Wowpedia talk:Namespaces

Thoughts 2.0? Follow the format below (either start a new discussion using a three = header, or respond to the others) --Sky (t · c · w) 19:59, 24 July 2007

Votes
I vote for making proper namespaces for Guild, Server and Quest. THat maint script seems the best route, what's the "server people" got to say about it? 21:47, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I vote for making proper namespaces for Guild and Server, but abstain from voting in regards to Quest. Quest either should be a proper namespace, or intergrated back into the main namespace. I'd vote for either of those options, but am more interested in getting the Guild and Server namespaces up and running. --Mikaka 02:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Previous vote removed until further discussion. -- DuTempete  talk  |  contr  18:54, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Guild: and Server: I see as intended for player use (similar to User: pages) so they should be separated, mainly so they can be excluded from searches. Quest, Formula, are clearly part of the game, and should be with the rest of the stuff that is also part of the game, in the main namespace. --Piu (?!) 20:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Unofficial votes

 * Would the relevant people please sign these? --Sky (t · c · w) 07:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Fisker: Guild and Server, at least (implied above)

Fisker and Kirkburn's thoughtsssss
I like the idea, i also agree with the whole "Quest:" thing, to me it just seems to confuse people and make stuff harder to locate, pywikipedia-bot has a script for the option #1 as well i think. 21:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Come up with a definite plan, and I can put it to the server guys :) 21:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

DuTempete's thoughtsss
I think I would definitely like to see server and guild namespaces, and probably quest, as well. As far as Formulas go, the longer ones could possibly be added as a subpage of the ability. So, any type of ability that has formulas attached, like [Formulas:Shadow Bolt] would instead go to [Shadow Bolt/Formulas]. It would keep the main articles neat, and still be a common place for formulas, but doesn't require a namespace. I'm always trying to find formulas I don't know exist, and often, I'm never sure if I've worded my search right. Might this work for mechanics as well? Take spell hit rate, for example. The main article could be an explaination of what it does, who would find use in it, and maybe some popular pieces of gear with it, and the Formulas could go to [Spell hit rate/Formulas]? -- DuTempete  talk  |  contr  17:47, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Maybe not a subpage; just [Shadow Bolt (damage formula)]? Subpages, imo, are icky in the global namespace. In the case of spell hit rate, I'd prolly defer that to [Spell hit rate]. :O --Sky (t · c · w) 18:21, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * If it is too big a writeup to just put in the Shadowbolt article, then I'd just call the new article [Shadowbolt damage formulas]. I'd reserve parenthesis in articles for disambiguations, and the sub-page approach makes navigation and wiki-linking troublesome. --Piumosso-Uldum 23:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, it would pretty much be a disambiguation, wouldn't it? "Shadowbolt damage formulas" is a bit of a mouthful.  Why not just say "Shadowbolt formulas", if we don't use disambiguations? -- DuTempete   talk  |  contr  23:28, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * [Shadowbolt formulas] is even better! I think of parenthesis disambig. to mean "two different things with the same name." Like Frostbite. Where as, if you're talking about [Shadowbolt formulas] in an article, you just wrap brackets around a natural name for it. If it's at [Shadowbolt (formulas)] I have to make a pipe link when I want to talk about [Shadowbolt (formulas)|Shadowbolt formulas]. If I want to talk about the mage talent, I can use the pipe trick, and type out Frostbite (mage talent) and it will auto-expand to a pipe link with the correct Frostbite --Piumosso-Uldum 01:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've read mediawiki's namespace article, and I'm questioning even the use of artificial namespaces. I had figured there was more use for namespaces than previously identified, but it appears that the only functions are that of separation from the "main" namespace, allowing the inclusion or disclusion of articles w/in that namespace in searches and special pages, and also allowing the admins the ability to remove articles w/in that namespace from public view.

So, I guess my question is: Why are they worth the effort? If we're just doing it for the purpose of adding amenities, why don't we also add Ability and Talent namespaces? Perhaps we should just get rid of the artificial namespaces we have, since they seem to do nothing but give us a place to look to when we're not sure we're looking at a quest article (O.o), and continue discussing custom namespaces? Really, if any article type yelled, "Separate me form the other stuff!" it would be API articles. My understanding of the community is that most of us don't even look at them, and I get those clogging up my search results all the time. That thought line also helps me see why Server and Guild make better namespaces than others, but I'm still not sure it's worth it.

I would love to see searching amenities added, as a user, and as an organization junkie, but I'm not sure I would push for it unless those folks who would actually be involved in the doing of it spoke up and said they would be happy to. -- DuTempete  talk  |  contr  19:11, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm starting to lean toward completely pulling the quests and items and mobs/Npc into their own namespace, as well as spell and api. If we continue to make pages like Hero of the Mag'har quest chain, those can be in the main namespace, as well as those items which are even sorta' kinda' mentioned as being notable (Thunderfury, even those which have an RPG mention), with a redirect from their item names. I'm starting to debate with myself. However, it seems to be pretty definite that we pull Guild and Server, which I'll request of the server guys now. --Sky (t · c · w) 07:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Eirik's Thoughts
Having never seen use of "true namespaces", I have difficulty talking about this. But knowing nothing about how they are implemented, I feel free in asking the "idiot questions".

I see the proposal as...
 * 1) Would we get enough benefit from true namespaces, to justify the effort implementing them?
 * 2) * If so, which page sets (whether currently a pseudo-namespace or not) should we create namespaces for?
 * 3) Should we rename pages that currently use a pseudo-namespace?

The second question can be answered independently of the first. But, if we say yes to the first question, does it technically require that pseudo-namespace pages be either renamed or placed in a namespace of their own? (not a rhetorical question)

I've grown accustomed to "Quest:" (and created "Quest Chain:" as a corollary). But there's not really a lot of difference between "Quest:XXXXXX" and "XXXXXX (Quest)", when it comes down to it. I can adjust, if needed.

If the purpose is to do search triage, it seems to me that quests (and separately, items, and NPCs) would deserve namespaces more than guilds and servers, based simply on page counts. There are a LOT of quests out there, certainly more than there are servers and guilds combined.

Recent Change triage should be considered differently, I think. Currently we're still filling in the space of concrete articles. Quests, Items, NPCs, Abilities. The vast bulk of changes, particularly recently, reflect this. That space is finite, though. At some hypothetical point in the future, the balance of edits seem likely to shift to guilds and servers.

ps: I think the "Spell: #" pseudo namespace has been deemed unnecessary/obsolete by some feature of mediawiki that I am only vaguely aware. I think that whether we keep it, rename it, or discard it is a good topic for yet another independent discussion. --Eirik Ratcatcher 19:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
The article needs cleanup, there are a lot "I" references, it reads like a personal article rather than a clean and definitive proposal. -- 15:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I tried to keep the I's out of it, but there were some places where I had to inflect that -I- wanted something. I'll tweak it. --Sky (t · c · w) 16:34, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Rehashing, v3.0
I think this is important, we should either make the Spell: and Quest: pages a real namespace or remove that designation from their title, since it just leads to confusion as to what a namespace is. The API pseudo-namespace could also use review. Fanfic is less important at the moment, but could be discussed. See for earlier discussion. -- 15:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm now of the opinion that Spell: pages should be completely removed, unless they have some real content (such as the spell which signals Onyxia's defeat). Their original purpose was to be transcluded to item pages (duh), which would aid in finding items that had certain spells. This is much less effective now, with hundreds of transclusions of items across the wiki.


 * Quest: I'm now firmly of the opinion that quests should be in the main space. Search results will be much easier for people, and it is content.


 * API: I think it's fine, for now. The people who use it most know what they're doing with the pages. I'm sure I could be persuaded either way.


 * Fanfic: I am firmly against it; people start making stuff about their characters, a new wiki should be started, or it should be confined to user subpages (I'm more in favor of subpages). I know there's another wiki out there on the subject (I stumbled onto it but did not bookmark it), but it's not a wikia wiki, so... eh. --Sky (t · c · w) 18:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it just me who find a Quest: namespace doable? It's the best way to find something I need, and it's clearly distinguishable from main namespace content. Not to mention that by now, most people who are editing the wiki know that quests has Quest: in front of it. Putting it in the main namespace will just lead to alot of confusion. 17:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * With WotLK firmly in place, we now have a potential for around 8,000 quest articles (7951 quests found ; 8,268 Quests were found ), and this number is only going to continue to grow. I think searching and search results will be much easier with a Quest namespace, as users will be able to choose to search everything, just quests, or no quests, and will clearly see results which are quests distinct from other content.  I don't see why a major sub-group of content cannot be in a namespace other than the primary namespace, or how it somehow lowers the status of that content, if configured and managed correctly.  Moving to a Quest namespace largely guarantees a minimum of naming collisions involving quests (it doesn't completely eliminate it, since it is possible for multiple quests to have the same name), while fixing things like  so that they work in a more useful fashion.  So, in answer to your question, I don't just find it doable, I find it compelling and think we'd be mad not to do it, given we already have the basic naming in place via a pseudo-namespace, so adopting it should be comparatively easy.  -- 09:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, and separating things like the databases is something I believe we as a wiki shouldn't do, because we're a wiki and not bound to the same restrictions as the databases (conversely, we have other restrictions that DBs don't). In fact, we've more items than we've quests, which are also content... --Sky (t · c · w) 16:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I wasn't going to bring items into it, but since you've mentioned them, yes, I think they would benefit from being in an "Item:" namespace. What you say about wiki restrictions vs. DB restrictions is certainly true, but I don't see it as a reason not to do this.  As far as I can see, there are clear advantages to using namespaces for large, distinct, easily identifiable sub-groups of content.  I don't really see any long term disadvantage to using namespaces for either items or quests.  There's a small amount of disruption and sysadmin time required to convert the existing Quest: pseudo-namespace into a real namespace, but it appears to be something that could be done fairly quickly and easily.  For items, the task would be much larger due to the number of pages concerned, and the renaming required, although it would be relatively easy to identify them, so the move could be largely automated.  Both would still be content, just cleanly and clearly sub-divided according to the type of content.  -- 23:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)