to what you think that Category:Items should look like and post it on Category_talk:Items (not actually changing anything yet until everyone gets a chance to look it over), I would very much appreciate that and take all of your ideas on that branch of our Cat tree structure into consideration. I would also like to hear from and some of the other administrators and get their ideas as well...

Thank you for your time. (I'll be copy pasting this last section to Category_talk:Items as well as a discussion starter for the purpose since your talk page isn't the appropriate forum for it). ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 18:25, January 21, 2013 (EST)

Discussion moved from HT:Category#Structure

 * I'm guessing part of what is talking about are pages like Category:The Red Fens epic items and Category:Cannith Challenge epic items. It might make more sense for the information there to be on it's own content pages instead of on the category pages. In my mind, the main reason the category pages should not also be used as content pages is that category pages don't show up in search results on the wiki. Its true that the categories I mentioned above are easy to navigate to using the main TOC, but a new user has to discover that through trial and error. I also think that it may serve to confuse new users who don't understand the cat system we have here (I know it used to confuse me). If pages in the category need to be listed on the content page, people can just use the command. This is what I have been trying to do on the monster race pages anyway (Beholder race for example).

As far as BlackSmith's comments about structuring go, I too have noticed some chaos in the structuring. I have read the Category structure listed on your user page Yoko, and that list is well organized. However, it doesn't really reflect what actually is going on at lower levels of the structure. In looking just through Category:Monsters I have found a plethora of unused and incorrectly named (and incorrectly categorized) categories (many of which I have already deleted or moved). For example, there are categories for monster races that don't exist in-game. That's just what I have found in Category:Monsters, so I can't really speak to other areas of the cat structure.

Anyway, just my 2c. Susalona (Contributions • Message) 13:04, November 27, 2012 (EST)

Discussion moved from UT:Technical 13#Incorrect Category Structure

 * I'm using the subpagename the same as what I started setting up weeks ago when I started the project, and it is taking this long to have an "issue"? *sigh* oi vey... Okay, let's discuss it.  How do you propose we deal with our dis-ambiguous effect names?  What ever you do to one, you should do to all to keep it uniform.  Doing things a certain way with an exception for things that just won't work causes confusion and should be avoided.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 14:36, February 25, 2013 (EST)


 * I understand that, and I don't like the way it looks much at the moment either. That being said, we need to start somewhere, and "(effect) items" isn't going to work due to some of the effects having multiple meanings.  I don't mind playing with the formatting and moving things around some more, I am not set that this is how it has to be.  I just wanted to get the structure to be independent and then we can play with wording a little to make it more pleasing to the eye.  The purpose of Categorizing is nothing more than grouping things up, regardless of what we name the groups...  I don't want to end up with them all being simple and then having one that won't work and have to do something non-uniform like "Wisdom items (damage effect)" and then the counterpart "Wisdom items (ability modifier)"... Just looks dumb.  So, we need an alternative.  Something that can be uniform for ALL effects...

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 15:50, February 25, 2013 (EST)

So, I rooted around a bit and found the start of this discussion. As far as the "Wisdom damage" suggestion goes, I'm not for that method because "Holy damage", "Pure Good damage", "Sovereign Acid Arrow damage", "Venomed Ammunition 1d6 damage", ... basically it looks horrible on a lot of other effects, and I stick to whatever we do to one we need to do to all. So, I thought about it some more AND my ideas are: ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 14:44, February 26, 2013 (EST)
 * Call "Wisdom" damage items, "Bewildering" instead. Since this is the proper DnD name for the effect anyways and Turbine-DDO should hopefully change it at some point (I'm even considering sending Feather an email about it).
 * Change to root category for Category:Wisdom items to Category:Wise items.
 * This would require other name changes as well (which I don't mind doing)
 * Category:Strength items to Category:Ogre Power items
 * Category:Dexterity items to Category:Nimble items?
 * Category:Constitution items to Category:Health items?
 * Category:Intelligence items to Category:Clever items
 * Category:Charisma items to Category:Charismatic items?


 * I understand what you are saying Blade, the question is: Without the "items" descriptor, can the title of the category be easily understood and not ambiguous? Using your example... If you came across something that was in "C:Spider", what would be your first instinct as to what the page was about? I'm assuming, like the rest of us that your first inclination would be that it is about an arachnid of some sort.  However, with it was in "C:Spider automobile" the category name can stand on its own and it is very clear as to what it is about.  I do want to work on reducing some of the sub-cats-titles I've created to get things where they belong, but I need to make sure that everything is in the right place before I do so.  Otherwise with my ADHD I'll forget what I was working on without the structure built out on every tier and things will get misplaced and it will all be broken.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 10:11, March 8, 2013 (EST)

Continue discussion from HT:Category#Structure

 * We have the policy but no one is following nor has anyone enforced them since 2010 or so it seems at least. Let's take a recent example that breaks most of the policies that there are, Category:Doublestrike items. The two examples brought up fill the same symptoms. A category that has TOC is already a definitive sign of failed wiki page. A category page that has uses NCL also is just double failure.

Name of the category is combination of two categories, items and doublestrike. It tries to be category that collects every source of doublestrike that a character can get. This might not be true but it is a educated guess as there is no Category:Doublestrikers, and it has subcategories per bonus given. But, even if I am wrong and it truly is collection of only items that give doublestrike, then such a Category: should be grounded by the fact that the main categories are too big or confusing. This is not true in this case, or in the DDO wiki in general.

The category is member of Category:items, yet there is no item called doublestrike. Also, it is hardly a subcategory of items. Equipment's should be subcategory of items as consumables, ingredients, and other major types of items. Category:Doublestrike is not a item type nor it is a major player thus it should not be a subcategory for items.

Its subcategories carry really bad names. Using / in wiki is really touchy thing, like adding a new namespace. It usually breaks something, usually templates and links. They also break the double meaning of categories as they have the item part. The subcategories should be "Doublestrike x%" and those should be child categories of the doublestrike.

Lastly but not least, the category page holds information, even double information. Only thing it should mention is what purpose the category has and have a decent links. Now, it lists twice the same information. Once through NCL, thus generating unnecessarily page load and secondly through native MediaWiki.

For the Category:Monsters if one familiarizes himself what is a creature type, subtype and a race, the category structure would be lot clearer. Also there is no need for repeating the word "type" in every category as it has creeped into the category names now. E.g. Category:Beholders should be subcategory of Monster manual but article Beholder should be member of Category:Creature type. One collects all different creature types, another collects all certain type of creatures. First category handles about game mechanics, second one of content.

The wiki is full of these kind of examples the more deeper you go in structure. While, the closer to the root you are, the more along the lines it is per the ideas of the original structure that is some what preserved from the old pages but the "ends" are quite horrible. They don't serve the user nor the editor.

These kind of points and more are the issues I would like to address and fix. If the core/structure isn't working, it does not matter how good the cake looks it still tastes bad. BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 12:07, March 14, 2013 (EDT)


 * I understand what everyone is saying, and there are a LOT of changes going on right now to the ends of the category structure. Let's start with the Category:Doublestrike items example being used here...  If you read the page history for the category, the creation edit summary reads: "(Category:Items for now... tree it out better later)"

What this means is that I was in the process of building many new templates and revamping the way that they auto-categorize things; because of this, I had dozens of new "redlinked" categories showing up in the Special:WantedCategories listing. In an attempt to kill as many of these redlinks as possible, I dumped them into the root of what they qualify as. My intent is to one by one go through and likely move them from Category:Items to something like Category:Items by effect. The category tree for Category:Doublestrike items will end up looking something like: If Turbine-DDO decides to extend this following that pattern, I would expect the next one to be Category:Doublestrike 9%.
 * Category:Root
 * Category:Items
 * Category:Items by effect
 * Category:Doublestrike items
 * Category:Doublestrike 3%
 * Category:Doublestrike 6%

The reason I have most of it going to these odd places and things that "look" broken and chaotic, and to some extent are, is for the few disambiguous effects that exist. I hope that I can make ALL of the effects use EXACTLY the same naming convention to make it as EASY to find things as possible. My example to explain all this, which there seems to be a fairly agreed upon consenus although I have not yet applied it, is for Category:Wisdom items. There is a damage effect named Wisdom and there are items that offer an ability bonus named Wisdom. The damage effect, is Turbine-DDO's screw-up for not naming it "bewildering" as it should be per PnP; nonetheless, we needed to deal with it. What I came up with, and seems agreed upon is that all six ability effects will be renamed using their alternative "item title" names instead of their "item description" name. By this I mean that Category:Strength items becomes Category:Ogre Power items (or maybe even Category:Ogre Power), Category:Wisdom items becomes Category:Wise items (or maybe even Category:Wise) and so on.

There are other instances where disambiguous names have caused an issue, and the currently chaotic structure is helping me find those and sort them out. I would be happy to work with anyone interested to build a category structure that works for everyone, but lately it has seemed that no-one (including me) has had a lot of time.

Personally, I am dealing with multiple real life issues. Custody of my daughter, death of a loved pet, full time student tackling four classes per semester, ... On top of all that, I have three MAJOR projects on this wiki I am tackling right now and multiple lesser projects (some of which are required to be done to make progress on the major ones). Building a fair Category structure; My Template:Named Item project; and building our guidelines, policies, and anti-copyright infringement liability protection.

I'm done rambling for a bit, I'll try to remember to add more later once my though process slows down... This is starting to get overwhelming and I just want to take a little break and play some DDO. Tomorrow I'll respond to Monster categories and quest/loot categories (which I think can be somewhat combined to clean them up... I'll explain tomorrow). I'll also offer what I think should go on a category page (and what should not). ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 12:59, March 14, 2013 (EDT)


 * BlackSmith, I have to ask that you remain civil with people who have been civil to you in this discussion. Resorting to name-calling and profanity is a breach of Wikiquette. Just because there are posts after yours doesn't mean that people can't go back and read your post, I did.

The point of having the loot lists somewhere is that they are being used on other pages (often multiple pages) as templates so that only the template page has to be updated when changes are made. For example, Category:Caught in the Web loot is transcluded on 3 other pages. No, those pages are not likely to be seen by casual users, but that is not the reason they exist. Susalona (Contributions • Message) 20:37, March 14, 2013 (EDT)


 * OMG!!! I'm trying to follow everyone from my little BlackBerry screen and my eyes are about to bug out. Everyone needs to relax a little because you don't want to make me stop and pull this wiki over or someones going over my knee! . In all seriousness now though, I encourage, , and to drop it for the night and sleep on it.  I can explain a lot of the confusion tomorrow.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 21:31, March 14, 2013 (EDT)


 * GOOD DAY everyone! I'm awake, and fairly well rested... I'll be working on answering everyones questions and trying to start to put together an outline for what I think the structure should look like and what I feel belongs where and whatnot.  Please, be patient and stay tuned!  I also plan to be mostly available on our  most of the next seven or so hours if anyone cares to discuss it live.

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 08:37, March 15, 2013 (EDT)

Why the header was changed and moved? Now the discussion is about category structure of category structure (what ever that is) as it was before the structure of overall categories in the page in the wiki that is focuses on categories i.o. Help:Category. If the point was to tag it to Village pump, simply slapping it with would have done the trick. I would move this discussion back where it was or to Talk:Categories as Talk:Special:Categories does not work. BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 15:33, March 17, 2013 (EDT)


 * I was going to move it away from where it was myself. The page name was wrong.  Yoko beat me to it, so you'll have to ask him why he chose this pagename.  Although I have a higher edit count and blah blah, he has seniority and I respect that, so even I wouldn't move it from here without discussing it with him first. I don't have a problem removing the redundant section header if it makes you feel better (it's an insignificant change that makes no difference to the point of the discussion.)

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 16:04, March 17, 2013 (EDT)


 * Category is its own namespace and isn't a special page. What you "may" be looking for is DDO_wiki_talk:Categories, but I am not moving anything in regards to this topic without talking to Yoko5000 first, and I will revert it if anyone else tries to.  Yoko put it there and as far as I am concerned he is top dog for seniority and contributions/edits...

ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 16:51, March 17, 2013 (EDT)


 * Special_talk:Categories seems to work just fine for me... All talk pages are in the format of &lt;NAMESPACE&gt;_talk:&lt;PAGENAME&gt; to get to the talk space for &lt;NAMESPACE&gt;:&lt;PAGENAME&gt;

How did Item: break File:? Image doesn't exist, it is a pseudo namespace. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 17:51, March 18, 2013 (EDT)

IRC Discussion
08:09:12	ShoeMaker	Okay, I'm mostly here, and I have about 40 minutes to discuss categories before I have to go to work, then I should be back within a couple hours. 08:57:40		--- joenuts is back 08:57:41	joenuts		just now getting in to the office. timing less than ideal 08:58:34	ShoeMaker	Yes, I'm just heading out to log in and start work. But, once I am settled, I'm sure I'll be available again. 09:42:26	joenuts		going to draft what I think would work best for item category tree, get some fundamental design rules written down, and put it up for criticism 09:44:37	ShoeMaker	Yeah... I think of the cat structure as a tree, which has 4 parts... 09:45:19	ShoeMaker	Root, Trunk, Branches, Leaves... Root & Trunk should have nothing on the cat pages except for further categorization connecting them. 09:45:38	ShoeMaker	Branches should have nothing but an NCL style list of the things the go there. 09:45:58	joenuts		i think we're in agreement there 09:46:06	ShoeMaker	Leaves should have a detailed list of the populators of the cat. 09:46:24	joenuts		i'm putting verbage together for when the term 'items' is warranted in the category title. just something straight forward 09:46:55	ShoeMaker	The only other thing that I would consider acceptable for root, trunk, and branch pages is transclusion of what the page is about... 09:47:24	joenuts		i think susalona's comments about content in category pages is off topic from BlackSmith's comments about category name definitions 09:47:53	ShoeMaker	So, on Coublestrike items, I could see adding as long as  had the correct inclusion limiters to only include the content and not the extras. 09:47:56	joenuts		I'm mainly putting together a structure list with some basic rules about naming / category location in the structure 09:48:11	ShoeMaker	That is what I think of the structure in a nutshell. 11:45:00		*** Susalona joined #DDOwiki ************************************** 11:45:33	joenuts	Good morning, Susalona 11:45:43	Susalona	Hi guys 11:46:53	joenuts		I mentioned to Shoe earlier this morning that I believe your comments concerning content in categorization page was slightly off topic to the category naming / classification discussion BlackSmith brought up. 11:47:25	joenuts		As far as actually (not) having content on category pages, I believe everyone seems to be in agreement that content should NOT exist there. 11:48:02	joenuts		Shoemaker : Root, Trunk, Branches, Leaves... Root & Trunk should have nothing on the cat pages except for further categorization connecting them 11:48:11		--- ShoeMaker is away (Auto away) 11:48:14	joenuts		Shoemaker : Branches should have nothing but an NCL style list of the things the go there. 11:48:30	joenuts		Shoemaker : Leaves should have a detailed list of the populators of the cat. 11:48:45	Susalona	That seems to make sense to me 11:49:08	joenuts		At some point he mentioned that if details WERE desired on the category page, that the category page should transclude the actual content page 11:49:17	joenuts		which I think is the exact point you made in your post 11:50:31	joenuts		I'm working on getting a concrete structure for the item category documented, guidelines, etc so that we actually have something visible to work towars 11:50:37	Susalona	Although I don't believe it was off topic, since BlackSmith was the first to bring it up....even if it was all the way back in November 11:51:06	joenuts		( that might help in peeling out content off the category pages, etc etc ) 11:51:10	Susalona	I do like visual aids 11:51:43	joenuts		yeah, shame on me, I didnt really read any posts prior to what was current 11:52:12	Susalona	It's not a big deal, I just wanted to make sure it was adressed 11:52:40	joenuts		as far as i'm concerned, its a no brainer. 11:53:09	joenuts		The category pages BlackSmith was originally talking about contained only ncl listings of cat elements, which I dont really consider "content" 11:53:47	joenuts		the pages you pointed out are so full of information that the cat page is definitely not the place for it 11:54:46	Susalona	Yeah I think you could make that argument forthe NCL stuff, although BlackSmith still seems to think that is unhealthy for the cat structure and stuff like the semantic mediawiki. 11:55:02	Susalona	I don't know enought about that to say if he's right or not 11:55:38	joenuts		indeed. hopefully what I put together will be something everyone can agree on is valuable / useful 11:55:44	Susalona	He might just be saying that isn't the way things are "done" on a wiki 11:56:45	Susalona	Well I think that having an agreed upon structure can only improve things 11:58:46	Susalona	After thinking about it some more, I'm under the impression that people may have starting putting stuff on the cat pages to use then as kind of a quick and dirty substitute for building an actual TOC 11:59:35	Susalona	Stuff like Category:Quests make it seem kinda obvious. There are no navigation links on that page other thank the cat pages 12:07:29	joenuts		Yeah, BlackSmith made the point that the category pages are lacking in links, which is another ball of wax completely, not ready to even think about that one 12:20:48	ShoeMaker	Well, I step away for a few minutes and WALL of chat... just aminute. 12:20:48		--- ShoeMaker is back 12:21:04	Susalona	LOL 12:22:32	joenuts		Let me ask what you think about this, Shoe. 12:22:42	ShoeMaker	Okay, so Joe shared the nutshell in my head.. 12:22:44	ShoeMaker	Ask. 12:23:19	joenuts		I >>believe<< that BlackSmith is (one of ) conerns is about item / group overlay / overlapping 12:24:00	joenuts		**IF** we have an item trunk that is designed so that an item can exist in ONLY ONE leaf node of that trunk so we have a definitive location for every item (or item type) in the game 12:24:25	joenuts		and then we have "something else" that is used for grouping items with similar properties outside of the item trunk 12:24:46	joenuts		I dont see why that something else should be anything other than more categories, because of how convenient they work 12:25:06	joenuts		So i'm thinking base trunk "items" and another base trunk "item groupings" 12:25:31	joenuts		where an item may exist in only one leaf of items, but can exist in multiple leaves of item groups .. items by durability, items by material, items by effect, etc. 12:26:11	joenuts		I'm kind of mapping out the structure, but I think that may satisfy BlackSmiths concerns, and also give options for end users to be able to drill down to find what they want 12:26:44	ShoeMaker	I'm going to need a visual aid... I can't picture what you just said. 12:27:18	joenuts		yeah. working on it, but i'm at work so time I can dedicate to it will be spread across next few hours 12:27:35	ShoeMaker	Yeah, I'm at work too.. I take lunch in about 30 minutes. 12:55:31	ShoeMaker	Okay, close enough to lunch.. 13:37:19	ShoeMaker	Soo... Now that I am here, no one is talking? lol


 * The reason I posted the chat that three of us had on the topic on our IRC chat channel, was because it was discussion pertaining to what was talked about here. I would be happy to trim out the "few" lines that aren't specifically about the topic, but I didn't feel they broke anything.  The consensus in that discussion is, as you have said is your opinion, that content doesn't really belong on Category: pages.  The content belongs on its own page, and there has been a lot of content moved since that discussion OFF of Category: pages and into the article namespace.  Isn't that part of what you wanted as well?

Categories are often referred to as "trees" for a reason. Everything is tied to the root. In our case, the root is the game itself. So everything in the game should be tied to root somehow. There should be NOTHING on the root page other than a note saying that it is the root and explaining its purpose.

Then you have trunks. The trunks are main points of the game, and this is where mechanics, quests, gear, monsters, and player characters start to separate and declare they are there own things. Considering the disarray of many of our categories, I see the idea of working on one trunk at a time as a good idea. At this time, there seems to be a little more bouncing around than I would like to see trying to get things fixed, but things are still getting done, so I have been biting my tongue until I see a degradation in progress. Each trunk should have sections of its associated page transcluded on it. For example, the quest trunk should (and currently does) have on it. That and the should be the ONLY two things on that page itself. That connects it to the root, and transcludes the &lt;onlyinclude> sections of Quests which describe what quests are. This content is purely visual and it is dynamic so that when the proper page of Quests is edited and updated in the future, what is seen on the Category: page will be updated as well.

Once the trunks are properly defined, each one of those gets broken into branches, and each branch may have multiple tiers of sub-branches. Branches and sub-branches should contain transcluded reference from its corresponding article in the main namespace briefly describing "what" it is and a NCL list breaking down and listing the leaves in each of the branches sub-branches.

At the end of every branch, there are leaves. "Leaf" pages should have an unordered list of the members of the group that is defined by the leaf. This list should be somewhat detailed. In the case of item pages for example, the list should have a linked name, followed by the item type (type of weapon, armor, jewelry, etc), followed by the stats of the item. This offers visitors an overview of what is in the category without having to visit all the members of it individually. Transcluding a brief overview from its corresponding article in the main namespace is also encouraged. ShoeMaker (Contributions <span style="text-decoration: blink; color: #FA88AF;">• Message) 16:29, March 17, 2013 (EDT)

I'm semi-available on IRC right now if anyone wants to discuss it there (I like the fluid real-time discussion). I'll be poking in and checking every 15-30 minutes, but I'm watching a movie and cooking supper so you'll have to be patient waiting on me there. ShoeMaker (Contributions <span style="text-decoration: blink; color: #FA88AF;">• Message) 17:12, March 17, 2013 (EDT)

Discussion moved from HT:Category#Content

 * BlackSmith, please continue this discussion on the other page, no need to break up the discussion. Also, I would like to point out that the page that this talk page is attached to was a copy and paste that someone put on this wiki from wikipedia and it was never properly gone through to make it more relevant to DDO wiki and some of the terms and concepts described within are wrong and do not belong here.  Some of the stuff is based on extensions we do not have, and we have other extensions that aren't mentioned that change our usage some.  Once the discussion on the other page (with hopefully some more IRC chats as I feel they move the discussion faster) is completed, I will dedicate some time to cleaning up this page and making it accurate for our needs.  Please be patient and open minded as I think that you will be a GREAT asset to helping us make this "guideline" the best it can be by offering your somewhat different perspective on the subject.  I know it gets frustrating and at times it is easy to feel unappreciated (I've been there many times myself), just keep reminding yourself that once a lot of this mess from people throwing stuff together "on a wiki that wasn't suppose to last this long" nevermind flourish the way it has, things will get better, the stress will go down, and it will be much more enjoyable (not that it isn't enjoyable some now or we wouldn't be here, right?).

ShoeMaker (Contributions <span style="text-decoration: blink; color: #FF00AA;">&bull; Message) 16:39, March 17, 2013 (EDT)


 * I got tired of chasing down the dozen different discussions about forming this new category policy. This section is directly from Help talk:Category which you started... It is about the content that does (not) go in/on category pages.  Your post just above this one is quite immature and ridiculous.  If you don't want to contribute to the discussion anymore, then don't.  Either way, this policy/guideline will be written and enforced.  There will be no more moving except to this page if I find more discussion about things that "may" have relevance in a policy about what and how (and maybe who) works on categories.  If you don't want to contribute to the process of creating something useful, I don't want to hear any complaining later.  Quite frankly, I personally have had to bite my tongue many times to try and compromise with what you think things should be and what I think they should be.  I have been somewhat disappointed in the lack of effort I feel that you are not putting forth to finding a reasonable middle ground.  I understand you may get frustrated with the process, as I know I have many times.  I would be very happy to continue to try and reach a reasonable compromise with you and all of the other editors that have been offering their input.  I feel that your opinion is diverse and representative of a minority that is not usually well represented in these discussions.  I would hate to lose this input from you, but I am at the point where if you can't keep it civil and keep your frustrations to yourself that I am going to have to ask you to refrain from commenting at all.  This commentary isn't helping the process.  I'm hoping you understand my position, and if you do have any questions about this, or if you just want to rant at me, please feel free to send me an email (my email address can be found on my user page).  Thank you.  ShoeMaker (Contributions <span style="text-decoration: blink; color: #FA88AF;">• Message) 20:23, March 20, 2013 (EDT)


 * If you feel that there is no difference with category structure (what are the category members and what sub category a category possibly is) and content of a category page (the stuff that is found behind the edit button on a category page) or if they are so relevant to each other that they should be included to the discussion of category structure, then your move was legit. To me, there is a clear difference. BlackSmith (Contributions • Message) 10:58, March 21, 2013 (EDT)

Discussion moved from UT:Joenuts.Propose Item Category Structure#Absoprtion Conflation

 * I think I'm the one that started the whole process of combining them (iirc I asked Joe to do it) and I started the Percentage and Charges thing... The name of the template is Template:Absorption, so the only thing they need to have in common is that they absorb something.  Negative Energy is not Elemental, it is Energy.  Elemental is defined as Fire, Acid, Cold, and Electric (for some reason Turbine does not include Sonic as Elemental, although I would argue it is and we can consider it as such for these purposes).  Energy is a much broader descriptor and allows for Force, Negative and Positive, alignments (good, chaotic, holy, evil).  As far as "Negative Energy Absoption (Spell) items" goes, there are weapons (like ) that do negative energy that is absorbed by "charge" type protection.  So, classifying it as only "Spell" is inaccurate.  I contemplated all of these things and the true differences is one set absorbs a percentage of the respective damage, and the other set absorbs all of the damage "per attack".  Just my 2cp...

ShoeMaker (Contributions <span style="text-decoration: blink; color: #FA88AF;">• Message) 10:39, March 20, 2013 (EDT)

Restore nested category structure.
Okay, so I've put some thought into this, and the complaint with the nested structure that we were using was that it looked horrible to see "Cat_A > Cat_A/Cat_B > Cat_A/Cat_B/Cat_C" and so on. I agree with this. However, using that type of structure and substructure is more efficient for the actual purposes of categorization. So, for my compromise, what if we used that more efficient structure, but it isn't displayed for users to have to look at? A simple little chunk of code in MediaWiki:Common.js that looks like: would do the trick as to hide the redundancy. I know that and others have put a lot of time into rebuilding the category tree without the cat/subcat structure, but I just don't think that it is working very well. It is harder to find and figure out what belongs where in my opinion. If the majority are all right with this change, I have no problem going through and updating all of the categorization myself and implementing this. What do you think? ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 14:49, March 15, 2014 (EDT)


 * To be honest, I was not even aware that anyone considered it horrible to see the " Cat A > Cat B > Cat C > Cat D " structure at the bottom of the item pages.
 * As far as I can tell, it only shows when a user is logged in. I personally prefer seeing the tree, because then I can click on any parent category I wish.
 * The only thing I dont like about it, is that there is a redundant " Root > Hidden categories " at the beginning of each line.
 * Joenuts (Contributions • Message) 13:48, March 16, 2014 (EDT)


 * Agreed, I would prefer the tree structure with parent categories shown. <span style="text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.09em #FFFF00; font-family:times; font-size:14px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; color: #FF7C00; background-color:transparent">"Tauro" (Contributions <span style="text-decoration: blink; color: #FF7F00;">&bull; ) 03:25, March 17, 2014 (EDT)
 * I think I'm being misunderstood as perhaps my example wasn't clear enough. Let's try with this more defined break down:
 * , it's not:
 * Cat A > Cat B > Cat C > Cat D
 * that people were complaining about, it was:
 * Cat A > Cat A/Cat B > Cat A/Cat B/Cat C > Cat A/Cat B/Cat C/Cat D
 * Or more specifically:
 * Items > Ability modifying items > Wisdom items > Exceptional Wisdom items > +2 Exceptional Wisdom items
 * Which my proposal would allow the actual tree to look like:
 * Items > Items/Ability modifying > Items/Ability modifying/Wisdom > Items/Ability modifying/Wisdom/Exceptional > Items/Ability modifying/Wisdom/Exceptional/+2
 * Which would display to the user (using the JavaScript code above, which could be made a default optional gadget that could be turned off) as:
 * Items > Ability modifying > Wisdom > Exceptional > +2
 * Hopefully this example is better prepared and you can see what I mean (it removes the redundancy, including modifying words such as "items"). ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 11:13, March 17, 2014 (EDT)
 * In building this example, I'm seeing I'll need to think this out in a little more depth and adjust the code. While this works for the result shown as the nested tree structure in the bottom half of the category box, the top half (the wmf core version) shows only "Category: Items/Ability modifying/Wisdom/Exceptional/+2" which using the existing code I have will just show "+2".  I could exclude all "#mw-normal-catlinks" from the script, which will show the full path, but that isn't very clear... We could hide the list in this id and use just the tree listing... I'm thinking that is the best option (we really don't need to have it listed twice).  Let me research this, I may have to get  to make some adjustments to the system itself, but it is entirely doable. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 13:44, March 17, 2014 (EDT)
 * Ahhh, yes. Category injection using Sub Pages. Very ugly indeed.
 * My position is more along the lines of this.
 * Keep the "DDO Library > Items" category static, and rigid. As parallel to in game as possible ( using action house categories as starting / reference point )
 * The "DDO Library > Item Groups" category is more free form, items can live in multiple categories, categories can have multiple parents, etc.
 * I see no problem with
 * DDO Library > Item Groups > Items by effect > Exceptional Wisdom items > Exceptional Wisdom +2 items
 * DDO Library > Item Groups > Items by effect group > Ability bonus items > Exceptional Wisdom items > Exceptional Wisdom +2 items
 * I'm not a fan of using slashes in pages, as mediawiki has a special purpose ( see Mediawiki Subpages ) for that.
 * (off-topic below)
 * I also believe that the "Item groups" category should not be a direct child of "Items", because in and of itself, it's not a category of "Items".
 * If the parent becomes something like "Items domain" or "Items related" something like that, which has children "Item groups" and "Items" that would make more sense to me.
 * Joenuts (Contributions • Message) 15:47, March 17, 2014 (EDT)


 * I have not read the above discussion. However, either roll back the changes in Template:Stat or create all the new categories and update all links to point to the new category structure. Fix your own mess. Thanks. --Cru121 (Contributions • Message) 07:48, April 14, 2014 (EDT)


 * After several days of pondering, I am officially undecided on this matter. Aldyron (Contributions • Message) 15:45, April 27, 2014 (EDT)