Editing Forum:Item template "Shop" parameter

{{Forumheader|Feedback and Suggestions}}
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While cleaning up some of the retired items pages, I noticed that the [[:Category:Shops|Shops]] parameter is fairly limited - there doesn't seem to be a way to specify a shop which doesn't belong to the existing categories. Usually that isn't much of a limitation, since shops are added fairly infrequently, but in the case of the Sunless Sea tie-in, there was a [[Harbour Provisioners|retired shop]] in [[Iron Republic Streets]] which doesn't match any of the above. This leaves no way to properly add its information without editing the template itself - something I'd consider generally undesirable, given how many pages that template touches.

It might be an idea to add some method of including isolated shops like that - especially since the trend has been to utilize that tab over storylets more and more often as time goes on. I'm not very knowledgeable at the underlying structure of MediaWiki, but, if it's possible, it might be an idea to set shops up as inherited qualities. Eg, instead of an item available in the [[Midnight Market]] being defined by <code>Irem Shop = Midnight Market</code>, have it defined by <code>Shop = Midnight Market</code>, and the broader location inherited from a parameter in the shop template, like <code>ParentShop = Iremi Exchange</code>.

It's a pretty edge consideration right now, but it could make the process of populating new shops a bit less painful. It's noteworthy that the current shop in the firmament is [[Hallow's Exchange]] and not a more generally named location like [[Upper River Exchange]] was, so there's the potential that we'll see a more distributed shop system show up as the new content rolls out, and a more flexible way of inheriting/extending organization could save some headaches.
<!--END-->- [[User:Treadwheel|Treadwheel]] ([[User talk:Treadwheel|talk]]) 02:50, 30 May 2024 (UTC)