ChernyjDyr wrote: There already exists a "category" (more correctly a page : "love interests") linked on Part 1 page under "cast" , where actualy are listed all the romances, the princess can do. So they are essentialy the same. There is also a page "sexual encounters" which lists and links all the other people who the princess can have sex with (in one form or an other). So I don't understand completely what is the difference. Do you mean that romances should include both?
Category basics:[]
Category and article (page) work differently and serve different purposes. Category is like a "feature" of an article that groups it with other articles. Each article shows at the bottom of it whether it belongs to any categories. If one follows a category link from the bottom of an article page, it takes to the category main page. The category page lists any subcategories the category may have, and all the pages that belong to the main category or its subcategories. The category itself may be a subcategory of another category. So, we have a tree of pages that are somehow thematically linked.
Please note that categories are not meant to replace any other navigation trees and linking between articles. Instead they add another way to navigate, which is intended to help in specific type of navigation. So, it's all plus :)
Example of category use:[]
I have created a category "NPC" that is a top category not given to any pages (at the moment at least). Currently this category is not a subcategory of any other category, so it's the topmost. "NPC" has subcategories "Bestiary", "Companion" and "Romance" (and "Henchman" which has been replaced by "Companion" and will be removed once not needed for discussion).
The category "Bestiary" has as its subcategories the groups to which the article Bestiary is divided, and the sub-articles of Bestiary have these categories accordingly. For example, the article Rat belongs to the categories "Bestiary" and "Animals". If you follow one of the category links from the Rat article, you end up on the category page "Bestiary" or "Animals" and can conveniently move forth from there.
How are categories useful?[]
It's another navigation way, where one can navigate bottom-up. If one just lands on the article Rat via the search function of the wiki, via Google or following a link from some other page, it may be difficult to get to other related articles because one isn't aware of the hierarchy of the articles established by linking, or such links don't exist. The categories the page belongs to provide linked pathways to thematically relevant articles. For example the NWN wiki makes really good use of categories. Take a look at the shadowdancer article, for example: if you want to see other prestige classes or need information on some other type of class, the category links at the bottom will take you to this info easily. (I've used these pages extensively and my love for smartly used categories comes from there :)
Back to Romance[]
The category Romance currently links the article Love interests and the character article pages for the love interests. More pages may fit in this category as well; perhaps we'll have articles for each romance detailing them? At the moment the category isn't extremely useful except for informative purposes; just taking a glimpse at the categories lets the user know that Anden has a romantic connection. If and when there are more romance related articles, the category will become more useful, providing a pathway between the relevant articles.
Other category ideas[]
I've been thinking that a "Humor" category could be really useful since articles with the main purpose of being funny exist. The category link at the bottom of the article states its type and also leads to other funnies. If there are many kind of articles, the "Humor" category can have helpful subcategories. Like "NPC Exposure" (or smthing), which for some reason pops to mind :) which would allow EXPOSED-fans to find the other similar funnies.
--Moirah 12:52, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Let's talk about this[]
So what do you guys think? --Moirah 12:52, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Is is a trick question?[]
We don't. You are too smart. I am going to have a beer and watch football now. :) We should once and for all set the way people will navigate on this Wiki. How people will reach the "bestiary" ? Should we make also a page with a list of all bestiary subjects and put it on main page? But it's content is similar to category , so why not to put a category and that's it? Should we do everything double - list of beasts in separate page "bestiary", so person could access it trough main page and aslo same category? But we also have a category "romance". It is essencialy similar to "Love interests" page. Where should we put a link to it? Or in order to get to categories, a person will have to go to a special "categories" page, thus he will have to check 2 separate places to get to all the stuff? In this way a person who will try to navigate the wiki trough articles wont get to everything and also the person who will try to navigate the wiki trough categories will miss things. We must adopt one clear main way, a person is going to enter the Wiki and navigate trough it and see everything. Just think form a point of view of user , who has no clue that there is such thing as categories, pages and cet. He just want's to get to main page and get to all the info from it , that's it. ChernyjDyr 13:40, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
- Oh, that one's easy. We just add it to the front-page of course. It's easy to navigate back to as there is always a link available redirecting the reader to it. But we shouldn't clutter it, so we better think of a way to get some system into the madness. Which articles goes with which and such, maybe add the categories into main categories. "Guides", "Humor", etc. The search function is also readily available at the front-page.
--Lazuri 13:47, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
So you basicaly want to replace a Part 1 and Part 2 pages as a portal pages, by a diferent way to access all the info on those parts? At least that's how I have seen them till now. A person who wants to get all the info on Part 1 gets into it and navigates from there. Cast allows to get to all the NPC's, Places to all the places, and probably Quests to all the quests. General stuff to both parts like "player's lounge, humor and cet, or bestiary can be on main page. What you are suggesting is bascially to change it all, so a person will go trough a main page into categories and will looks there for a desired item. So what happens with Parts pages? I don't like much the category aproach, it looks too random not as logical and structured as part aproach which has some geography (so to speak) in it. ChernyjDyr 14:01, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
When designing the main navigation, just ignore the categories completely. The main navigation starts from the main page and continues from there, hopefully as a sort of a coherent tree that contains all the articles in the wiki directly or via portal-type articles. Now, categories on the other hand are supposed to be "random" in the sense that all pages don't need to be in any categories and there likely is no need to link to any category pages, say from the main page. The categories are useful from "bottom-up" rather than from "top-down" (i.e. main page and forth) If a user doesn't know how to use categories, they can just ignore them. Those who need them likely figure out rather easily how to use them; I know I did when looking at the class descriptions in the main NWN wiki and needing the functionality that categories provide :) --Moirah 14:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I took the liberty of copying the discussion about the navigation to its own forum topic here since it's such a major issue. --Moirah 14:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
The side-bar is also a possibility for easy access to where you want to go. Dunno if its editable though. I suggest looking to huge and popular wikis for inspiration. The more people, the better the layout usually looks. Like... Harry potter wikia or Lord of the rings wikia or Dungeons and dragons wikia, or Lostwikia, or whatever. --Lazuri 15:00, 2 April 2009 (UTC)