Forum:New 'labs' feature - automatically create starter item pages

I've added a new "labs" feature to the gadgets in Special:Preferences, it will add to the "page management" drop down menu an option to create an item page, including the tooltip, from the edit page.

A few things to note: Please let me know if you have any questions or find a bug. Thanks. -- 04:40, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's still experimental, I haven't tested every single attribute to make sure its implemented correctly.
 * Source data, where the item drops or whatever, isn't available, so that is left to the user. Also the page is automatically flagged as a stub.
 * It retrieves data from Wowhead; it would be nice to use Sigrie but I haven't figured out the layout and I'd already done some work with Wowhead's XML item database. I'll probably re-work it for Sigrie if I ever get its JSON layout figured out, or maybe the new Armory, but I haven't looked too much at that.
 * It does replace anything currently in the edit box, so watch out when you're editing existing pages or not starting from scratch.
 * It does have to ask you for the item name or ID every time it opens because there may be different items with the same name (heroic or whatnot). Note that by default it removes the (heroic) disambiguation (to avoid confusing Wowhead with it), though typically Wowhead will return the heroic item stats by default - so it may be easier to use the item ID in such cases.
 * It sucks at recipes (mainly because Wowhead doesn't make them easy to parse), avoid those for now.


 * Really cool. Found a bug: When creating pages for the new JC gems, their icons are importing as inv_misc_uncutgemsuperior vs the correct inv_jewelcrafting_gem_ . This is resulting in no icons being loaded. XML on wowhead shows the correct one, so something's slightly off with 'labs'. See Zephyrite as an example. Ressy (talk) 14:55, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Not a bug, it's using the correct icon according to Wowhead's cata db. -- 15:07, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My mistake. Wowhead has all the cataclysm items in Live with different icons for some reason. Ressy (talk) 15:12, 8 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks like a very good tool, this will make things a little simpler. 06:40, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Update 1
Couple of updates: it now supports updating existing items (just updating the tooltip, if you want it to replace everything still just blank the page first) and I added the keyboard shortcut ALT + i to access it (you may have to push ALT + SHIFT + i if your browser intercepts ALT + i). -- 00:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Update 2
I've done the same with quest pages, you'll have to add that script separately. It pulls from Sigrie and will only show on the edit page of pages starting with "Quest:". Sigrie is a little lacking in what it reports for quests, but perhaps less copying and pasting (or even typing!) would be nice. ALT (+SHIFT) + Q is the shortcut. -- 04:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Coppercost
The auto-generation stuff apparently uses the coppercost template. Coppercost is used "because it is easier to import data" with. However, it pushes the cost of breaking the cost up onto individual page loads. I think it would be a kindness to convert instances of Coppercost to using Cost directly whenever possible, unless the input to coppercost is some formula not immediately calculated (say, if we find an exp-to-gold formula that really works). --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 21:57, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * So we should manually convert coppercost to cost if we have the time to reduce the uses of things like #expr and #ifexpr? I was wondering if I should do that or not. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic (talk &middot; contribs) 9:43 PM PST 2 Dec 2010
 * You can, you don't have to. It's no huge burden on the server. -- 04:47, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Individually, perhaps no more so than Tooltip already is. Collectively, I'd say that it's on par with the idea of leaving the item templates in the monolithic recipe tables or keeping images of every mount in existence on the Mounts page.  It might not cause things to crash, but still contributes to problems and potential problems.  And sloppy workmanship.  Harder to read when editing, thus more time consuming to change manually. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 22:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Bug report
I went to create Quest:That's Just Rude! and noticed a few things that might be worth mentioning for future versions. I left the page uncreated in case that helps with replicating the situation. On the other hand, it (seems to) work perfectly for items. You're probably aware of most of my post, but the first point in particular was one I wanted to suggest changing. Great job. Espantish (talk) 06:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It adds progress and completion sections with "..." in both sections. In the former case, it seems like it should be left out unless Wowhead has the info, unless there's a technical reason I'm not aware of. In the latter case, Wowhead does have the info, but it's not added.
 * At least for this particular quest, it seemed to recognize the need for the "patch added" template, but put ellipses in the template.
 * The quest was labeled Neutral despite being Horde.
 * The quest start and finish fields were left blank.


 * I noticed these problems too, but I was too lazy to report it here... thanks Espantish.
 * There is something which I'm not sure is a bug, but I think it is. If you are editing a non-main namespace page (like Category:, Forum:, Help:, Template:, or Wowpedia:), the lab menu item for "Create item page" or "Update item tooltip" still appears. --[[Image:gengar orange 22x22.png]] Fandyllic (talk &middot; contribs) 11:57 PM PST 5 Dec 2010

I apologize to everyone for the spam in the Recent Changes feed, by the way. But I did find another issue: I cannot create Crul'korak, the Lightning's Arc, presumably because it has an apostrophe in its name. Espantish (talk) 18:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Works fine for me. Quests have very limited information available, that's why things are not available. -- 18:18, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Sometimes theres issues where wowhead doesn't know which version you want (normal vs heroic) so doesn't respond. In this case, grab the ItemID, and just put that into the popup, and it'll create the page properly. Ressy (talk) 18:29, 6 December 2010 (UTC)