User:Pharap/Wiki Improvement Proposals

Template Improvement Proposals

Apocrypha Banner

Summary

At the moment, apocrypha articles using the {{apocrypha}} template are marked with a small badge at the top right of the page which is unobvious and easily overlooked.

I propose that instead of (or in addition to) a small badge, apocrypha articles be marked with a large banner at the top of the page as is done with both Out-of-Cavern artices (e.g. Riven (game)) via the {{OOC}} tag and Unexplored Branches articles (e.g. Chiso Preniv) via the {{Unexplored Branches}} tag.

Reasoning

The reasoning behind this suggestion is to make apocrypha articles more obvious and less likely to be mistaken for 'official' content, particularly in cases where particularly well-made apocrypha with similar quality and/or appearance to official content might easily be mistaken for official content if one has overlooked the badge.

Example

The banner by including the {{apocrypha}} template would appear as thus:

The badge on the top right of the page could appear as it currently does or be omitted.

Implementation Details

The change could be enacted by the use of an {{ambox}} template.

<indicator name="apocrypha">[[File:Apocrypha.png|30px|link=GoArch:Apocrypha]]</indicator><includeonly>[[Category:Apocrypha]]</includeonly>
{{ambox
| type=notice
| image=[[File:Apocrypha.png|50px]]
| issue = is [[GoArch:Apocrypha|apocrypha]]. It should be considered [[GoArch:Canon policy|non-canon]] and may consist of fan-created content.
| small = {{#if:{{{sect|{{{section|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#if:{{{small|{{{left|}}}}}}|left}} }}
| sect = {{{1|}}}
}}
<noinclude>
'''This template is for indicating that an article is about a non-canon subject. Non-canon subjects include:
* Fan-created content, such as the [[Lara Documents]] or fan-created Ages
* Material from the Dark Horse comics
* Ret-conned content from the Myst novels (such as [[Tadjinar]])</noinclude>

This template currently includes no documentation, though if any were needed it should simply be a matter of adapting the documentation provided for the {{OOC}} or {{Unexplored Branches}} templates.

Add a quote Parameter to {{cite journal}}

Summary

I propose to add a quote parameter to the {{cite journal}} template so that references may include specific quotes relevant to the claim being supported by the citation.

Reasoning

The intent of such a quotation would be to make it easier to verify claims as readers would not have to (for example) go hunting through entire journals just to find the one sentence that supports the claim made in the article.

Example

The quote parameter could then be used as thus:

<ref name="Tay">{{cite journal|author=Catherine|journal=Personal journal|journal-page=Reference:Catherine, personal journal (Riven)|game=Riven|quote=They have named it "Tay"}}</ref>

Producing an output of:

Catherine, Personal journal. Riven. "They have named it "Tay""

The presence or absence of quote marks and/or the style of the quote marks would be up for discussion.

Should anyone find the nesting of the same style of quotes unsatisfactory, I believe it should be possible to enforce the inner quotes being made a different style.

Implementation Details

This proposal could be implemented by simply adding {{#if:{{{quote|}}}| "{{{quote}}}"|}} to the existing template, such that it becomes:

{{{author}}}. ''{{{journal-nolink|[[{{{journal-page|Reference:{{{author}}}, {{{journal}}}}}}|{{{journal}}}]]}}}''. {{{game-nolink|[[{{{game-page|{{{game}}}}}}|{{{game}}}]]}}}.{{#if:{{{quote|}}}| "{{{quote}}}"|}}<noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>

The documentation for the template could be ammended with:

"quote":
{
	"label": "Quote",
	"description": "A selected quote from the referenced journal. The chosen quote should be relevant to the article content that makes use of the citation. If omitted, no quote is included in the reference.",
	"example": "They have named it \"Tay\"",
	"type": "string"
}

As well as the addition of "quote" to the end of the paramOrder array.

Note: In regards to enforcing that nested quotes use a different style, I don't believe templates alone are capable of text replacement that sophisticated, though it's possible they support some sort of regex-replacement feature that I'm unaware of at the time of writing. To support such a feature would, I believe, require a Lua module. I haven't researched that as I'm presuming it won't be an issue, but should it be an issue I have sufficient experience with Lua and parsing that I'm confident I could make a good go of it.

Incomplete Proposals

• Add a {{hover}} template like the one found on UESP.
  • Use this new {{hover}} template to add hover text for n., adj., v., prep., suf. et cetera, thus making it easier for people to know what these abbreviations mean. E.g. n., adj., b., prep., , suf..
    • For that matter, a general {{abbreviation}} (short form: {{abbr}}) template would also be useful for other abbreviations like , KIPS, and could incorporate an HTML abbr element rather than a span. (The abbr element has the added bonus of already including the dotted line underneath and thus not neading an extra style attribute.)
• Further proposals for adding quote parameters to other cite templates, such as {{cite dialog}}.
• Add an access-date parameter to the {{cite forum post}} template.
• Add relevant details to Reference: pages that archive forum posts such that they can be properly cited with a {{cite forum post}}. In particular, the original forum post URL would be useful - the reference page should be considered the archived form if no Wayback Machine page exists.
• Adapting the {{sic}} template to produce an output more akin to what UESP produces. (A surplus of examples can be found in the Bloodmoon:Airship Captain's Journal article.
  • For those who are unwilling or unable to visit the linked page, if one were to use UESP's {{sic}} template as {{sic|Incorrect|Correct}}, that would cause the text to appear as thus: Incorrect [sic]. Naturally the text in the hover box could be adapted to say whatever might be appropriate. It could be as simple as including only the correct text.
    • UESP also has the 'sic' link to an appropriate section of one of the style guide articles. For the Guild of Archivists, the most obvious candidate at the moment would be the Quotations section of the style guide.
  • To provide a more concrete example, Gehn's Lab Journal incorrectly says "discreet" instead of "discrete", and at present that looks like discreet [discrete] [sic]. With the proposed change, it would appear as something more like discreet [sic], with the exact tooltip text being up for debate.