I imagine that most entries for items will be the same base, which is we will mirror exactly what the in-game assessment panel. The only differences in templates will be what follows. Most (if not all) items will have a notes section, and that will be enough. Food items can have a recipe section if craftable (same with alch/fletch/etc). Ingredients I think should simply list in the notes section what foods they are crafted into - if its something too generic like dough or arrowheads, we will use the whatlinkshere feature.
NPCs & creatures with multiple versions under the same name are covered in Naming Conventions for the most part. For your specific examples:
- Black Ferah - this is a not just a creature but a major lore character. All information would be listed on 1 page, under different sections.
- Tackle Master - this NPC is identical, and the interactions are not restricted to that area (you can get a fishing license from any of them and fish anywhere). In this case, there is just 1 NPC entry, with the multiple locations listed on the NPC summary.
- Apprentice crafters - they share names but are not identical in interactions. In this case, they should have their location added to the end of their name, and a disambiguation page should be created. Example: Apprentice Alchemist (Yaraq).
- Old Zombie - How they are set up now is fine, with the level added to the name. Just need an [[Old Zombie]] disambiguation page.
When I have some time, I will try to get some basic templates up for the various entries tlosk has added, as well as update the current ones. From then on we can discuss the individual templates on their own talk page. --An Adventurer 08:46, 4 November 2008 (CST)
Cool, over the next few days most of these should get covered as we add the missing templates (for specific template issues that remain we can move to the talk pages for those templates). As far as I know there's no way to get specific lists of recipes vs vendors vs creatures that drop, but the whatlinkshere list will at least include them. So not an ideal solution but still helpful I think. (Unless someone knows of a way to filter by category, which as far as I know isn't possible).
There's two ways to handle multiple items with the same name, you can make individual pages and have a disambiguation page that links to all the variant pages or you can put the variants on a single page under headings, for example the Raven Hunter. I don't think we've come to a consensus yet on which should be the default. Personally I think they both have their strong points and make sense in different situations. For retired versions of items I think the majority of pages with these do a single page setup, for example Quintessence Sickle.
I don't know as that we've done anything with dyed variants yet. Perhaps use the original icon for the stats panel/link and under notes we could include a collage of in game shots (small) of dyed variations. However there's enough variation in the number and type of items here that perhaps we don't need a standard, just use what makes sense for the particular item.
The templates are designed to be clear and unambiguous for people using them for the first time, hence lots of descriptors and angle brackets. In practice they are inconvenient if you do a lot of posting. That's why the templates are completely customizable (personally I have blank spaces for almost everything so you can just skip along entering the info, partial completions, and I also list most of the common ones for things like special properties then just delete what doesn't apply (faster than typing what does from scratch). Maybe it would be a good idea to offer a supplemental download of the templates folder that has all of the entries blanked for people that are familiar with the templates already?
For multiple location NPCs I made a Mulitiple Location NPC Template and after we get a good list of all the NPCs like this on Talk:Mulitiple Location NPC Template we can get a general template going (not sure right now everything that should be included until we see what they all have in common. --Tlosk 08:30, 4 November 2008 (CST)
Ok, this is gonna be long….Reflecting the ingame id-panel is a good general guideline :). Here’s some stuff I was kinda confused about what sort of template to use, or where I didn’t know how to best put in an entry, also reflecting some of my wishes to see it included:
- Portal gems (which are consumable items like food, but also a magic item)
- Food (also guideline how to put in the recipe, stack size, possible messages during the crafting, and is there a way to distinguish in the special-what links here- between vendors and recipes?)
- Cooking/Alchemy/Fletching ingredients, see food
- Housing / Hookable items / Decorating
- Items that can be bought, especially if items share a name with for example a loot category, or if items have the same name and general lay-out, but are available in different colors/formats (such as dresses, certain housing items)
- Jewelry
- Robes/Dresses/Guises & Headwear that is more fun than armor (i.e. masks, some quest headwear)
- (Quest) Trophies dropped by critters: stack size if applicable, “used for” guideline
- Gems which are not portal gems (store bought / loot / crafted / quest items), example the lifeprot-casting gems from the holiday quest
- Quest crafting items (and keys) of the kind of “use this.. on that .. to create/obtain such” and how to distinguish them from “Trophies”
- Points of Interest / Locations that are quest-related but not a dungeon (for example the Ice Tree of Lunnum’s Pyre) and well.. tourist locations such as Babe & Paul
- Portal (Hubs) for example the settlement portal hubs
Also, I’m looking for guidelines on how to enter (and link to) certain stuff:
- Creatures: a guideline maybe on how to include a Boss critter which is specific for a certain quest. Sometimes they share names. for example the shadow of black ferah is in different dungeons, has at least 2 different levels
- Creatures which share names but are furthermore different. The Old Zombie of the Butler Quest is an example
- How to incorporate retired versions of stuff that is updated, but of which the old version also still is ingame, or quest stuff that regularly gets new versions (the Night Club shirt for example)
- How to incorporate the dyed versions of quest and store bought items, and/or when the item is available in different colors (Coral shield, sanguinary aegis)
- A guideline on stuff that is exactly the same in stats, but differs in name and looks, for example the “red/blue/green anniversary sparkler”, “red/blue/green minnow”. My choice until now has been to use the general name as a header, and in the notes place the different Icons with the name variations.
- NPCs that have the same name, but are in different locations (Tackle Master, Night Club Attendant) or even have different sayings and tasks (apprentice cooks, fletchers, alchemists)
What I liked in general about the swiss tool templates, was the fact that there were already entries made that you could just delete. Less work than typing it all in again :). Examples are the “your level must be..” and such sentences
The short answer is templates as a group are still a work in progress, some templates like those for Creatures and Weapons/Armor have gotten lots of attention and probably won't change much in the future. Other templates, like for food for example, don't yet have a template examplar and have been pretty much whatever the person posting wants to do. That's not to say we shouldn't have one, just that no one's made an exemplar and there hasn't been a discussion on what to include or not include. An Adventurer has done the most work on working up template exemplars. Some things, like in game shots you asked about are just an oversight and haven't been added to the template examples yet. And it's only fairly recently that we moved from a table format for most in game items to one that mirrors the in game ID panel with a bulleted notes section, so a lot of the older entries need to be reformatted.
There are a lot more people making significant contributions so it would be helpful if we can nail down most of the templates we might use so over the next few days you can help us make sure we got everything in the templates section that we might use in posting content (and then I can have a fully updated set of templates to include with the next wiki tool release). --Tlosk 19:32, 3 November 2008 (CST)
I got a few questions about the new templates compared to the ones in the swiss tool. First of all, the categories are different between the two, for example, food and jewelry are text templates in the swiss tool, but not on the page. How to deal with this, make a creative combination? Or just wait for the new tool to come out ;)?
Also, I noticed a lot of the new templates, compared to the one of the swiss tool, don't require images anymore. Now I got to admit, it was fun to finally see how all that food & cooking stuff looked on the ground, but I guess for food not really necessary. But for stuff like armor, weapons, housing items and the like, no images required anymore, but as a player, I also like to see how stuff looks :). Is the reason behind it space available on the server (or traffic), or just that not having an image available could stop people from contributing? --Sanddh 17:47, 3 November 2008 (CDT)
I added a spell color for the font colors, instead of using blue which appears the same as a link I used cornflowerblue. --Tlosk 08:23, 10 June 2008 (CDT)
What template should we use NPCs that are actually creatures? Like on Delving into Claude's Mind, the witnessing history NPCs are actually creatures. I'm leaning toward creature. --Atarax 10:10, 27 October 2008 (MDT)
For the stuff on Claude's mind, they are for the most part another variation on existing creatures. Keep in mind, whenever a character has both an NPC and creature version, both are placed on the same page. I would just place them on their main page, under == Claude's Mind Version ==. Use the creature template to show full stats, I guess. Any special titles they have can be listed under notes for that version.
As for creature/NPCs in general, like the ones on the knights of karlun quest, or the rytheran in the GY quest, I'd say use creature template - if its something players can end up fighting, it'd be better for them to know the stats than know the race and title. --An Adventurer 13:00, 27 October 2008 (CDT)