Presenting... Mistipedia

[Le Noir Faineant]

I'll do a writeup for my PbP-campaigns soon.

Maybe someone can write something for the "Evening" game, DS's Epic game, and/or the Galen Saga?

[cure]

OK, this is getting somewhat better, but . . .

I have a jpg showing the history of the development of the Core. How do I post it on page for the Core?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

There's a link on the left side of the page that says "upload file". that will let you upload the file. (surprise! )

After it's uploaded, you'll need to link to it on the page you want to show it on. Nerit has kindly made a help page that will show you the syntax for this and other common tasks. The Help link on the left side of the page should take you there. Good luck!

(I know this can all be a little intimidating, learning a whole new formatting language. It is to me too, (try making a table, like I did for the catalogue entries. Oy!) but we can take it one step at a time and learn together. If all else fails and you can't figure something out, google "mediawiki" and whatever you're trying to do, and hopefully somewhere out there are instructions. )

[cure]

What's the procedure for adding alternative titles for existing entries? There are a lot of NPCs listed alphabetically by their titles (Brother, Captain, etc) who ought to be cross-listed by their names as well (e.g. both "Garvyn" and "Captain Garvyn"). Surname-first variants might also be appropriate for some.

This is a called a "redirect" in mediawiki-ese. Here's how you do it:

1) Pick the "most official" name for the person to have the actual entry.
(example: http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Captain_Garvyn)
(remember, spaces become underscores in the wiki URLs)

2) Then for each alternate name (we called them aliases in the Catalogue) create a page with that name.
(example: http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Garvyn)

3) on the page you created in step two, add the following line:
#REDIRECT [[Official Name]]
(example: #REDIRECT [[Captain Garvyn]] )
NOTE: This should be the only text on that page. Move everything else over to the official page.


For an example, see Strahd. If you go to Strahd, it will redirect to Count Strahd von Zarovich and it will say at the top:
"Count Strahd von Zarovich
(Redirected from Strahd)"

If you click on Strahd from there, it will take you to the actual Strahd page and force it NOT to redirect. (by going to the 'secret' URL http://fraternityofshadows.com/w/index. ... edirect=no )

You can edit that page to see exactly how it's done. (don't change it, please, but just look.)


A lot of these were already done by my catalogue import script. But I'm sure there are many more to be done.

OK, for the sake of clarification, what about Chezna the Blood-cat. She is in the Mistipedia under 'Chezna,' whereas one might be tempted to say that her full and 'official' title includes 'the Blood-cat'. In this case a further complication might be that the 'the Blood-cat' is an addition made in Gaz V I believe.

And for that matter, what about Sainted Prince Jokum Rivtoff the Pacifier? The 'Sainted Prince' part makes sense, but 'the Pacifier' seems a little much.

[cure]

And what is to be done with monsters that are subspecies, say plains cat or Vaasi garter snake?

Easiest to use in a description is clearly 'Vaasi garter snake' or 'plains cat,' but in the monster list presumably one would want 'snake, Vaasi garter' and 'cat, plains'.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

OK, for the sake of clarification, what about Chezna the Blood-cat. She is in the Mistipedia under 'Chezna,' whereas one might be tempted to say that her full and 'official' title includes 'the Blood-cat'.

My preference there would be:

1) Edit the 'Chezna' page, copy the full text of the page. (click in the edit window, ctrl-A to select all, ctrl-C to copy). Don't save changes.
2) Open the 'Chezna the Blood-cat' page and edit it, pasting in the contents of 'Chezna' (ctrl-V) Save changes.
3) Go back to 'Chezna', delete everything, and replace it with a redirect to Chezna the Blood-cat.

(I've been doing similar stuff all week with the Sources which are also names of things, like Carnival, The Shadow Rift, Knight of the Black Rose, etc.)

And what is to be done with monsters that are subspecies, say plains cat or Vaasi garter snake?

Easiest to use in a description is clearly 'Vaasi garter snake' or 'plains cat,' but in the monster list presumably one would want 'snake, Vaasi garter' and 'cat, plains'.

I had to tackle that one with the catalogue import. I assumed people would be more likely to look up "Greater Mummy" than "Mummy, Greater", so I made the "official" pages in "Firstname Lastname" format and put a redirect page at "Lastname, Firstname"

I guess we need a style guide of some sort to collect this sort of guideline.

[cure]

Thanx.

Two more:

I have been taking something like The Blue Eel Dinner and making the official page 'Blue Eel Dinner', which is to say dumping the 'The'. Is that correct?

And what about Sainted Prince Jokum Rivtoff the Pacifier? The 'Sainted Prince' part makes sense, but 'the Pacifier' seems a little much.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I've been keeping the "The", following wikipedia's lead.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Office

For long titles, I guess make a judgment call. I don't think want to have
"Lord Loren Soth, Knight of the Black Rose" for example. As long as there are enough redirects to get you to the right place, it should be ok.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

for further elaboration on use of 'The', here's wikipedia's stance, which we might as well follow:

From the manual of style:
A, an, and the are normally avoided as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless part of a proper noun (The Hague).

From the naming conventions:
Avoid definite and indefinite articles: Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea) or otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Crown).

So for the name of an inn, I'd use it, since it's part of the Proper name for the Inn For an event or creature with a proper name, I'd use it too.

[cure]

OK, with a bit of practice it is perfectly managable.

But, something has blown up on the Nova Vaasa page. Wrong characters are visibly scattered about.

Same problem on the 'Dommark' page.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Sorry about that... as mentioned in the "Poll: Mistipedia Look" thread, I goofed when flipping the catalogue info to the bottom of the page. Any page that had catalogue info AND special unicode characters (like all the funny "foreign" characters in the Vassan names.) got a little mangled.

I'll try to find a way to fix it all at once, but in the meantime, feel free to fix any that you see.

Apologies again.

EDIT: I'm thinking the easiest way would be to revert to a prior version, then flip the catalogue info to the bottom manually for each affected page.

[BigBadQDaddy]

Friggin' awesome! and what not

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

1) Edit the 'Chezna' page, copy the full text of the page. (click in the edit window, ctrl-A to select all, ctrl-C to copy). Don't save changes.
2) Open the 'Chezna the Blood-cat' page and edit it, pasting in the contents of 'Chezna' (ctrl-V) Save changes.
3) Go back to 'Chezna', delete everything, and replace it with a redirect to Chezna the Blood-cat.

Apparently there's an easier way to do this. (Thanks to cure for finding it, I only noticed it when I saw some of his recent changes on the "recent changes" page.).

The "move" button at the top of the page automatically changes the title of the page AND creates a redirect from the old name.

[cure]

'Move' is sweet.

But another problem, although not a technical one, has reared its monstrous head. The Gryphonhill maps are, on one hand, nice to have, and, on the other, wildly inaccurate in some cases at least.

I realise fully that this is not the fault of their maker. Whoever drew our 3ed map (and who was that by the way?), filled in the blanks differently than had been done with the Gryphonhill maps.

Still, the problem persists. I write careful descriptions of the rivers of the Eastern Core based on the 3ed map and 3ed Gaz's, then look back at the Gryphonhill map stuck on the domain page and it makes a mockery of them. I have already started a domain's geography section with a warning about this, but perhaps a note should be attached 'automagically' under the lot of the maps, non?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

'But another problem, although not a technical one, has reared its monstrous head. The Gryphonhill maps are, on one hand, nice to have, and, on the other, wildly inaccurate in some cases at least.
....
I have already started a domain's geography section with a warning about this, but perhaps a note should be attached 'automagically' under the lot of the maps, non?

I agree, it should be noted near the map that it includes non-canon extrapolations from the canon map. We could work up a template to include. Nerit already made Template:MCS (use it by typing {{MCS}}, look at it or edit it by going to the page Template:MCS) , and we could just add a disclaimer to that, but I'd rather have something right under the map as well.


In fact, it's probably worth making a generic "non-canon" template, since I put forth in the guidelines that we should clearly deliniate... (an opinion I feel strongly about.)