User talk:Adnoam/Archive

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Welcome to Echo Bazaar Wiki!

Hi, welcome to Fallen London Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the Trade favours with urchins page.

Please leave me a message if I can help with anything!
127.0.0.1 09:21, July 27, 2014 (UTC)

r.i.p. Template: Card 2

Feels awesome to be finished with those! Thanks for the edits =D
Aximillio (talk) 18:14, December 31, 2014 (UTC)

NP. Should the same be done to Storylet 1 and Storylet 2?
Adnoam (talk) 19:01, December 31, 2014 (UTC)

Yes, in the long run. I'd do the decks first, though. I posted a longer message on Thread:28732
Aximillio (talk) 20:58, December 31, 2014 (UTC)

Holiday events and retiring

We had a discussion on this subject over at Category talk:Retired. If you have time it'd be nice if you could voice your opinion. (As well as other people's)
Aximillio (talk) 21:06, December 31, 2014 (UTC)

Silas

Ha, I was edtting Silas same time as you (wanted to fix the graphics in one pass then trim in a second) :)
S'pht (talk) 15:42, January 1, 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I think there were 3 of us editing almost at once :-)
Adnoam (talk) 15:47, January 1, 2015 (UTC)

{{I}} vs {{Gain}} on the Making Your Name gain pages

For some reason, {{Gain}} is causing the relevant line to be displayed unusually on the parent storylets (see the expanded options on A Royal Invitation). Some difference between {{Gain}} and {{I}}, when the parent storylet is transcluding the options.

I had been changing some to {{I}} to bypass the oddity, but will stop as you have been using {{Gain}}. There may be a better method for retaining the usual appearance, anyway.
Carbonspider (talk) 01:00, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to butt in, but that is something I've also noticed, and I've been unsure whether to keep  {{Gain}} or use {{I}}. Have to say, that infobox looks just godawful. This would probably be best fixed by tweaking the Gain template at code level to stop printing out that silly box.
Madbringer (talk) 02:02, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

{{Gain}} by itself doesn't appear the problem (although this is only happening where {{Gain}} is used, of course), as the appearance oddity isn't happening on the option pages themselves.

Having investigated further, it looks like the problem is that the transcluding by {{Options}} or {{Storylet}} is resulting in something considering the line where {{Gain}} is used to start with a space,

which causes the boxing (like this).

Carbonspider (talk) 03:50, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed this behaviour as well and had no idea what causes it.

Interesting point about this style happening if a line starts with a space. I've never known that. I now see more such examples, besides "Making Your Name" gains, such as the option under City Vices: a Rather Decadent Evening. There it is even worse than in the Making Your Name examples.
Adnoam (talk) 06:51, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

OK, I've looked into this some more (desclaimer - I'm no expert on Template cryptic coding).

Some observations:

* It's not the {{Options}}> transcluding. If you go to a page with {{Gain}} in it and click Edit, you'll see in the page's background the line with {{Gain}} being shown in an infobox.

* It seems that when using {{Gain}}>, the page is rendered so that there's a new line being added immediately after the {{Gain}}, but before the accompanying text (which starts with a space). You can see this in the {{Options}} preview by observing that the quality's image is on one (bulleted) line, but the strange infobox is on its own new line.

So:

"{{Gain|A Name Signed with a Flourish}} text" looks like this:

[[A_Name_Signed_with_a_Flourish|]]

text

And "{{Gain|A Name Signed with a Flourish}}text" looks like this:

[[A_Name_Signed_with_a_Flourish|]] text
Adnoam (talk) 07:23, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

Aha! Fixed! Indeed, the Gain template's source included a new line character which shouldn't have been there (seen by comparing to similar templates, such as Item Gain and Increase). These pages's Options preview now looks normal to me. Please also confirm.
Adnoam (talk) 08:32, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

That change to {{Gain}} seems to have solved that display problem - the options on A Royal Invitation are fine now.

As for City Vices: a Rather Decadent Evening/Engineer an invitation, not sure immediately. Will try rewriting in case of a bad character, though could you add the following line to Template:Action to mirror the line for BroadDiff?

{{#if: {{{NarrowDiff|}}} | {{NarrowChallenge|diff={{{NarrowDiff}}}|qualityLink={{{NarrowQuality}}}}} | }}
Carbonspider (talk) 10:22, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. I've added the line to the Action template, and now there are NarrowDiff and NarrowQuality fields in the Action template. However, this still doesn't work 100% as it should. If I use these fields, then the page correctly displays the possible results and probabilities, however, the quality's name is without a link and without an image (unlike how it is for Broad).

I see no difference in the Broad and Narrow templates to explain this difference in behaviour. Any ideas?
Adnoam (talk) 10:57, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

There were a few things I missed in thinking that was the only change to Template:Action needed. But as things are now:

* The line {{#if: {{{Challenge information|}}} {{{BroadDiff|}}}| needs to be adjusted to

{{#if: {{{Challenge information|}}} {{{BroadDiff|}}} {{{NarrowDiff|}}}|

(adding in NarrowDiff to that if statement)

* If BroadDiff and NarrowDiff are both used, a line break in between will be needed.
* Things don't work with {{IL|Bohemian|Connected:}}, but can just use {{IL|Connected: Bohemian}}

Also, I'm not expecting this by itself to fix City Vices: a Rather Decadent Evening, just something I noticed to fix up and save having to write everything currently going under {{Challenge information|}}
Carbonspider (talk) 12:04, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

I added the NarrowDiff-case to the if-statement as you suggested. However, I don't see any difference. Could you please check if something has changed on your side?
Rahv7 (talk) 13:01, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

I forget what City Vices: a Rather Decadent Evening looked like before, and can't think of another storylet with a dual-challenge option to look at, though City Vices appears fine now (other than adding a line break in Template:Action if both BroadDiff and NarrowDiff are used.). May or may not have been due to me replacing Engineer an invitation's use of {{Challenge information|}}
Carbonspider (talk) 01:46, December 1, 2016 (UTC)

Dual challenges are rare, but they do exist (another example: An audience with His Amused Lordship).

The problem is that these changes to the Action template won't help if its a dual Broad challenge (or dual Narrow). This will only work if there's one Broad and one Narrow challenge.

For now: any idea how to update the Action template so it would add the missing line break, but only if both Broad nad Narrow are there?
Adnoam (talk) 06:26, December 1, 2016 (UTC)

I suppose the way would be to add lines in Template:Action for {{BroadDiff2|}} and {{BroadQuality2|}} (and similar for NarrowDiff2/NarrowQuality2), if we wanted to (almost?) entirely remove the need to use the less convenient {{Challenge information|}}.

As for dealing with line breaks, the easiest way might be to add a line break to the end of both Template:BroadChallenge and Template:NarrowChallenge - unless that ends up breaking something.
Carbonspider (talk) 07:08, December 1, 2016 (UTC)

Fruits of the Zee template

Hah, I was actually pondering to ask you or Rahv7 if such a template existed just when you did that edit. Awesome you introduced it. Tho, might I suggest a more dark/blue colour theme? Could just be me, but IMO would be more fitting. I know, pedantic.
Madbringer (talk) 07:00, December 1, 2016 (UTC)

I actually didn't create it. I believe Aximillio did, a couple of years ago :-)

I just notice that this holiday marker is not actually used. Someone on Reddit found the Festival pages on the wiki and wondered why they couldn't play it, since there was no indication it was seasonal.
Adnoam (talk) 07:06, December 1, 2016 (UTC)

Thank God you posted that now. I have recently created the Election-template and wanted to do Fruits of the Zee next when I had some time. Good to know somebody else has already created one.
Rahv7 (talk) 10:31, December 1, 2016 (UTC)

Rahv7 wrote:

Thank God you posted that now. I have recently created the Election-template and wanted to do Fruits of the Zee next when I had some time. Good to know somebody else has already created one.

Indeed. And also, may I say, you did a nice job of going through the Election content and marking the stuff. Even just pasting the template to source gets very tedious.
Madbringer (talk) 06:34, December 2, 2016 (UTC)

Adding Carnelian Coast to the navigation menu

Hi, Could you please add a link to The Carnelian Coast to the navigation menu (Overzee category)? The navigation menu page is only editable by admins it seems.

For example

* ** *** Category:Heartscross_House|The Carnelian Coast
BengalLancer (talk) 12:22, February 13, 2017 (UTC)

Done! Thanks for pointing this out.
Adnoam (talk) 13:49, February 13, 2017 (UTC)

Re: Recent change to Get rid of the plant page

Yeah, I used subst to get the relevant parts of the template onto the page itself so I could remove the extra brackets. I didn't want to bother an admin to edit the template itself, as that's the only page I'm aware of with multiple source links. If you think that's a reasonable solution though, it would probably make more sense.

I think it would work to replace this part of the "From" line:

[[{{{From Card title|}}}{{{From Storylet title|}}}{{{From Card/Storylet title|}}}]]

With this:

{{#if: {{{Multilink|}}}||[[}}{{{From Card title|}}}{{{From Storylet title|}}}{{{From Card/Storylet title|}}}{{#if: {{{Multilink|}}}||]]}}

That way, if I'm understanding the code correctly, by default the square brackets should appear to create a link. If a page has the "Multilink" variable set that space should be empty instead. This would only affect pages without "Title Appearance" set the way I've written it, but if there's multiple links, I imagine each would just have appearance set individually as needed.
Optimatum (talk) 17:55, April 29, 2017 (UTC)

Your changes look great! A question, though - why does the template have "From Card title" and "From Storylet title" in the code as alternate source variables? It's not in the documentation, so am I right in assuming this is legacy support, in case any old pages still use those instead of "From Card/Storylet title"? Why not have a bot check all the pages using the Action template to replace any instances of the old variables so they can be removed from the template?

(Also, I haven't used Wikia much for quite a long time, so I don't think I fully understand how these newer Message Walls work. If I reply to a message you leave on my wall, do you - and anyone else who's replied to that thread - get notifications saying there's a message?)
Optimatum (talk) 05:40, May 1, 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know these are legacy fields. Theoretically it can be used to query Action pages which originate specifically from storylets or from cards, but this is of dubious value and properly won't work since almost all new Action pages today only use the "From Card/Storylet title" field.

I have no idea how to write a bot to update all the old uses.
Adnoam (talk) 07:50, May 1, 2017 (UTC)

I might be able to program a bot that could do that, but it's not really an issue, so whatever.

On an unrelated note, {{[[Template:Places|Places]]}} marks articles as incomplete if there's no description given, but I'm pretty sure some locations just don't have descriptions. (For example, Category:Aboard a Tramp Steamer.) Wouldn't it make sense to have some word that could be entered for the description field, indicating that the lack of description is intentional and preventing {{[[Template:Incomplete|incomplete]]}} from appearing? Something similar would make sense for the "Unlocked with" field as well, unless there's some reason places like Watchmaker's Hill should explicitly say there's no requirement.
Optimatum (talk) 17:53, May 1, 2017 (UTC)

Rare success

Great, thanks for the modification to my addition. I was sure that there's something else that needs to be done!
5.12.112.3 08:18, May 24, 2017 (UTC)

That was me, but seems I was logged out before posting this. Cheers!
AlexSkinnyman (talk) 08:20, May 24, 2017 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 08:28, May 24, 2017 (UTC)

Season of Ruins Randomizer Branch

What is happening to the guests at the Royal Beth?

"The same value of The Temperament of the Royal Beth can lead to different text!"

I'm not quite sure. Did you verify the randomizer's value before or after playing the branch? The text, just like Season of Stone's, seems to depend on the value AFTER playing the branch.

It also seems that the title Recovery arrested leads to 5 x Maniac's Prayers and The residents sleep fitfully leads to 1 x Tale of Terror!! while the description text depends on Airs.
Flubsters (talk) 01:30, May 27, 2017 (UTC)

It seems with FBG's increased usage of QVDs that maybe that needs to be incorporated into the templates somehow?
83.216.95.1 10:10, May 27, 2017 (UTC)

Not sure how that'd work with the 250-char limit, but I agree that it might not be sustainable to continue dealing with it the way we are right now...
Flubsters (talk) 14:28, May 27, 2017 (UTC)

The easiest (if not the most user-friendly) approach would be to put all QVDs on the page of their host quality (much like level descriptions) and then link to it from inside the results text
83.216.95.1 14:42, May 27, 2017 (UTC)

CoolFluby,

I've recorded the quality's value before the action (as this is how all other such qualities behave). I'll try again and record values both before and after.

Also: what do you mean by QVDs?
Adnoam (talk) 21:09, May 27, 2017 (UTC)

"I've recorded the quality's value before the action (as this is how all other such qualities behave)."

This is indeed how it behaves. But here, we have a QVD. A Quality's Variable Description. Now, how do we spot these?

Let's echo a result. Go to the Journal, and open "Collapse" into another tab. (For this example, check this Journal http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Liam%20Nevs?fromEchoId=11788780 )

After opening in another tab, you should see something like this: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/ShowMore/11788769/EventConclusion?contentKey=273925

And if you try on other echoes of the same branch, it gives exactly the same contentKey!

To verify that it is indeed a QVD, you can set the echo's ID to 1 on that link.

In this example, http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/ShowMore/1/EventConclusion?contentKey=273925

"[qvd:125958(Dreams)]"

That means it's The Temperament of the Royal Beth's QVD (it's ID being 125958; This can be found with InspectElements on the Myself page). A quality can have multiple QVD, and they are named (in this case, "Dreams").

What does all this mean? It means that the text is not from the branch result, but rather taken from the quality, much like level descriptions.

The anon suggested putting the text in the quality's page as that text belongs to the quality. It can be a good idea if the template makes it clear and/or redirects the user to the right spot on the quality's page.

You might have seen use of QVDs in multiple ESes and Season Conclusions (like your Investigating technique, with the Polymath), and now that FBG seems to prefer this over making multiple branches, the wiki needs to adapt instead of creating pages with a lot of alternate results.
Flubsters (talk) 23:06, May 27, 2017 (UTC)

The quality with the longest pedigree and widest use of QVDs, of course, is "Addressed as:"
83.216.95.1 23:50, May 27, 2017 (UTC)

Oh dear, please help

I just made a new page for Advance your Career for Election 1895, to differentiate this from the previous one which did not have an additional unlock option. Can you please delete that one?
115.133.88.198 14:05, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

No worries. I'm sure others will also try this, so I'm leaving in your new page for now, but stripped of content and with an explanation note in it.

Thanks for helping to update the wiki! Much appreciated!
Adnoam (talk) 14:08, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

Oh man need help again - Failbetter keeps making post-release changes

Failbetter changed the option title text for this year's election candidates to just their names, after I have created pages for Feducci and the Dauntless Temperance Campaigner with the original title texts. Can you change them?
115.133.88.198 16:34, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

Oh wait scratch that, I am in the midst of some serious confusion.
115.133.88.198 16:37, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

FYI - renaming pages is easy
Adnoam (talk) 20:38, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

How do I do that? I can't seem to do that. Do I need an account?
115.133.89.43 23:56, June 26, 2017 (UTC)

Yes.
Optimatum (talk) 01:41, June 27, 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup

Thanks for the help cleaning up the Relicker actions. For some reason when I tried to edit in the LuckChallenge using the classic editor as I did for other pages, it completely broke the template. Was that a problem with ordering or something else?

I think I'm starting to figure out the standards as far as categories, at least.
KaigenFL (talk) 18:10, July 13, 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work. I rarely ever use the visual editor anymore - only updating in source code.

FYI - in case you haven't noticed: the new LuckChallenge field I've added can accept both a number (i.e. luck success chance) or the text message (e.g. "the odds are against you"), to extrapolate from it the full message, plus odds if known.

Also, it automatically adds the Luck category, so when using LuckChallenge field, remove any explicit use of Luck category on the page.

FYI - I've created the (temporary) Category:LuckChallenge, to help track those actions which are luck challenges but haven't moved yet to use the LuckChallenge field.

Thanks again!
Adnoam (talk) 18:17, July 13, 2017 (UTC)

Favours: Church

Psst, I see that your wikia edits call it Favours: THE Church while there's no "The" in the name. (Simply Favours: Church, Renown: Church.)

EDIT: Nvm nvm, it got changed. Sorry.
Flubsters (talk) 11:54, August 7, 2017 (UTC)

I see it as Favours: The Church (and Renown: The Church)

(holding the Altars and Alms-Houses: the Church card to check)
Adnoam (talk) 11:56, August 7, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, it got changed since I last looked at it. Sorry for bothering you and for those wrong edits.
Flubsters (talk) 11:59, August 7, 2017 (UTC)

I found some places still referring to "Favours: Church" (e.g. in the game instructions here).

We should wait until it's stabilized and then send bug reports for the remaining inconsistencies.
Adnoam (talk) 12:02, August 7, 2017 (UTC)

Oh well. I'm still on vacation right now. Best luck on updating the wikia!
Flubsters (talk) 12:08, August 7, 2017 (UTC)

Can you update the database dump?

This page seems to imply that doing so requires being an admin, and the last dump currently available (here) is from 2016-10-10.
Osberend (talk) 20:50, August 16, 2017 (UTC)

I've sent a request to create a new DB dump. This should automatically update the Statistics page once it's done.
Adnoam (talk) 06:13, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

Ask them the question

I don't mean to undermine your efforts, but when I played that card yesterday it definitely had the 0 at the end, and this was on desktop. I know it shouldn't be there gramatically but it is there for me.
Joshopoke (talk) 13:17, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

This is more interesting than I thought.

I *just now* drew this card on an alt. The description I see is actually different than I saw before: "It burns in you. Ask it. Ask it a dozen times. What is due?".

That is, no "0", but "what is due?" at the end. And as it so happens, "what is due?" is the question this character has chosen (i.e. the "Hate" option).

Did you choose A Question yet?
Adnoam (talk) 13:41, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

No, I'm not that far into SMEN. Did you check whether that card needs a different level of either SMEN, UP, or anything else?
Joshopoke (talk) 16:07, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

Huh! I've increased UP on another alt who *isn't* a Seeker, drew this card, and indeed there's that "0".

So it seems that they wanted the card's description text to acknowledge the Question that the Seeker chose, but the default (if no Question was chosen) is the string "0" instead of an empty text string.

I'll send a bug report.
Adnoam (talk) 19:24, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

Ah - that makes a lot of sense. I had been wondering why there was a 0 for a while, and it looks like we finally cracked it!
Joshopoke (talk) 19:56, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

FBG have replied to my bug report and have confirmed they've fixed it.

Now for my non-Seeker, this has a "What?" at the end (instead of "0"). For my Seeker, this still shows the chosen Question (i.e. "What is due?").
Adnoam (talk) 15:01, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

This is another instance of QVD (quality value description) which is being used more and more by FBG and increasingly so outside of Fate-locked content. It's not going to be trivial but I wonder if this is something that we should be taking account of on wiki. I imagine making changes to the quality pages and then using transclusion in the text of the results?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:08, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Possibly, but a simple transclusion won't help much, as the wiki should document all options, not one of them selected by a quality level.
Adnoam (talk) 15:11, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Awesome ;D
Joshopoke (talk) 02:39, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Incomplete Placeholders

Hey there! I noticed you overwrote an outdated result as incomplete... Is that how we're treating the outdated Connection info now? Because I thought we were leaving it alone until we can update it accurately, and have been leaving outdated results in place with my edits.

Personally I think it might be best to leave the outdated Connection results until we can update them, because it still gives an idea of what the result might be. But I'm good with whatever's decided, I'd just like to know how I should proceed with my edits.

Cheers!
Bashir Vassar (talk) 22:43, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Or was the specific one just missing the failure results to begin with, and I just made a fool of myself? :)

Edit: Yep, it was. Ignore me, sorry. Carry on!
Bashir Vassar (talk) 22:45, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I've just noticed that the action had a Challenge, but only a success section. A comment on the storylet said that this became a challenge at some point, so I've added an empty Failure section.

(the Watchful success increase on that page is also probably wrong. It lists a +2 bonus CP (on top of the regular increase), but that was added to the page before it became a challenge).
Adnoam (talk) 05:56, August 20, 2017 (UTC)

Unaccountably Peckish, et al.

Quick question... Are we treating qualities such as Unaccountably Peckish or Intimate with a Secular Missionary as an item or a CP-based quality? Meaning should we be using the Item Gain/Loss templates or the Increase/Drop templates?

It appears to increase and decrease as an item, one level at a time, not with CP-based increases or decreases, so I think the item templates make more sense. But we're currently using both, and I'd like to convert them all to the same if possible.

Let me know your thoughts.
Bashir Vassar (talk) 03:19, August 21, 2017 (UTC)

Well, today UP only increases by whole levels, so it behaves as an item and {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} is appropriate. This is what most current code use for this quality anyway.

Now, historically (i.e. before SMEN went on a long hiatus and returned), UP used to progress by CP. So old (retired) SMEN pages might indeed use {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} for UP, and I think it's fine to leave those as is.

On a similar note, I'm wondering myself about the Intimate with a Secular Missionary (both {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} and {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} used by different pages) and Intimate with a Revolutionary Firebrand (using only {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}}) qualities. I can't remember if these increase only by whole levels or sometimes by CP (most -- but not all -- uses of {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} for these are using the "to" param to explicitly specify the new level, which is the correct usage, if it can be done consistently for all occurrences).
Adnoam (talk) 06:47, August 21, 2017 (UTC)

Difficulty formulae

Hi, what's the standard approach in the Action template to difficulty values that are set by a formula? For example, Spy on a delivery for the Custodial Chef has broad difficulty 40 + 10 * Suspicion.

Is the way it is currently implemented (using the "Challenge information" field and plain text) still the appropriate way of doing this? Or is there something we can do with BroadDiff and BroadQuality fields?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:37, August 21, 2017 (UTC)

No good solution, but I prefer what we have on the options increasing Renown past 15 (see example.

Basically, use BroadQUality/BroadDiff fields to generate the table using a reasonable challenge level, and use the Challenge Information (free test) field to add a note that this is an example.
Adnoam (talk) 13:44, August 21, 2017 (UTC)

Autofire storylets

Hello, do we have an autofire template for storylets rather than opportunities?

I tried using

{|
|width="100%"| Spoiler warning!

This page contains details about Fallen London Actions.
|}





{|
|width="100%"|
This article is incomplete. You can help Fallen London Wiki by expanding it.
'
|}

=== Rewards: ===

for Light Figers! 11 but that converted it to a card so I had to undo it. I looked around for similar storylets that would send you to menace areas but those don't seem to have their own pages that I can see...

83.216.95.180 17:28, August 23, 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean a storylet without any options in it to choose?

If so, I've never encountered such a storylet myself. The closest thing I can think of is to leave it as a storylet with no options listed (just the results) and add a comment as to it's special behaviour.

Alternatively, if you mean an actual Autofire storylet (i.e. something which happens automatically once you meet the requirements, like when your menaces go too high), then it's for the wiki's purposes it's a "regular" storylet, and should just be tagged with the Category:Autofire category.
Adnoam (talk) 20:40, August 23, 2017 (UTC)

Well I guess I mean both. I do mean an autofire storylet like when menaces get too high; but also when that happens you typically don't get any options - you just get the result text and quality changes. So it's a bit like a red bordered opportunity in that respect.

Currently storylets like this don't seem to have their own pages. See A state of some confusion for example - all the various entry and exit storylets are just "sections" on that page.
83.216.95.180 20:55, August 23, 2017 (UTC)

Autofire is not an exact term and I've seen it used to describe very different things.

Now, in this case, is the storylet Ambition: Light Fingers! 11 an actual storylet you can see in a location? It's tagged with the Wolfstack Docks category, so is it there for the choosing among all the other Wolfstack Docks storylets? Or if not location specific do you see it anywhere among all other storylets of whatever location you are in?

On the other hand, there are "autofire" MUST storylets which jump into play when you meet certain conditions. Raising menaces too high are one example, but there are others (see examples here, and here).
Adnoam (talk) 11:20, August 24, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, there is definitely a lot of confusing terminology. Let me try to clarify. The term "autofire" as it used to be used back in the day of active support for Storynexus referred to storylets that have a root and results but no branches - since it has no branches the results would "fire" immediately as soon as you'd click on the storylet/card. In addition, as you say, there is also the Urgency property with the Must Urgency also being referred to as autofire and which is currently implented through the use of  Category:Autofire. So this means we have the following combinations:

Cards

1. Standard Urgency non-Autofire cards: these are the majority of opportunity cards and are implented using the Card template

2. Must Urgency non-Autofire cards: for example the obstacles. Implemented using the Card template and Category:Autofire

3. Standard Urgency Autofire cards: all red bordered cards. Implemented using the Autofire template.

4. Must Urgency Autofire cards: none currently exist but they could in principle be implemented using the Autofire template with Category:Autofire

Storylets

5. Standard Urgency non-Autofire storylets: any bog-standard storylet, implented using the Storylet template

6. Must Urgency non-Autofire storylets: these are like the examples that you provided. Implemented using the Storylet template with  Category:AutofireCategory:Autofire

7. Standard Urgency Autofire storylets: Currently none exist but historically, The Thunder Takes Me Away  used to be such an autofire storylet (around the Urchin renown update it got converted into a standard storylet with a branch). These currently do not have a standard implementation.

8. Must Urgency Autofire storylets:  Ambition: Light Fingers! 11 is one such example but most menace trigger storylets are examples too, for example "You have lost your mind" or "You are yourself again." taking you to and from A state of some confusion. Currently there is no standard implementation for these and they are typically listed as subsections on other pages. Ambition: Light Fingers! 11 is slightly unusual because it's also location-specific where "You have lost your mind" isn't. So just to summarise Ambition: Light Fingers! 11 can only be triggered in W\olfstack Docks. But it doesn't visually appear in the list because it's a Must Urgency storylet. As soon as you travel to the Docks with Light Fingers! 11 it will get triggered. But it's different from the Sound of His Horn because you won't be given any branches/options - simply the result text and the increase of your Ambition quality.
83.216.95.180 18:56, August 24, 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I've changed to template back to "Autofire" and made a note that it is automatically triggered. It doesn't really matter how exactly the StoryNexus implementation works (although it was interesting to read about the options and how they're implemented, thanks for that!).

The template is at the moment simply the best way to create a clean page and indicate how the branch works without requiring to adjust any existing templates or create new ones. If you (or adnoam or anyone else) comes up with a better solution, feel free to change it again.
Rahv7 (talk) 19:42, August 25, 2017 (UTC)

I agree.

I guess we can update the {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}} template to support both the case of card and storylet (i.e. add the proper categories, etc.), but it's probably not worth it if this is the only such occurrence.
Adnoam (talk) 21:22, August 25, 2017 (UTC)

Yes, if the Autofire template could be updated to support both cards and storylets that would be ideal (for example, storylets don't need the Red Border ategory).

It's not at all the only occurrence; as I said lots of menace-related storylets use this and are not currently documented properly on the wiki. I'll try to compile the list of affected pages/storylets when I get some time.

If this update is implemented it might also be an idea to rename Category:Autofire to Category:MustUrgency as well, to avoid future confusion?
217.45.107.205 17:21, August 26, 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I went through the menace areas, the Zee and some ambitions. These are the pages that I think would benefit from an update to the template.

Currently no page at all

* You have lost your mind! (see A state of some confusion)
* You are yourself again (see A state of some confusion)
* A maelstrom of scandal! (see Disgraced exile in the Tomb-Colonies)
* A waking dream - is someone there? (see The Mirror-Marches)
* A waking dream - memories of light (this seems to be entirely undocumented but it's the version that I've actually seen and can be seen e.g. here)
* A familiar darkness (see The Mirror-Marches)
* A Steamer-Voyage Begins (see Aboard a Tramp Steamer)
* A zee-voyage begins (see The Broad Unterzee)
* A Zee-journey (see The Sea of Voices)
* What happened? (see Hunter's Keep)
* Why are you standing on top of a rock? (see Hunter's Keep)

Current pages exist but do not use a template at all

* A sudden light!
* The misty air of freedom!

Current pages exist but current use templates are inappropriate or insufficient

* Imprisoned! Again!
* The even more daring escape!
* I Chase the Thunder Away
* Mess with the Smile, get the teeth (is not an opportunity)
* A danger to your weasels (is not an opportunity)
* Discovered! (is not an opportunity)
* Dead – Thank God
* Awaken!
* A vigilant colonist
217.45.107.205 12:30, August 27, 2017 (UTC)

That is a surprisingly long list. Thank you for collecting these.

I agree that we should do something about the issue. However, I doubt I'll find time to do it within the next we days. I put it on my list.
Rahv7 (talk) 23:48, August 28, 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, thank you for compiling the list.

Let's first decide *what* we want this all to look (and preferably via a way that won't require a bot to update lots of pages).

To recap: regardless of what things are called inside StoryNexus's engine, today the wiki uses "Autofire" in two contexts:

* {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}} template: This is used for cards, and also adds the category Category:Red Cards (151 such pages)
* Category:Autofire used to tag storylets which pop up on their own when the right condition is met. (23 such pages)

Do we want all of the them (i.e. existing pages and ones we should add) to use {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}} and just change that template's code to support multiple options?
Adnoam (talk) 08:06, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

And another thing to consider for the sake of wiki consistency:

Today we have no pages for storylets triggered by using an item (e.g. Spread your Tale of Terror).

Instead, we have a weird hybrid: There's a {{[[Template:Item_Actions|Item Actions]]}} template, which is used directly on the item's page (e.g. Tale of Terror!!), and we the item action's page just redirects to this section of the item's page.

I feel that whatever solution we want for these missing Autofire/Must storylets/cards (a lot of which today exist only embedded on other pages), should be consistent. I.e. either have the enveloping pages (e.g. A state of some confusion) call the right template (Autofire or other), or we should also change the Item Actions to also be their own pages, and update the item pages themselves to transluce them.

Thoughts?
Adnoam (talk) 11:21, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

I would suggest creating a seperate template. We can - for now - use an exact copy of the {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}}-template but should we want to make adjustments in the future it'd be good if they used seperate templates.

We should probably also either rename Category:Autofire or {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}} because it's confusing to have the same name for two (mechanically) different things. Category:Autofire would make the most sense since it's fewer pages and apparently has the wrong name anyway. We could call this {{<span class="new">MustUrgency</span>}} or something completely different, I don't really have a preference.

Concerning {{[[Template:Item_Actions|Item Actions]]}}: I don't really see a problem here. I think it's convenient to have all the information on one page. Occasionally pages get a little crowded (e.g. for Pails of Snow) but it's not confusing in my opinion. Personally, I wouldn't touch this now and if we do, I'd treat it as a completely separate issue.
Rahv7 (talk) 12:08, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

I agree about item storylets. My personal thoughts/preferences would be that each storylet (whatever its source or properties) should have its own page.

I am mindful of the update burden so I'll mention what I am thinking at the moment but I am aware that it might not be practical or feasible without bots, just want to set it out. And then I'll try to come back to this and think about the practicality angle too.

1. Storylet template should have a "Source" parameter. This can be "Pinned" (or "Normal" or something) or "Redirect". Pinned would be the default so that there is no necessity to update the vast majority of existing storylets. If it's Pinned then it can do the usual testing for the location with Universal as the default. If it's Redirect then it won't do this testing but instead it will have the field for where it's been redirected from instead of putting it into the Unlock field like in here for example (the Universal category here is meaningless, for example). Then Redirect can also be used with items. You simply put the relevant item into the Redirect parameter. On very rare occasions a card can be both Pinned and Redirect so maybe we could have Source and Source2 or something.

2. Personally, I would not conflate the Autofire template and Category:Autofire. I appreciate that it doesn't matter what Storynexus backend does for the purpose of the wiki but they mean mechanically completely different things. For Category:Autofire, I would also add a parameter to the Storylet, Card and Autofire templates. I'd call it Urgency but we can call Autofire if you prefer. It would be Normal by default so, again, no need to update the vast majority of storylets, but if it's set to Must then it adds Category:Autofire. Currently this group of cards is sufficiently small (only 23) that I'd be happy to do so manually once the templates are updated. I think doing it as a parameter has several advantages. Firstly, it's a property that's shared across several templates. Secondly, it makes updating easier and more modular. Ironically, I just got a reply from Cash about Light Fingers 11 and he now confirms that the storylet in question should be autofire but *not* must urgency. Clearly for them it's just a flag they tick and untick and so it would be useful to be able to respond to such changes without changing the entire template. Thirdly, there is actually a third urgency level - high. It's not used very much but there are in fact some cards with it in the game - for example, the complications (it means that you always have to draw this card if it's not in your hand but you don't have to play it unlike must urgency).

3. If we can extend the Autofire template to include multiple options then why is it a separate template at all? I was looking through the history of templates and apparently it was created because the Card templare was somehow not usable for some reason. If it's not a problem to have a template without any options then shouldn't we just be using Card and Storylet templates for everything and simply have a parameter flag and a category to identify those without any branches?
83.216.95.103 12:12, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

I see I cross-posted with Rahv7, so just an addendum. My point 3. was not to indicate a strong desire to scrap the Autofire template (which may be impractical in any case). More of a genuine question.

But yes, I am with Rahv7 that maybe creating a copy of Autofire template and renaming Category:Autofire is the most economical way of proceeding, at least in the short term
83.216.95.103 12:19, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

Interesting all around. Some comments/questions:

Rahv7:

I didn't mean to remove the Item Actions from the item pages. I suggested to have a storylet page for the actions, and transclude it from the item page. (which is similar to what we're discussing here for the actions when entering/existing certain places, like menace areas).



Anonymous (BTW - have you considered making an account on the wiki?):

2. I'm interested in Cash's response to you. What does that mean now for the Ambition: Light Fingers! 11 storylet? Is it now a regular storylet at the docks (with options in it)? A red card?

3. We can extend/change any template we want if it makes sense (and worth the effort). Some are just there for historic reason when the wiki was created. We've scrapped less useful templates before when a better design emerged (e.g. there was once a separate Storylet template based on how many options there were - Storylet1, Storylet2, Storylet3, etc. That got obsolete when the main Storylet template was updated to support a variable number of options, but it took a while to cleanup all the usages of the deprecated templates)).

Theoretically we could have a single template for both storylets and cards, using a parameter to determine the difference, but that's not practical without a bot to go over the hundreds (if not thousands) of usages.
Adnoam (talk) 12:52, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

@Adnoam: I see. Just a misunderstanding then. I'm completely fine with using transclusions, it'll just take a while to actually change everything. (One more bullet on that long list ;))

@Anonymous: Concerning 2: I'm not a huge fan of just adding a parameter to indicate the "must"-property. The storylets behave differently enough to justify an extra template:

* most have no options (which is a problem with Card/Storylet-templates)
* a lot have no location (e.g. menaces reaching 8)
* some are just a link in a chain, i.e. they always appear after a certain storylet und will redirect you to a new one (e.g. putting to zee)

Building wiki-pages based on parameters is a convoluted affair and the more parameters there are the more difficult it becomes. Both to write the template and for casual users to actually use it correctly (just look at templates such as {{[[Template:Social_Actions_Auto|Social Actions Auto]]}})

Concerning 3: I would not scrap or change the Autofire-template. I think it's doing exactly what it should and I would keep it as it is.

It only becomes a problem when we want to press different mechanics into this template (like implementing options/branches, differentiating between storylets/cards, etc.). A new template for those MustUrgency-storylets avoids these problems and (hopefully) keeps templates simple and easy to use.

Even with the current pages in Category:Autofire and the new list the work is managable.
Rahv7 (talk) 14:28, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

Hello, it me, Genesis. I keep changing computers and forgetting my password. Also Chrome seems to like to log me out by default or something.

So LF 11 has basically moved from my category 8 to category 7 (in the list above). This is what it looks like in the list of storylets. And this is what you see as soon as you click on the storylet.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:37, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

@Rahv7: So I'm not sure what you suggest here (besides leaving the Autofire template as is). Do you support creating new pages for all those instances that Genesis listed above?

And what about the Light Fingers 11 page? It's not a card - it's storylet at the Docks which behaves like a Red Card. We can't even mark it's location because using the location field will display a message that the *card* is only drawn at the docks (instead of the storylet indication of location).
Adnoam (talk) 18:34, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

Now that I've had more time to explore the wiki, the templates, the needs of various pages and also see some of Adnoam's ongoing revisions, here is my revised view on what we should do.

I like the approach that Adnoam took with {{[[Template:ActionResult|ActionResult]]}} - i.e. a full functionality template that may not be massively user-friendly in itself but offer the flexibility and is then wrapped in a range of other simpler templates for ease of use.

So I'd propose creating a new templare, call it {{|Root}}, say which would have all the fields that the current {{[[Template:Card|Card]]}} and {{[[Template:Storylet|Storylet]]}} templates take. In addition, as I suggested above, I'd also include the ContentType paremeter (what I called Source above - Card, Storylet or "Plain"/Redirect), the Urgency parameter (with Category:Autofire renamed to Category:MustUrgency), and maybe even the CardBorder parameter.

Then the existing {{[[Template:Card|Card]]}}, {{[[Template:Storylet|Storylet]]}} and {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}} templates would just be wrappers. If I understand correctly, this should both address Adnoam's earlier concern about using bots (since only the templates themselves would need to be re-coded - all pages that actually use {{[[Template:Card|Card]]}} and {{[[Template:Storylet|Storylet]]}}  templates should remain unaffected, {{[[Template:Autofire|Autofire]]}} might require some twiddling but there aren't as many pages using that at the moment) and Rahv7's concerns about not overloading on parameters (since the simpler templates would be retained). For special cases like Light Fingers 11, we could then use the underlying {{|Root} template since those would be rare.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:57, September 27, 2017 (UTC)

Funny, I have just read this thread again earlier today - mostly because I've decided to send an Alt along the Light Fingers! path and hit that Ambition: Light Fingers! 11 storylet :-)

In general I very much agree with you. My recent changes (e.g. {{[[Template:ActionResult|ActionResult]]}}, as well as {{[[Template:ChallengeSection|ChallengeSection]]}}, etc.) are all aimed to get common sections from similar templates to look the same using a common template, while keeping the outer template easy to use by the common wiki editor

(other similar changes I plan are to consolidate the description / game instructions / lock / unlock under one helper template (like I did for {{[[Template:ChallengeSection|ChallengeSection]]}}) and use this everywhere applicable (including Social Action templates, Action templates, Storylet/Card templates, etc.).

I also agree that underneath the hood {{[[Template:Storylet|Storylet]]}} and {{[[Template:Card|Card]]}} should use the same infrastructure (they are 90% identical anyway).

The part I'm not sure of is how to expose it to the "simpler" wrapper templates for ease of use of casual editors. I think "MUST" is not a trivial term in this case. Autofire is actually much better (regardless of how this is called in StoryNexus), though this might mean having to manually update 100+ pages which use this template today (I've dealt with worse as I've manually deleted/restored 1500+ Trimmed pages over the last few months - just 1767 to go!)

I'm also not sold on the "Source" param - is this just to avoid the Universal category? As you mentioned earlier, this might cause complications if something has multiple sources.

I think I'll create a test template to try to capture the spirit of this, and we can work on that. When we feel it behaves properly we can do the switch.
Adnoam (talk) 11:29, September 27, 2017 (UTC)

I am not wedded to *calling* Must Urgency by that term. If Autofire is better then fine. What I am keen to avoid is using the same word for urgency and root-only storylets since they mean entirely unrelated mechanics. If we use the word "Autofire" for must urgency what do we call the current Autofire template? Also, if we avoid the use of the word "urgency" how do we treat the (admittedly corner) case of complications (obligatory to draw but not obligatory to play)?

Re Source: The three main motivations were (i) to capture Item storylets, (ii) to apply correct categories (this means non-only Category:Universal but also Category:Storylet, Category:Card and possibly Category:Items) and (iii) to separate quality unlocks from redirecting storylets (e.g. Gifts for the Feast). Again, I am not wedded to it being specifically through a single parameter, specifically called Source, but it would be nice to address those points if we are doing a utility template anyway.

In the same vein Non-discardable might also be a useful property to flag. I know we can just plonk a category at the bottom but I think it'd be more informative if there is a warning higher up the page.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:55, September 27, 2017 (UTC)

Seasonal DEFAULTSORT

Hi! (and User:Rahv7)

Is there a reason why we DEFAULTSORT seasonal content with retired stuff? It makes it hard seeing what needs to be updated. If there isn't a good reason I'd be tempted to remove the ^ defaultsort from all the seasonal templates and have them be sorted together with all the normal stuff. The headers will always alert the user that the storylet may not be available at other times of the year. And if it's seasonal and retired then the ^ defaultsort on the retired template would move it to the end of the list.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:31, August 30, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I was wondering about that for a while but didn't try to second guess the admins who did this a few years ago.

I believe that the idea was indeed that the content is unavailable most of the year, so it should be categorized by default with the retired stuff.

How about choosing a separate sort key for seasonal? If retired pages sort under "^", perhaps we can sort seasonal stuff under a different key, such as "_", or "#"?
Adnoam (talk) 18:28, August 30, 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was thinking of as an alternative too. Ideally it would sort seasonal content before retired - I am not sure what order non-alpha numerics go in.

But the main problem is that it seems to cause a clash for pages that are both seasonal and retired. Unless I did something wrong, it seems to have a big red warning that one of the defaults is overidden. It's not a massive problem of course; it just makes it look like something's broken. Maybe there is a way to suppress it?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 19:44, August 30, 2017 (UTC)

And come to think of it, merely supressing the warning isn't enough. We need to somehow tell it that the retired category "wins" in such a clash.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 19:50, August 30, 2017 (UTC)

I found the info here.

Sort order here

By default, the last default sort key used on a page is the one used.

There's not much to use before "^" which is also after the rest of the A-Z, so I changed Retired to use "~" instead of "^", and I'm adding to the seasonal templates the parameter "noreplace" which will cause it to not override the retired sorting key if it exists.
Adnoam (talk) 22:29, August 30, 2017 (UTC)

Perfect! Works exactly like it should. Thank you!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 22:53, August 30, 2017 (UTC)

Hm. Have a look at the embedded Embrace different destiny branch on The Gates of Midnight. In the embedded inclusion it has that warning. But if you go to the branch page itself, it's fine.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:35, August 31, 2017 (UTC)

I've added the "noerror" parameter to the Retired template so it will quietly override.

But the real issue is that, by using the Options template internally, the parent storylet page inherits the default sort key of the last Option used. And this is wrong. For example, in this case, the storylet should be sorted as Seasonal (^), but the last option is retired (~) so it overrides (whether we use "noerror" parameter or not).

You can see it sorted here.
Adnoam (talk) 05:48, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

Huh. So one possibility would be the one I mentioned earlier - simply not group seasonal content separately and mix it in with normal unretired content.

Alterrnatively, I was looking at the Options template and the way it works is by doing lots of regex-like match/replacements. We could in principle continue in that vein and match occurrences of DEFAULTSORT so that we could add the noreplace parameter in there. Messy, though..
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:27, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

It's messy either way.

The problem is not just about seasonal stuff. It's the Options template.

If a storylet has several Actions, one of which is Retired (or seasonal), then the Storylet page will get the Retired (or Seasonal) sort key via the Options template, which is not right.

In fact, if you look at the Options template there's comment there to deal with Retired/seasonal stuff at some point :-)

The "simplest" indeed might be to change the Options template with the right regexp to avoid this. I'm not sure if it can remove the sort key directly (as it's comes from a template within a template), or to have it remove the relevant blocks of retired/rose/hallowmas/christmas/election/fruits templates used.
Adnoam (talk) 18:53, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

I tried a bit and it's complicated. The Options template can't directly strip the DEFAULTSORT tag, as that's a special word which is processed before the text regexp manipulations of {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}}.

The only idea I have at the moment is to modify the Retired/Seasonal templates so that they wrap the DEFAULTSORT usage in some tag, and have Options strip everything in that tag. But this will not be pretty. Even this might not work, since the magic word seems to be invoked anyway.

Theoretically, it would have been ideal if there was a way to determine the current DEFAULTSORT key. This way it would be easy to modify {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} to save this value at the start and restore it at the end. But I'm not sure this is exposed anywhere (though the API seems to exist deep down).
Adnoam (talk) 21:54, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

Ok, this is indeed more complicated than anticipated. I don't have any clever or elegant ideas atm.

I am not entirely clear on the timing of these magic words, but what about using template substitution instead of transclusion?

In the {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} code the target page content is loaded using {{#vardefine: pc|{{:{{#var:p}}}}}} on the third line where {{#var:p}} is the option name. It seem that this is the point at which DEFAULTSORT runs when {{:{{#var:p}}}} (and all of its constituent) templates are run and transcluded in turn. But what if we used {{subst:{{#var:p}}}} instead? If I am reading the documentation right, it will simply extract the code of the underlying template and assign it to #var:pc without (hopefully?) doing any preprocessing at this stage.

As I said this is me mostly just rumminating; I am not all that confident about this suggestion but I don't have any better ones at the moment...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:56, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

ETA: there is more nuance to this substitution business which I am still reading here.
83.216.95.103 00:27, September 2, 2017 (UTC)

Substitution won't help, as the underlying code is still executed, just the result is separated from the original template.

The problem is that DEFAULTSORT isn't actually a template - it's a magic word. So there's nothing to "strip" from the text. It's either executed or not.

So we either find a way to save/restore the default sort key (couldn't find a way to do this), or make it so that setting the sort key is conditional on something we can control via the Options template.
Adnoam (talk) 07:59, September 2, 2017 (UTC)

Apparently we can use {{msgnw:page name}} to get the raw text (from which we can easily strip the Retired/Holiday template calls).

However, I haven't found a way (yet) to make the wiki parse this raw text again to properly display.
Adnoam (talk) 10:41, September 3, 2017 (UTC)

Success! (I hope).

It seems that when defining variables on a page, these propagate for the entire page and all templates in it. This means you can define a variable in one template, and use it in another (assuming both templates were called on the same page).

So, I've modified the Retired/Seasonal templates so that they change the DEFAULTSORT key unless there is a variable defined named "defsort" with the value "no". Then I've modified the Options template so that at the beginning it sets such a variable with the value "no", and at the very end it clears this variable again.

This way, all normal pages which directly use these Retired/Seasonal templates get the proper DEFAULTSORT key. But anything called via {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} doesn't cause this effect at all.

It can take a while for such a change to propagate through all pages. If you encounter an issue, please let me know!
Adnoam (talk) 11:30, September 3, 2017 (UTC)

Looks great so far! I was going to mention that you did the same sortkey for all the categories but you've fixed it since then :-)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:15, September 3, 2017 (UTC)

Inaccessible and Exceptional templates

Hey, what do you think about adding an Inaccessible template for branches that are either locked with Impossible! or some other quality that is known not to be implemented (e.g. The Great Work tattoo), and an Exceptional template for (the non-Fate parts of) exceptional stories?

I think it would be useful to keep these categories separate from the ordinary Incomplete and Retired content. And with Exceptional stories it would be in line with the other temporary content like seasonal templates and the {{[[Template:A_Particular_Day_in_the_Neath|A Particular Day in the Neath]]}} template.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:59, September 11, 2017 (UTC)

Possible. Did you have in mind a banner-like notice (like for Retired)? It might be cleaner to have this handled in the {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} template itself, since if the branch is locked with Impossible, then it should show an empty Success section with an {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}} tag. (i.e., the Action template can check (hopefully intelligently) if the Unlock field includes the Impossible requirement, and if so will not create a Success section (as is done for Fate actions).

The Great Works Tattoo is an interesting example, actually. As far as I remember this was a placeholder when tattoos were first released (locked with the unavailable Sultan's Dream quality), but I don't think this option was even visible in the following year's Feasts. So this just might be a placeholder which got retired.

(BTW, I do see that someone has managed to add the Sultan's Dream quality's description to the wiki in some (probably illegitimate) way. We should probably remove it as there's never been a way for anyone to get this in-game.).

I didn't even know we had a banner template for A Particular Day in the Neath. It's only used by one page, so it makes it not very useful. I doubt FBG will ever bring those back (in the same format). Exceptional Stories have replaced them to some extent.
Adnoam (talk) 07:27, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

For the Inaccessible, I was thinking something like the {{[[Template:Fate|Fate]]}} template, i.e. a variation on {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} which replaces the Success section with the relevant warning and adds relevant categories. I am not sure {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}} and Category:Incomplete Pages are quite appropriate as it invites the users to expand the page. Also for organisational purposes I'd find it useful it for these pages not to be mixed in with the other incomplete pages. So maybe I'd introduce a new category which itself is then tagged with Category:Incomplete Pages or something like that.

Automating {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} to read for Impossible! is also an option of course, espcially if the Great Work tattoo is no longer actually visible in the game. I guess I was thinking of future-proofing as well. I can't think of many non-Sultan's Dream examples but it's not hard to imagine them. An Intimation is a possible example (though I do appreciate there are arguments for not advertising this publicly).

For the Exceptional templare, yeah I was thinking having a banner at the top like with retired and seasonal pages. Again, it's useful to be able to find these pages separately from other retired content and it will save us work from having to manually retire the stories every month. And yeah I agree, that A Particular Day in the Neath is unlikely to come back in that form but the point was more that there's been a consistent tradition of marking "temporary" content separately from actual retired content. Hannah did mention a couple of years ago that De Gustibus may well come back at some unexpected point in time, even if no longer part of the Particular Day, for example. Maybe we could rename and repurporse the current {{[[Template:A_Particular_Day_in_the_Neath|A Particular Day in the Neath]]}} for exceptional stories and other content with "limited lifespan".
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:58, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

I've created an {{[[Template:Exceptional|Exceptional]]}} banner template. It can receive an optional parameter of the name of the Exceptional Story/Season.

For now, this template sets the default categorization sort key to "~" (as for Retired"). This is because these pages are no longer available except by paying Fate.

Also, this currently categorizes such pages under Category:An Episode for Exceptional Friends (which is poorly named, but already exists and categorized many of them).

Thoughts?
Adnoam (talk) 12:56, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

That's exactly what I had in mind! I'll have a think about the sort key but for now it's definitely fine!

A queston on policy - do we update the non-Fate parts once they are out of circulation? As in people will carry on playing those parts as part of their Fate purchase and so could in principle continue updating the pages that were originally Fate-less. But how does that sit with the wiki Fate policy?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:30, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

I think we should treat these pages like Retired - they were once available to all, and now they are only on the wiki for historical purposes (and now thy are properly marked as such).

So, we can fix their formatting if we want (like any other active and/or retired page), but won't accept actual content updates that come from people playing them now for Fate.
Adnoam (talk) 05:58, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Found a good example of an inaccessible branch that doesn't use Impossible!: The fifth coil is closed!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:18, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Good point.

Actually, I want to consolidate all Action templates ({{[[Template:Action|Action]]}}, {{[[Template:Fate|Fate]]}}, possibly the Social Actions templates once I rework them). They are 90% the same anyway. At least underneath they should use the same infrastructure (or helper templates).

As an example: today the {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} template behaves differently based on whether the "Redirects to" field is used. But unlike {{[[Template:Fate|Fate]]}}, we don't have a dedicated "RedirectAction" template. Just a field in {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}}.

So I was wondering if to add another field there ("Impossible", like it's done for "Redirects to"), or to create a clone template (like done in {{[[Template:Fate|Fate]]}}).
Adnoam (talk) 13:50, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

That's a very good point. It's interesting to note that the cases of (i) having the usual quality changes, (ii) having only a redirect, (iii) having a fate warning, and (iv) having an impossible warning are all mutually exclusive. Perhaps we could simply have a single field ("SuccessView" or something) that can then switch accordingly?

In fact, now that I think about it if I wasn't mistaken, I noticed you were playing with templates that would separate the "header" part of the {{|Action}} template and the "results" part (where you also now included Rare Failure). If we take this to its conclusion then this "SuccessView" (or "Type" as you've called it) could then also switch on "rare" or "alt" values too...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:16, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I've been trying to consolidate template code behind the scenes, so things loos similar and we have a single place to update if we want to change formatting.

It's also OK to have specialized templates so wiki editors aren't overwhelmed with juggling lots of parameters. (but behind the scenes they use the same code).

So far, I've create {{[[Template:ActionResult|ActionResult]]}} (which can replace everything {{[[Template:Success|Success]]}}, {{[[Template:Failure|Failure]]}}, {{[[Template:Rare_Success|Rare Success]]}} and the success section on Action templates do, and more).

I've also consolidated the challenge sections into a {{[[Template:ChallengeSection|ChallengeSection]]}} template.

To be continued...
Adnoam (talk) 14:40, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Hey, have a look at Destroy an Infestation of Sorrow-Spiders, for example. The successes no loger show up properly in the Options view and lots of text is replaced by "Well then" It seems to be a recent change but the Options template itself hasn't been changed other than the Defaultsort tweak. I was wondering if it might have been a side effect of the {{[[Template:ActionResult|ActionResult]]}} somehow? Or is this a long-running issue and I simply hadn't noticed it before?

PS. I am also editing Destroy an Infestation of Sorrow-Spiders atm so it might not be the best example, I guess. But it seems to be the case on many storylets with rare successes, at least
Mikey thinkin (talk) 21:23, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

Huh.

I have no idea how it looked before my recent template changes.

This comes from a code in {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}}, which reads:

-->{{#vardefine: pc|{{#invoke:String|replace|{{#var:pc}}<!--<br>* Remove [rare/alternate/] success/failure descriptions, but not their respective titles<br>  -->|<p>.-fallenlondon.com.</p>|{{QuoteSummary | Quote=Well then | NoTruncate=test}}<!--<br>  -->|all|false}}}}<!--

I'll need to experiment with this a bit to understand it better.
Adnoam (talk) 22:08, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

This might actually come from a recent cleanup I've made to {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}}. It seems that the {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} truncation code gets rid of the success/failure description text by looking for a paragraph which ends with "Find the rest of the story at http://www.fallenlondon.com%22.

But now {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} doesn't always print this (it didn't do it always before either, but now it's more consistent.

As I said - I'll have to experiment. I might change {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} so that it adds a tag/id to the description text paragraph, so that the {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} code can strip it cleanly.
Adnoam (talk) 22:13, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

OK, I think I've managed to fix it:

I've modified {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} to not print the quote if a variable "supporessquote" is defined. Then I've updated {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} to set this variable at the beginning (and clear it at the end). This way, any quote (of description/success/failure/etc.) that happens when the Option is expanded is stripped (leaving titles and rewards untouched).

Please let me know if you encounter anything looking weird/incorrect with the Options expand.
Adnoam (talk) 09:21, September 19, 2017 (UTC)

Looks good so far! Will let you know if I notice anything else.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:07, September 19, 2017 (UTC)

Hey,

I am seeing an end in sight for cleaning up Category:Incomplete Pages. Other than a few pages that should be done within a few weeks at most, it's just the retired pages, templates and impossible pages.

I'd quite like to tidy the impossible pages from the list. My default would be to use something like this: {{<span class="new">Template:ImpossibleAction</span>}}. It's very similar to the current {{[[Template:Fate|Fate]]}} template so when the time comes to consolidate all the action templates it would be very simple, to embed the "mother template" in ImpossibleAction.

I just wanted to double check the previously discussed consolidation wasn't immintent. I imagine not (Especially with the recent quality revamp) but I did want to double check in order to avoid work duplication.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:25, March 16, 2018 (UTC)

Sure, sounds good. I just didn't get around (yet!) to consolidating the storylets/cards and the action/Fate/Impossible like we've discussed.

Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 23:36, March 16, 2018 (UTC)

Strange Fire

Hey, I've been working my way through Making the Name content on some alts and preparing to organise that whole chunk of content a bit more. There is a funny case of Strange Fire (the You consulted on another case in particular). I noticed that the journal id for Strange Fire changes depending on whether you help the contables or not.

So I think the "alternative" success on You consulted on another case may be dependent on the original choice and not an alternative success in the usual sense of a 50/50 random chance. I tested it on two accounts, and did get the different outcomes that support this theory. It's hard to be certain of course as you can't test it repeatedly. I will do it once more on another pair, though.

Provided the theory is supported, what the best way of documenting that? Clone Strange Fire? It may be that other options also depend on the choice. Or, if not, that would be a lot of duplication for not much gain.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:20, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm.

What exactly is the difference in Strange Fire?

Do you mean that there are two types of (seemingly identical) Strange Fire, based on whether you arrived there via Plan the raid for the Constables or via Warn your contacts at the Embassy?

The choices under Strange Fire (even the "alt" or "rare" successes recorded) seem almost identical anyway - same text, just a slight change to quirks, no?
Adnoam (talk) 11:28, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Yes, there are two seemingly identical storylets based on the redirecting branch. I couldn't test every combination of course but, seemingly, it affects the quirks on You consulted on another case (and possibly You provided a lecture, I am trying to verify). As far as I can tell so far nothing else changes.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:43, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Interesting mechanic.

I think it will be needlessly confusing to create two pages for Strange Fire. Better to indicate on the relevant action pages which quirk changes come from which preceding choice. This won't even need a confusing alt success section. Something like:

...Normal results...<br>...Stat increases...<br>... etc.<br><br>- If you've chosen previously xxx<br>   -- Quirk change A<br>- If you've chosen previously YYY<br>   -- Quirk change B

Adnoam (talk) 14:30, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Stuck trying to fix a bug

Hello! I am stuck :/

As part of organising the Making Your Name content, I've been looking at Area-diving: Casing the Target. 

The Making Your Name: What to do with the Box? 0  page is really weird.

So firstly, the page being redirected to (Making Your Name: What to Do with the Box?) was broken. It showed its title as "Keep it" despite that not being the link. I went back in history to where that started happening and reverted. The problem seems to be in the Keep it option but I can't figure out why. Currently it's a simple link (As it was historically) and the page displays the correct title. But once you try to insert that option into the Options template it goes weird again.

Secondly, the page now seems to be called "Making your Name: What to do with the Box? 1" (with a trailing 1). But no such page seems to actually exists. When I tried changing redirecting link in the branch "Making your Name: What to do with the Box? 0" it didn't work.

Thirdly, there is anothe page  which is currently just a pointer. But i would like to reclaim it for actual use since Area-diving: Casing the Target has both MYN and normal versions.

I imagine I probably exacerbated some of the original problems while I was trying to "fix" it, for wich I apologise....

Any ideas?....
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:55, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Let's see:

First: The "Keep it" problem apparently came from code in the "Keep it 1" page itself. Someone added there the magic-word DISPLAYTITLE to force it to show as "Keep it" (and not "Keep it 1"). Of course, the magic-word triggered when the page was parsed by the Options template...

Second: The page didn't exist because of capitalization. On wikia, page names are case-sensitive. The page Making Your Name: What to do with the Box? 0 redirects to Making Your Name: What to Do with the Box? (which is a static redirect to Making your Name: What to do with the Box? 1). But the page Making your Name: What to Do with the Box? 1 doesn't exist (notice the "Do" vs. "do"). I have no idea what's the correct capitalization to match what's in the actual game.

Third: I'm not sure how you wanted to reclaim that page. But it's certainly possible if the outcome would more accurately reflect how the game behaves. Just make sure to check out Special:WhatLinksHere what Links to any page (or redirect page) you so modify.
Adnoam (talk) 19:20, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

1. Aha! Thank you. That was a bit insiduous...

2. Ah of course. I did know that but I think was so thrown by the first problem that I had assumed the cause was more complicated and so didn't check the obvious. In terms of matching the game, the small "do" is used in the branch name and the capital "Do" is used in the storylet name. But as long as everything links correctly on the wiki I, personally, am not so fussed.

3. Yep. Again, I was more wary of causing additional problems re: 1. But now that I know what caused that, it should be fine.

Thanks again!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 19:31, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Stories

Hello again!

I've been preparing a big update to the Making your Name quality pages (see here if you are curious; any comments welcome!) and in doing so realised that the wiki is using {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}}/Category:Stories a bit funny.

There is a certain conflation of "Stories" meaning pages for qualities of type Story (as opposed to Randomizer, Accomplishment etc.) and pages for stories in a more natural language sense - tales with more than one chapter, as Category:Stories description says.

Often that's fine because many stories are indeed structured around the main tracker quality that can then host both types of content. But we seem to be missing a natural container/template/category for stories that don't have such a simple correspondence to a single quality. To my mind, when a user clicks on "Stories" in the navigation bar they should see actual stories that they can play (whether operated by a single Story quality or something more complex) and not a list of Qualities of type Story, which would exclude many actual stories - after all that's what the Qualities option on the navigation bar is for.

If we had something like this we could deprecate the {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} template for example (I noticed it's on your to-do list) since it's too restrictive for all types of ventures and not every Venture quality would even need the {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} template.

Was just wondering whether you had any thoughts on this? It's in no way a pressing issue but I think it's one of the features that makes many forum users bemoan this wiki in favour of the old Echo Bazaar wikidot one.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:37, October 21, 2017 (UTC)

Hi,

First of all, I'm very much in favour of organizing the Making Your Name branches in an easy to follow manner (never had the time to try to figure out how best to do it).

A few suggestions, looking at your sandbox: 1. I'd suggest to use separate pages for each of the Making Your Name trackers. A main page for this can then either link, embed, or transclude the specific pages.

2. The big table seems a bit confusing to me (purely subjective). e.g. the Objective column includes both the level's objective and the link to the storylet triggering after it is achieved. Have you tried to just embed the relevant storylets? (e.g. using {{[[Template:Embed|Embed]]}} on A Trove of Secrets will automatically give a collapsible section of all options and their results.)
Adnoam (talk) 05:33, October 22, 2017 (UTC)

As for Stories, indeed there's some inconsistency in the wiki.

Generally, I'm fine with it regarding to the Stories category vs. the Stories template. It's just used to tag various qualities, even if it's not very consistent.

As for the actual menu / navigation bar, that's a different story (no pun intended :-) ). The current navigation bar is not often helpful, certainly not for new players. Any specific suggestions are welcome!
Adnoam (talk) 07:07, October 22, 2017 (UTC)

Preparations FaM formatting

All the Preparations options use the quality set to message for FaM, not the item set to message:


Optimatum (talk) 00:09, November 13, 2017 (UTC)

I know. It's a compromise.

The problem is that using the {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} template will show the more accurate message, but also include the quality's Gain category, instead of its Sources category.

We can't use both {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} and {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} for the same quality. I saw you've recently changed a few of the increases to this to {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} (i.e. the options at The Well), so I was trying to keep things consistent. for the quality.

We can certainly restore all the usages to use {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} again.
Adnoam (talk) 07:08, November 13, 2017 (UTC)

Hm. Can we add an optional parameter to Increase to add the Sources category instead?
Optimatum (talk) 14:59, November 13, 2017 (UTC)

The Gain/Sources issue runs deep in the wiki. Many template will need to change to properly fix this, potentially with bots working to rename things.

For now, we mostly use {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} and {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} for qualities which grow by CP, and {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} for qualities which increase in whole levels.

Where there are unique circumstances we use the closest template and workaround the issue as needed. E.g. in this case, the options as The Well used {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} and marked the increase amount in levels instead of specifying CP.
Adnoam (talk) 21:04, November 13, 2017 (UTC)

Is there a reason we can't add an optional parameter to the templates to change the message, though? For example, Gain could check an additional parameter (say nowQ) if 2 and now are both empty, and if nowQ has a value it would use the quality set-to message instead of the item set-to message. That way we could display the right message in unusual use cases without needing to change every other page, like with the From field formatted variable in the Action template.
Optimatum (talk) 17:16, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

We can, but the more special optional parameters are added to templates, the harder it is to use them correctly (especially for casual wiki editors).

I'm also less concerned about capturing the exact message style in the game, as there are already plenty of cases this is no 100%, e.g. when messages are dependent on a quality level (e.g when raising Taste of Lacre), or when the message is something like "You have a new Accomplishment - YYY" / "You are now XXX").

We try to document as best we can, but as long as the action's actual impact is properly conveyed to the wiki reader, it's mostly OK.

Categories are a different thing. Items/Qualities can have either "Gain" or "Sources" categories associated with them when they increase. For these we should be consistent per quality. If something like "Fasting and Meditating" is using the "Gain" category (from the {{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}} template), then we shouldn't also have pages categorized under "Sources" instead (from using the {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} template).
Adnoam (talk) 13:02, November 16, 2017 (UTC)

I still don't see an issue with more optional parameters. If the only issue is making use more confusing, adding documentation would deal with that pretty effectively. (Though we really should add more documentation in general.)

Edit: While I was thinking about it, I added documentation for Item Gain. If it looks good I can go add documentation to other similar templates. (Also, is there a reason that the Appearance parameter doesn't work when using now, or is that just an oversight?)
Optimatum (talk) 04:52, November 17, 2017 (UTC)

Template:Places

Could I get Template:Places updated to User:ViKomprenas/Template:Places? (Re-add the category.) My version adds a note for what song plays in the app. It looks like this.
ViKomprenas (talk) 23:17, November 15, 2017 (UTC)

bumpbump
ViKomprenas (talk) 01:48, November 24, 2017 (UTC)

Sorry - was a bit busy recently.

I've added the parameter - though I wonder if this will add useful info for wiki readers. The name of the music track is very specific and will be completely disconnected for browser users.
Adnoam (talk) 18:29, November 24, 2017 (UTC)

Narrow difficulty scaler

Hey,

So for some time I've had this weird feeling that Narrow Difficulty numbers seemed off to me. It just occurred to me (looking through the Storynexus manual) that Narrow difficulty is off by 10%. It says that if you meet the difficulty level then the chance is 60% but according to the Storynexus manual it's actually 50%, which is what I had always used.

In principle it wouldn't be a problem - as you've said before, it doesn't matter what Storynexus does as long as the wiki is consistent. But that's what concerns me - is it actually consistent? Certainly I would have used the 50% benchmark at least on occasion (whenever I calculated manually rather than using the wikia calculator) and I am pretty sure I am not the only one.

Anyway, I'll be careful with Narrow challenges in the future and it's just a heads up to you as a potential source of confusion.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:55, November 20, 2017 (UTC)

That's interesting.

So, does this mean that when the wiki records a Narrow challenge as testing the quality at level 4, it's actually (in the background) a Narrow test of the quality at level 3?
Adnoam (talk) 06:42, November 21, 2017 (UTC)

Yep (unless the page editor actually used the SN formula straight away rather than relying on the wiki calculator).
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:11, November 21, 2017 (UTC)

So there's probably no way to "fix" the wiki to match the SN engine without going over and updating the challenge level of every page using a Narrow challenge.

Unless someone *really* wants to create a bot for this, no reason to change anything in the wiki as long as the presented success percentages are correct.
Adnoam (talk) 09:17, November 21, 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. So going forward I'll try to remember to use the wiki threshold when doing Narrow challanges but when editing older pages (for other reasons) it's just worth bearing in mind that the Narrow challenge numbers might be off by 10% if there is a way to double check them at the time.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:45, November 21, 2017 (UTC)

Ventures

Hey, sorry I think I was cross-editing at he same time as you! I'll let you finish as I think you are actually splitting the venture page into the individual storylets - an approach I support wholeheartedly! On that subject, do you think we still need the {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} template? I mean obviously for now we do as it's still used. But I am wondering whether it might be an idea to slowly convert the current venture pages to just standard story pages.

The reason I ask is because I know revising the template has been on your todo list and wanted to check whether in the long run you still think it needs revised rather than (Eventually) abandoned
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:36, January 7, 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we'll indeed need the {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} template, but it's certainly a mess as it is now. There's slightly different text shown when starting/progressing/completing a venture, but other then that it should be similar to any other progress-based mini-story.

Any specific ideas would be welcome!
Adnoam (talk) 13:49, January 7, 2018 (UTC)

Well, quite. I think I may have mentioned it before but my feeling is that we should simply be using the {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} template for any coherent "narative unit". This can be a simple single quality story (e.g. Exacting the Urchins' Vengeance), a multiple quality story (e.g. Shaping a Masterpiece for the Empress), a story spanning the entire game (e.g. search for Nadir or Making your Name), a story around a special zone (e.g. Flash Lays) or indeed a venture. There are so many different ways of structuring a story (and FBG have been getting more unorthodox recently) that something as simple and flexible as {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} is perfect (I would maybe make it easier to have it allow for multiple starting points where that's relevant). Incidentally, according to WhatLinksHere there are only 21 Ventures to convert if that's the way we go.

The greatest problem with this is that {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} is used both for "narrative" stories and the quality of type Story. I feel the correct template for the latter is {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} with the correct "Quality type" field. Where there is a strong link between the quality and the story the two pages can off course cross-refer (In fact we already do this with {{[[Template:Fatestory|Fatestory]]}} - e.g. The Gift vs Category:The Gift or The Face Trade vs A Trade in Faces).
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:40, January 7, 2018 (UTC)

That makes sense. Though going over all current usages of the {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} and change to {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} where needed would be tricky.

{{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} and {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} don't look exactly the same, so it's not just a matter of the right quality type for categorization. Some qualities really need the links to the Gain/Loss sub-categories of the quality, and for other qualities this would make no sense (e.g. for accomplishments, or for one-time story markers) and then you'd only need a link to the storylet/action which unlocks the quality.

It's probably easiest to start with something similar yet unused, such as {{<span class="new">Story</span>}}.

A couple more points:

# The game itself does treat Ventures as its own thing, which is where the {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} template originally came from, I imagine. e.g. when starting one you'd get a message like "<quality> shows your progress in the venture", instead of the regular "<quality> has increased to 1".
# The idea of the {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} template is to give a common look and feel for these progress-type mini-stories (as you noted, FBG have added more and more ways for these to look and work). If we just keep the bare minimum (e.g. description, unlocking storylet, etc.), each such page will need to manually list all the progress and conclusion parts and we'll be repeating code in these pages (which is what a template is there to solve to begin with).
Adnoam (talk) 07:10, January 8, 2018 (UTC)

All good points

0a. Using something like {{<span class="new">Story</span>}} probably does make more sense, you are right.

0b. Looking at the code of {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} and {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} the gain/loss subcategories and the default categories are the only differences as far as I can see. The default categories would be addressed by the quality type, anyway. So the only substantive difference is the gain/loss subcategories. So why not just include them in {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} with a switch parameter that's off by default?

1. Yes, but the only difference is, as you say, aesthetic. (In fact from the point of view of the engine there is hardly any difference between items and qualities - it's just presentational). The type of the quality determines things like - do they appear on the sidebar, do they have a custom change message and (lately, much to my annoyance) do they appear in the results panel at all! The latter, for example, is not something that would make sense for a wiki to reflect faithfully. The custom messages, I think, are better implemented by making changes to the {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} etc templates or indeed simply as manually typed messages (as i think we had discussed in one of the past threads). 

2. That's the ideal, of course. But I think there are two counterarguments. Firstly, I am 95% confident FBG have abandoned ventures. They haven't introduced a new venture in (at least) 5 years. The last quality containing the word "venture" to be introduced (Venture Challenge Level) is of type Story (the default these days). There are currently only 21 ventures (including the retired ones) so while it's a little bit burdensome on editors to change them, once it's done it's unlikely to be an issue again. Secondly, looking at the code of {{[[Template:Venture|Venture]]}} I am not sure it saves all that much. The actual progress and conclusion have to be typed in manually. The thing that it does automatically is to add the headings "Pursue your goal" and "The Conclusion!" but that is itself problematic because those are typically different storylets with different (albeit similar/related) names and I think should be documented as such.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:04, January 8, 2018 (UTC)

Fate-locked Spouses

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but Category:Spouses lists Fate-locked companions along with each's own pages. Then is it okay if we make new pages for the spouse version of Secular Missionary and the Firebrand? I... already uploaded the images without thinking.
Sinnouk (talk) 13:10, February 5, 2018 (UTC)

Ooops. Never mind.
Sinnouk (talk) 13:15, February 5, 2018 (UTC)

Their existence, images, description, and stats are public by viewing a character's profile who has them in the Spouse slot.

Anything else (i.e. storylets and/or actions which include them) shouldn't be on the wiki.
Adnoam (talk) 13:15, February 5, 2018 (UTC)

ES and Backer stories in NavBar

Hey,

I don't have the admin rights to edit the NavBar but I think we should add Category:Backer-Exclusive Stories and An Episode for Exceptional Friends in the drop down menu under Stories (similar to Seasonal Events).

I know we discussed generally revising the NavBar - I'll try to formulate some detailed thoughts when I get a chance - but for now it feels like a small enough and appropriate change (and in case of Backer stories, it gives it a bit of a home as it has no parent Categories atm)

ETA: And maybe even SMEN too! Maybe under Ambitions?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:50, March 5, 2018 (UTC)

I've added the Exceptional Stories. It turns out that there's a limit of 7 items in the drop down menu so I couldn't add both. I've considered just removing Ventures, but I think we should properly redesign the thing.

We've discussed in the past having all the storyline qualities under a Story (or Stories) category.
Adnoam (talk) 13:00, March 5, 2018 (UTC)

I've created a new category under: Category:Storyline. (It's under Category:Content, so it's a sibling to Category:Storylets, Category:Qualities, Category:Places, Category:Guides, etc.)

For now it's a place to put the orphan Category:Backer-Exclusive Stories. We should add to it more over time. Hopefully we can make it a useful and readable list of the various storylines (and not the individual qualities which track them).
Adnoam (talk) 13:05, March 5, 2018 (UTC)

Excellent! Good start
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:06, March 5, 2018 (UTC)

Links not working

Hullo,

I started updating Attend to Matters of the Heart, starting with the austere date. I created all the pages but for some reason the links to these pages don't work (see An Austere Evening with your Sweetheart for the branches and Ask your sweetheart to an evening of restrained sophistication for the quality). Somewhat at a loss... Can you see what I managed to do wrong?...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 21:24, March 7, 2018 (UTC)

Although, the quality is now showing. So maybe it's just *veery* slow propagating the updates. It's been hours....
Mikey thinkin (talk) 22:06, March 7, 2018 (UTC)

Things seem fine on my end. Maybe it just took a while to propagate, as you've suggested.

(sometimes choosing "refresh" from the "edit" drop-down menu on the page fixes such things).
Adnoam (talk) 07:17, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

Also, I see you've added a note here that the actual rewards are different than what's listed in the game instructions. If you haven't yet, you should probably send a bug report on this.

(likewise for this one)
Adnoam (talk) 07:24, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

Actually a new question on these changes (since I can't test them myself):

In An Indulgent Evening with your Sweetheart you list it as unlocking with Asked to an Indulgent Date. Is it really a universal storylet that is available once you have this quality (and you can play whenever you wish)? Or, is it a redirect from Ask your sweetheart to an indulgent evening?

If it's the latter, then the "Unlock with" should instead list "a redirect from...".

Same for Austere, of course.

And while we're at it, can you please check the actual requirements for the option to Make a simple proposal of marriage? It seems it's likely missing some locking conditions, as stated in the Grand option (i.e. being already Committed, or Engaged, etc.)
Adnoam (talk) 07:36, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

I did send a support ticket, but haven't heard back yet.

Re: unlock.. well it's a funny one... It's one of these new fangled social storylets.

You, the sender, choose to Ask your sweetheart to an indulgent evening. You don't redirected anywhere and you don't get any new qualities. The recipient (your sweetheart) *automatically* accepts your invite and in doing so receives the Asked to an Indulgent Date quality. Again they don't automatically get redirected anywhere. But nor is there a universal storylet. Instead, in your message box you have a message saying "[Sender] has invited you to an evening of immoderate pleasures!" and next to is a button "Respond". It is pressing the button that redirects you to An Indulgent Evening with your Sweetheart.

Importantly, pressing the "Respond" button isn't a one-time response like with the standard social actions because you can always back out of An Indulgent Evening with your Sweetheart and the ability to respond is always there (until you make a choice). So it very much acts like a storylet but one that "lives" not on your main Story tab but in the Messages tab. Note there are a couple of similar "normal" storylets that also live in the Message tab. For example, Pursuing an Archaeological Expedition. The difference here is that An Indulgent Evening with your Sweetheart lives *only* in the Messages tab. Also note that as soon as you make a choice, you lose Asked to an Indulgent Date and, correspondingly, the ability to "Respond" disappears. So while you can't *see* the unlock requirement it very much behaves like one.

Re: simple marriage. I will check in detail because there are also several simple marriage ceremonies that are currently incomplete. But on a cursory glance, the current entry seems complete. It has all the locks that the grand marriage has. If anything, it is the grand marriage branch that's incomplete as it doesn't list things like Organising the Wedding.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:47, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I am going through the details of the simple proposal and there are some things off. But I am hobbled by the template as it has Friend unlock field but not a Friend *lock* field. Obviously I can write something to the same effect but do you think you could tweak the template?

Also, thanks for creating Category pages for the new qualities. I always forget to do that! Is it right that we almost always want the category pages; are there any times when we want, explicitly, both the category and the non-category? (Obviously we discussed using the non-category version for the new Storyline category, but other than that)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:01, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

# As for the social actions, this is how all the new multi-steps ones work (including chess matches, sparring, inviting someone for dinner, etc.). Since the recipient launches the storylet from their message tab, the storylet's requirement should list the redirect (after all, the incoming social action page already lists the redirect on that end). So the direct unlock isn't the quality, but being redirected from the message.
# For qualities, we'll almost always want this to be in a category page. This is because storylets/actions which list this quality as an unlock requirement are added to that category, so it needs to exist (and there's a link to it at the bottom of the pages, whether it's there or not.)
Adnoam (talk) 14:30, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

Two more things:

1. For Items (and not qualities), use a regular page (not a category one). Create a separate category page (to hold the pages which require the item), with the content:

[image name]<br>{{Item Uses}}

2. For social actions, we indeed don't have a separate parameter for "friend lock", just to simplify the templates. Just phrase the "friend unlocked with" field in an understandable way. e.g.

|Friend unlocked with = no {{IL|Committed:}}

Or something similar
Adnoam (talk) 15:24, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

Oh I didn't know that about the item pages. Good to know!

I figured that's what I needed to do on friend locks but thought it's worth checking that was intentional/
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:35, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

See for example how I've changed the following:

* An Invitation to a Humble Wedding
* Category:An Invitation to a Humble Wedding
* Category:An Invitation to a Humble Wedding Sources

BTW, if you're able to check out how the equivalent An Invitation to an Extravagant Wedding looks/behaves that would be great.
Adnoam (talk) 15:42, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

That's a really useful example, thank you.

While, I have you, could you please check, say Enjoy your host's wine - I am getting another red link on Throwing a Humble Wedding and I want to double check I haven't missed anything. (For example, I haven't updated the IL module for that yet but that shouldn't red link it, I didn't think...)

I'll definitely get to the Extravagant Wedding (not least because I want to divorce with an Empress' letter and give it to a footman) but I want to to check on all the humble weddings first as several of them are almost completely blank pages at the moment. I am doing it on a few accounts but, still, the number of free evenings and waiting for divorce card do slow down things somewhat
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:49, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

There was a red link there because the page did not exist (only the category page existed). I've created the redirect page and refreshed Enjoy your host's wine and now the link shows fine.

The image still doesn't show, because I need to update it Module:IL/images, which I'll do in a minute.
Adnoam (talk) 15:54, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

Aha. Right, so for qualities we need both a category page and a normal page (if it's linked to in text anywhere).

I think it might be an idea to have a brief guide on creating pages, specifically this sort of sequencing (e.g. lots of people don't know about the IL module). your item example above would be perfect there.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:57, March 8, 2018 (UTC)

Remind me, please, what do we do with source categories for non-pyramidal qualities?

We use the  {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} template in the results but that adds it to Sources category. That's fine. But then when creating the the new Quality page that will include an orphaned link to the Gain category. I know it's a long running deep issue but what's the "best practice" work around at the moment?

I've seen people redirect the Gain page to the Sources page. That way the link on the Quality page isn't orphaned but we have both the Gain and Sources categories. Is that the best way? Or is there something else?

We could just change the Quality template, though, to take a parameter or something? It's a localised issue that wouldn't impact (I don't think?) the other templates in the way that a thorough consolidation of Source/Gain would 
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:43, March 12, 2018 (UTC)

There's no perfect option.

* One thing to check is that there are not some pages categorized under "Sources" and some under "Gain". It should always be just one and not the other.
* If the quality in question is one for which there's little reason to track all actions which raise and lower it (e.g. markers for progress in some storyline), then the {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} template seems to be the better fit (and you can override the default category of "Stories").
* If it really makes sense to include links to the categories actions raising/lowering the quality, then I think the best approach for now at this point is to use {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} and make the Gain category page a redirect to the Sources category. (ensuring, as stated above, the no pages are categorized under the Gain category).
* It's possible to make any change we want to any of these templates if there's a suggestion that will help more than cause trouble.

Looking at some of your recent changes (e.g. here), I think some of these qualities could remain with the {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} template, instead of moving to {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}, with the possible addition you've made anyway of the "Social Action" section. Usually, the only action page categorized under "Gain" (or "Sources") is the same one listed under "Unlocked with" section. And the only pages categorized under "Loss" are for following through with the story. It's not like "normal" qualities (e.g. Making Waves) where people might be looking for those actions spread through the game to either raise or lower it.
Adnoam (talk) 20:32, March 12, 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'll revert to usking the Stories template for these social qualities.

But I do think we should make the Quality template more flexible. I think it should have three flags: UsesCP, IncludeGain and IncludeLoss (or similar names) with "yes, yes, yes" as default values. It would let us deal with various combinations, inlcuding qualities that are never lost, for example. And the first parameter can the be used to set the Gain vs Sources category.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:18, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Done. Check out {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} (and its documentation) now.

I've also changed it so that qualities with no listed quality type will no longer sort by default under Quirk, which never made sense. Also, I've changed the {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} template itself to now use {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} as its base.

Ideally, all pages which use {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} should move to use {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}, for three reasons:

# There's no point in a type-specific quality template.
# With the upcoming site-redesign, quality types will change. No reason to keep Stories separate specifically.
# It will free "Stories" for a more proper use than to track qualities :-)

Unfortunately, there are less than 100 pages which use {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} and over 400 which use {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}}. If and when I figure out how to write bots this might be a good exercise. Though maybe it won't be trivial to automate - some "Stories" qualities will need no "Loss" section, some will be discreet and some use CP, etc.
Adnoam (talk) 11:17, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Awesome! Though, I wish I waited a couple of hours before comverting all those qualities to stories ;-)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:53, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Ah! {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}} is a wrapper for {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} so it should be tweaked so that the parameters don't display the loss/gain categories (if that's what we want of it until it's reclaimed)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:24, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

You're right, of course. I've changed {{[[Template:Stories|Stories]]}}'s way of calling into {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} so that it maintains its previous look & feel.

Over time, we should strive to move pages using Stories into using Quality directly, for the reasons listed above.
Adnoam (talk) 12:30, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Oh I've just realised why so many qualities get stuck in the non-category page. The {{[[Template:I|I]]}} template (that among others used in {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} and {{[[Template:Loss|Loss]]}}) links to the plain version of the page. Maybe if it's tweaked to link to the category version it might alleviate some of the problem?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:42, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

It won't be able to differentiate between a real quality which should probably only ever be in a Category page, and something else. For example: Items have a "normal" page (for the.. item), and a Category page for the Item's uses.
Adnoam (talk) 13:51, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Though I guess an argument can be made that to be consistent, we should either make items also category pages (so the same page will show the item's description and list the pages which require it), or to make it so all qualities have a short description page (like for items) and link to the "quality uses" category.

The more I think about this, I think that making all these qualities into Category pages was not the best design. We're using them as "normal" wiki pages, with content, images, etc. Categories are meant to be indexes of similar pages, not to replace the actual wiki content.

If we want to save people the trouble of going to the Category page, it's always possible to embed the categorized list in the page itself (as is done for Item pages, where there's a collapsible/expandable list of the Source/Use categories).

Given the state of the wiki, though, changing this manually would be painful.
Adnoam (talk) 13:52, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I personally would lean towards harmonising the approaches as I found that somewhat confusing a few days ago, as you noticed.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:16, March 13, 2018 (UTC)

I've started the process. But the next step will involve a lot of changes, so I wrote it all down in a blog post.

I'd appreciate you feedback.
Adnoam (talk) 14:16, March 14, 2018 (UTC)

I'll be ready for an Extravagant Wedding if not shortly then tomorrow (Noticed you put it on you to-do list)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:17, March 14, 2018 (UTC)

Thanks!

I've put it on my to do list mostly to fix the template use (mainly the Gain/Loss of the quality).

Also, it would be great if you can verify Extravagant Ring? The comment when this was added was that it's actually a quality (under Stories) and not an Item.
Adnoam (talk) 08:17, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

Both rings are indeed discrete qualities. The Extravagant one was already documented as a quality but I converted to the Quality template with the discrete paramater. The Humble one was an item but I've changed that
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:32, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. It's weird that these are qualities. It would have been much more intuitive to make them a Curiosity item (same image, same description - nothing would have changed).
Adnoam (talk) 10:39, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

I think I am mostly done with the extravgant wedding exploration. Just making sure of the MW range. Is there anything else in particular you need checking re "Throwing an Extravagant Wedding"
Mikey thinkin (talk) 15:50, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

No, nothing specific. I've just noted it to myself since I've noticed most pages using it had the wrong templates and it was too late to fix on the spot.

Thanks for all the work!
Adnoam (talk) 15:55, March 15, 2018 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Attend to Matters of the Heart is done! I was not expecting it to take so long and lead down so many rabbit holes...
Mikey thinkin (talk) 00:20, March 16, 2018 (UTC)

Really well done. I'll strike it off the list :-)
Adnoam (talk) 23:36, March 16, 2018 (UTC)

Restricted Content

Hey, I created Category:Restricted Content. This now includes fate content (including a category that, it turns out, didn't even exist despite being used), backer content (I think a better parent category than storyline) and conversational content. The other obvious candidate is enigma but I don't have acces to that page. Assuming you agree, could you please categorise it as such.

Also there is a Template:Enigma header which should either be applied to the four pages that are currently relevant or, otherwise, deleted?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:26, April 9, 2018 (UTC)

Done.

I think that Category:Fate-locked Stories should probably be under Category:Fate, but also that it, as well as Category:Backer-Exclusive Stories‎ should in addition be categorized under either "Stories" or "Storylines" or whatever the category structure of stories would end up being.
Adnoam (talk) 07:48, April 10, 2018 (UTC)

Yep, I think you are right. Done.

I actually thought the same about Category:Fate-locked Stories but what had stopped me was that it would imply that it's also categorised under Category:Item Uses. But I don't think it makes much sense to treat Fate as an item, so I simply removed that template.

Also I wonder if Exceptional Stories and The House of Chimes ought to be in Exceptional Content directly under Restricted Content rather than under Fate (since it's possible to simply buy it for money). But that's a very minor point.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:03, April 10, 2018 (UTC)

Quality type names vs categories

Hey,

Re: Ambition vs Ambitions

I realise that the categorty type name in the game is in singular. But the category under which ambitions have been sorted has been "Category:Ambitions" in plural for quite some time. As is, Ready to Fly, for example, is sorted under the non-existent Ambition category rather than the same category as, say Ambition: Light Fingers!.

This has also been true of other (but not all) quality category names (e.g. Accomplishment in game vs Category:Accomplishments.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 07:41, April 16, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, the quality name in-game (in the Myself tab) is singular. This might change with the upcoming redesign, so who knows...
Adnoam (talk) 08:55, April 16, 2018 (UTC)

I guess what I am saying is that we should be consistent? If we use the singular then we should re-categorise the pages under the current "Category:Ambitions". It might be enough just to change the Ambition template, I suppose.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:08, April 16, 2018 (UTC)

I've converted all ambitions (apart from enigma) to use the Quality template and updated to our new normal/category page format. This uses Ambition in singular as the quality type, so I've created Category:Ambition under Category:Qualities. The main content of the current "Category:Ambitions" (plural) I've moved to a normal page Ambition (which already existed but was only used as a redirect). I've updated what links to "Category:Ambitions" that I could.

What remains (and requires admin rights):

* Convert Enigma to use Quality template using Ambition (singular) type and move the content to the "normal" page

* Change the link from "Category:Ambitions" to Ambition in the NavBar

* Change the link "Category:Ambitions" to Ambition in a user blog

* Deprecate the Ambition template (at the very least, move the code that adds the "Category:Ambitions" behind the includeonly tags)

* After that "Category:Ambitions" can be deleted
Mikey thinkin (talk) 23:28, April 16, 2018 (UTC)

Done, with one change: although the quality type is "Ambition" (singular), it made more sense to me to have the gateway page be "Ambitions" (plural).
Adnoam (talk) 07:40, April 17, 2018 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I think the user blog I linked above still has a broken link but otherwise all good
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:26, April 17, 2018 (UTC)

I'm OK with the broken link in that old blog (there are already other broken links there).
Adnoam (talk) 18:37, April 17, 2018 (UTC)

Fixing up the Raising Favours guide

Raising Favours#Raising Specific Favours is somewhat of an inconsistent mess, and I think "ordinary London cards that give favors, and how to unlock them" is very important to grinding renown, and worth having a good guide on.

I just realized you were mostly just copying and pasting from the main page when you moved the stuff into the individual 12 pages and transcluded it... but the original creator isn't active, it looks like you did improve it a little, and you're a very active wiki admin, so I might as well still ask whether you have any opinions on it.

I'm working on it at User:Cimanyd/sandbox, for the sake of not editing 12 different pages at once until it's actually done.
Cimanyd (talk) 05:59, April 21, 2018 (UTC)

If you have a suggestion on how to better structure this, then by all means, create a demo and show us.

Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 08:57, April 21, 2018 (UTC)

Discrete quality sources

Hey,

Just saw you updated striped delights/silve hrosehead sourcr pages to use the Item Sources template. Is that intended? Because we've certainly not been doing that for other discrete qualities. In addition it places the page in the category hierarchy under Category:Items, ultimately. I wuld have thought the most natural way to update those pages would simply have been to categorise them under the relevant quality category (and no other page content other than, possibly, a brief summary and an image)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:47, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

It's just the way it was done until now for discreet qualities (for the same reason that we use {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}}/{{[[Template:Item_Loss|Item Loss]]}} for these qualities). There are definitely already lots of those.

And the template does correctly categorizes them under the quality category (e.g. Category:Silver Horseheads Sources is under Category:Silver Horseheads).

You're right that it's bad that these are also categorized under Category:Item Sources. We'll need to think of a way to handle this for all existing cases...
Adnoam (talk) 10:39, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

Ah right. I meant we haven't been doing it (consistently, at any rate) as part of the current ongoing category page move update. I didn't realise that some prior pages were already using this.

Looking at the template code, it doesn't seem to "do" very much that's not covered by the minimal content I suggested above. As far as I can tell the template:

1. Adds the image 2. Links to the parent category with some descriptive text but the default option of the text doesn't make sense as it talks about equipping 3. Categorises it under Category:Item Sources

Given that we don't want 3 and the descriptive text in 2 isn't ideal, it feels to me we should either be doing it manually, as I've been doing so far, (the content is minimal and it's not clear to me the (suboptimal) template then saves on typing) or create a quality-specific template for this?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:54, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

Never do manually what could be standardized via a template :-)

In this case, probably a {{<span class="new">Quality Sources</span>}} template (similar to how I've created {{[[Template:Quality_uses|Quality uses]]}}).

The trick would be to find all the existing pages to thus change. Let me think about that...

(basically, we want to find all category pages such that they:

# Use {{[[Template:Item_Sources|Item Sources]]}}
# Their parent quality page does not use {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}}

)
Adnoam (talk) 10:57, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

Also, creating a Quality-specific template (if needed) would allow us to both the Source and Gain categories to use the same code (with the long term view for when the same is done for {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}}/{{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}}/{{[[Template:Increase|Increase]]}})
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:58, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

I could also be misremembering things, and maybe there aren't really that many other examples of Discreet Qualities using {{[[Template:Item_Sources|Item Sources]]}}. (we certainly don't have a template used for Gain pages).

For now, I can't think of a way to detect such cases using just templates and categories. This will require running a bot over all sub-categories of Category:Item Sources and look for those without {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} for their base quality/item.
Adnoam (talk) 12:11, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

As a starting point, we could temporarily adjust the {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} template so that it adds some sorting category whenever the Discreet field is set to yes and some other sorting category whenever the Discreet is set to No.

Also, have you seen this [1]? Seemingly there is a way for an admin to enable category intersection functionality. This could be used for example to intersect discrete quality category with Category:Item Sources (provided it deals with sub-/super-categories properly). I think it would generally be useful functionality to have?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:26, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

Interesting extension to have, though I'm not sure it will solve the current issue. It will allow us to request a list of all pages which belong to two specific categories. This won't help us (unless we arbitrarily update the Item Sources template to also add those pages under the item's category). I've requested the extension to be enabled for us, just in case.

There are extensions that can do exactly what we need but I don't see them as part of wikia.
Adnoam (talk) 12:40, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

Hey, they are fast!

Special:CategoryIntersection
Adnoam (talk) 12:56, April 23, 2018 (UTC)

Terminology

Hey,

I've collected several outstanding and new discussions/questions about terminology that I'd like to start finalising, if possible. 

Urgency - If I am not mistaken your preference was to keep "Autofire" term to mean "Must Urgency". I am happy with that if that's still the plan (although, my personal preference was to call it "Compulsory" to free up the word "Autofire" for...)

Autofire - So the question is then what term to use for red bordered cards/menace trigger events/Ambition: Light Fingers! 11. I've considered the following alternatives: "Direct/Immediate Effect/Resolution/Result" (6 possible combinations). What do you think? Any other alternatives? 

Events - We talked about combining Cards and Storylets under one template. The actual template implementation notwithstanding, I wanted to try finalising the terminology. Would there be a new term to describe Cards or Storylets (e.g. "events") or would everything be Storylets and Cards would be just a particular subset? The problem with "events" (which otherwise would be my preference) is ambiguity with "seasonal events". The problem with using "storylets" as the top level category is we need to come up with a new term for what we currently call storylets (i.e. non-compulsory storylets assigned to a location).

Social Qualities - I am quite pleased with the Category:Social Qualities and also with the {{[[Template:Social_Gain|Social Gain]]}}/{{[[Template:Social_Loss|Social Loss]]}} templates but they don't quite match up at the moment. Not all Social Qualities use Social Gain/Loss. So I'd like to sub-categorise those social qualities that have different values per player (and thus use social gain/loss). But I need a good name. Current ideas: "Interpersonal Qualities", "Interplayer Qualities", "Player Relationship Qualities" or, simply, "Relationship Qualities". What do you reckon?

Quality game instructions - Several qualities have text that tells you where they can be obtained. This is similar to "Game Instructions" field in actions. So I was going to update {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} with that but it occurred to me they are not really instructions and more like "Availability suggestions" or something. What do you reckon? (Also maybe also implement the Wiki Note field, as with actions?)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 13:00, May 8, 2018 (UTC)

I'll need to think some more on Urgency/Autofire and their likes.

As for Quality: feel free to use "Game Instructions". consistency in parameter names across templates is good. (and for me, what makes this "game instructions" is that it's text addressing the player (about mechanics) and not the player's character).
Adnoam (talk) 10:09, May 15, 2018 (UTC)

Formatting

Hey, I see you changed square brackets to parenthesis on Confirm every accusation levelled at you citing "consistent formatting".

For every other page I checked, including the other 24 options on The Hallowmas Edition for setting qualities the square brackets are always used. That's why I edited it to be consistent with the rest. Is there something I'm missing?
Miranah (talk) 16:45, May 9, 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. I was thinking of many other examples throughout the wiki, but it should first be consistent with the other options of the same storylet.

(eventually I'll get to code this into the {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} template itself to make it completely consistent...)
Adnoam (talk) 18:49, May 9, 2018 (UTC)

Concerning "The Name Known to Many"...

I apologize, I probably didn't quite express myself. Yes, it's great that the articles are integrated, but something isn't completely clear:

The text in "Just so!" by design and result corresponds to "You mix with the cream ...". I thought so too. But this option (Mix with the cream) I experienced on myself, and the result was different. That's what I wanted to mean when I said "in practice the text was different."



The very "story" is quite rare, and it probably shouldn't be at all (but shh, let it be, such loopholes make the game more interesting), I scrupulously captured everything.

Here are the pictures.

Thus, at the moment, the correction that I originally made on page "You mix with the cream" is relevant. But then where did the text come from: "That's it! A friend gave me one of your short stories - wonderful stuff! ..."?

I think that perhaps earlier the text was different, as if a player character is met by someone familiar and talks to him. This can be understood from the text of the options:

"Maybe he's familiar with some of your works?" from "You're striving to become"

"Does he know you from there? Or has he heard of your foray into short stories?" from "You've been investigating the secrets of Veilgarden..."

etc.

I doubt, but I cann't verify that these lines are now missing in the game if not everywhere, then at least in some options.



In general, this is all confusing, maybe it's worth leaving everything as is and not deleting the text, while it's possible that somebody in practice won't probe other options. In the end, you can not embrace the immense, right? Sorry for bad English if so. Thanks!
Catowar Meerkat (talk) 21:07, May 13, 2018 (UTC)

I see. So it might have changed at some point.

These options are such a corner-case that I don't really mind leaving them as is. If you encounter anything different, then please feel free to update the corresponding page appropriately. But I think it's fine either way (most players will never encounter these, and it's one time record keeping storylet anyway)
Adnoam (talk) 07:54, May 14, 2018 (UTC)

New header image

Hi, quick question: what do you think about a new header image? I have prepared this:

(using font and background from the redesigned page)

Alternatively, I already have updated the old image with a new data (i.e. (c) 2010-2018).
Rahv7 (talk) 13:42, August 2, 2018 (UTC)

Looks fine to me.

(It would be weird to see "Fallen London wiki" instead of the old-school "Echo Bazaar wiki")
Adnoam (talk) 13:45, August 2, 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean ... keep the old one or add the new one?
Rahv7 (talk) 14:25, August 2, 2018 (UTC)

I meant that the new image looks fine to me (as a replacement for the old header image, of course - no need for both).

My comment was just about that it will take some getting used to not seeing the "old-school" Echo Bazaar anymore in the image header.
Adnoam (talk) 11:49, August 5, 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I've updated the header image. I've also played around a bit with colour schemes and came up with this: https://i.imgur.com/MoZHuq9.png. I've been using colours from the new page, e.g. background colour is the bg-colour from the page, buttons and links have the colour of buttons on the new page, etc.

Again, if you like it we could use that colour scheme or we could keep the old one. (I've just fiddled around a bit, so it's really no big deal if you'd rather stick to the old colour scheme. It's really just a suggestion ...)
Rahv7 (talk) 16:23, August 7, 2018 (UTC)

The colour scheme in your sample image looks nice (but I'm no expert :-)). I don't have any objection at this point.

You should probably publish this intent somewhere more public (i.e. not on my Wall, but maybe in a blog post, or in the wiki's forum) and invite some active wiki editors to comment on such a change.
Adnoam (talk) 07:11, August 8, 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. I just wanted to check with you first to make sure you're okay with it.
Rahv7 (talk) 10:59, August 8, 2018 (UTC)

It think I'm done with updating the layout. The general colour scheme aside, I've updated the wiki title and lots and lots of templates. Mostly the colours of all kinds of infoboxes such as spoilers, seasonal events, SMEN, Exceptional Stories, etc. Should you notice that I've forgotten anythings or anything looks weird, let me know. (Also updated the blog post with that exact same information ;))
Rahv7 (talk) 12:30, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

Nicely done. Thanks for all the work.

It will take some getting used to - it looks so different! :-)
Adnoam (talk) 13:25, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

About a city vice card

Hi, so sorry to disturb you. I just drew a card called "City Vices: what profit?", and I can't find it on the City Vices page or by directly searching it and its options. So I wonder if it's a new card and it hasn't been added to the wikia yet? Or because it's part of the "soul trade" storylet so it's due to the fate policy? But I thought there would at least be a title of it on the City Vices page... I apologize if this question is bothering you. I'm just a bit confused.

(I'm keeping the card now, so you may contact me if there are further information needed.)
Flyingflyx (talk) 11:26, August 5, 2018 (UTC)

Hi,

The card isn't on the wiki because it's indeed Fate-locked. You only see it if you've played the Soul Trade.

The only Fate-related cards/storylets/actions on the wiki are those which are visible to all (but only playable if you've payed Fate). Cards/storylets/actions only visible after paying Fate are not on the wiki.
Adnoam (talk) 11:47, August 5, 2018 (UTC)

Oh, thank you so much for answering! I can go back to pick an option now ;)
Flyingflyx (talk) 12:03, August 5, 2018 (UTC)

Quality categories structure

(Replying to Thread:57181#35, just to keep it clear for future reference)

Yes, I do think it makes sense. In fact we did discuss that originally back at the dawn of the overhaul :) And yes, I do think we shouldn't have it as a default for most qualities. Regarding, "automating" it by means of PAGESINCAT, is there a reason we didn't do something similar for the Gains/Losses categories (which we currently toggle manually)?

There is an overarching structural point here. Category:QualityName serves a dual purpose in some sense. Its predominant use is as if it were Category:QualityName Uses and that's how it's linked on the Quality page. But it also keep track of related sub-categories like Loss and Gain subcategories. Notice, for example, how effectively Connected Gain appears *twice* on the Quality page - once as a result of the template (the "Actions that raise this quality" but) and once as a subcategory in the expandable use.

So in a way Category: QualityName Challenge is already accessible from the quality page but it's not super intuitive.

Might it also be an opportunity to consider whether we should have a more explicitly named Category: QualityName Uses (which would contain all the individual pages currently categorised under Category: QualityName)? And the Category: QualityName would then simply contain the subcategories for Gains, Losses, Sources, Challenges (and potentially, down the road, the category for the quality being used to set the value of rewards for variable results).

I *think* we would only need to change category names in the templates ({{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}}, {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}, {{[[Template:Quality_uses|Quality uses]]}}) I don't think these categories are ever manually assigned?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 14:13, August 12, 2018 (UTC)

Regarding "I don't think these categories are ever manually assigned?"

I think there are still pages which directly include categories, instead of going by the templates. I still encounter them all the time while cleaning up other stuff. So I'm not sure if this will help more than cause inconsistencies (or whether those cases will be easy to identify).

If we'd been designing the wiki's category structure from scratch, then I believe we'd go with what you outline here (Category:QualityName which has as sub-categories the Uses/Gain/Sources/Loss/Challenge categories).



Regarding: "So in a way Category: QualityName Challenge is already accessible from the quality page but it's not super intuitive."

Note that this is true only if the Challenge category page exists (which it often does not, even if pages are categorized under it).



Regarding "is there a reason we didn't do something similar for the Gains/Losses categories (which we currently toggle manually"

Depending on the quality, it's not always useful to show Gains/Losses/Sources, so we can toggle it. We do always show the "Uses" category on the quality's page (and it if doesn't exist we tag it for maintenance, so that every quality will have a Category).
Adnoam (talk) 06:42, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

OK, here goes:

I've updates {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} as follows:

# The expandable/collapsible tree of pages under the quality's category now displays only regular pages (not sub-categories).
# If there are pages categorized under "QualityName Challenge", and that category page exists, then show it. (e.g. Connected: Summerset)
# If there are pages categorized under "QualityName Challenge", but that category page does not exist, just link to it (can't create the tree), and add the page to Category:Qualities without Challenge Category, for maintenance and tracking. (e.g. Committed).

* If there are no such pages, don't even show a link to a challenge category.

Also:

# I've created the new {{[[Template:Quality_challenges|Quality challenges]]}} (as an analogue to {{[[Template:Quality_uses|Quality uses]]}}). Put this as the content of such Challenge Categories.
# I'm not sure how to find all existing Challenge Categories without this template in them. Perhaps a bot?

Please let me know if you see this breaking anything.
Adnoam (talk) 08:30, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

Great work, thank you!

Before we consider bots, is a simple search not sufficient in this case?

Restricting to namespace Category and searching for Challenge gives only 40 results. So just by inspection, we can see that it's only Connected: Summerset and the four main attributes that currently have existing challenge categories. Is there a reason that this search might be missing something out?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:18, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

I wanted a way to search just the names of Category pages for the suffix "Challenge". The regular search includes page contents as well.

But you're right that since it's only 40 we can manually scan the results.

A bot, BTW, can scan all qualities for which there is at least one page under the quality's challenge category, create that category, and add {{[[Template:Quality_challenges|Quality challenges]]}} as its content. This will ensure none are created without this template in them (which also adds those categories into Category:Quality Challenges.

EDIT: well, that was easy enough. No bot needed :-)
Adnoam (talk) 11:23, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule. In some rare cases, there are challenged based on items, not qualities. e.g. Opening a hole.

Should we ignore those? Update the {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} template to support those? It's a very rare case.
Adnoam (talk) 11:59, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

Personally I favour treating Items and Qualities as similarly as possible (where there are similarities) so I'd say change the template but I agree it's not a big deal

Well done on doing all the categories already! :)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 12:18, August 13, 2018 (UTC)

FYI: The wiki SITENAME

I've noticed that the wiki's {{<span class="new">SITENAME</span>}}-variable is still set to "Echo Bazaar Wiki". Apparently we cannot change this ourselves but need to ask FANDOM to do it.

No idea how important this actually is. It was used in the {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}}-Template. For now, I have just replaced the variable with actual text. Not sure if we want to do anything about the issue...
Rahv7 (talk) 09:52, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. It's also why it's the main page's name, and why it's in the browser's title bar.

I don't see any reason not to try and change it into "Fallen London Wiki". Any objections to requesting this change?

(I've requested stuff from FANDOM before, like adding extensions, and they were extremely responsive. Not sure if in this case we'll need to show some sort of wiki community discussion and support...)
Adnoam (talk) 10:14, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Mikey thinkin, your thoughts (for the record :-)?

Adnoam (talk) 10:51, August 14, 2018 (UTC)
Adnoam (talk) 10:51, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

I have no objections :-) Sounds like an eminently sensible thing to do!
Mikey thinkin (talk) 10:57, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Request sent!
Adnoam (talk) 11:31, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Aaaaand done!

(they are very fast!)
Adnoam (talk) 11:46, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you! :)
Rahv7 (talk) 12:17, August 14, 2018 (UTC)

Quality Gain/Loss templates

Hi, I have created templates for {{[[Template:Quality_Gain|Quality Gain]]}} and {{[[Template:Quality_Loss|Quality Loss]]}}, analogous to {{[[Template:Item_Sources|Item Sources]]}}

As I'm writing this, it's only used for here.

If there is a template for these things already, feel free to delete it again. It's just that for all the qualities I checked, the Gain/Loss pages had been manually created...
Rahv7 (talk) 08:13, August 24, 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. Adnoam and I discussed it in the past - I can't recall exactly what the issues were at the time but I like the idea in principle. Two points on template implementation:

1. The current structure is to categorise the Gain/Source categories under the corresponding quality. If we intend to maintain this structure then the template would need to do that categorisation.

2. There is the issue with Gain vs Sources. Discrete qualities have sources (rather than gain) but it is inappropriate to use ItemSources there as the latter template would ultimately categorise the page under Items. Ultimately it's not a giant issue as the current template code doesn't do a whole lot that needs distinguishing between the two. But I guess I was wondering if the template name might cause confusion. Also the wording "Storylets and actions which increase" might need tweaking to make it slightly more generic.

(Personally I actually favour combining QualityGain and ItemSources under some common wrapper template but I know it's not an insignificant amount of work)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:44, August 24, 2018 (UTC)

At the moment, both templates do nothing else but determine the name of the quality based on the pagename and grab the image associated with the quality. Feel free to expand them in whichever way you think is necessary.

Basically, I just wanted to create the gain-page for Picking and couldn't believe I would have to write all of that stuff myself and search for the image and whatnot. Of course, I have now spent probably twice as long on creating the template, but the computer scientist in me says that this was the right decision and it needed to be done ;)

If you and adnoam don't mind, I would propose that we use the templates now (at least for new pages) and can do whatever extensions you think are necessary whenever we get around to it. Modifications such as adding categories, parameters (e.g. for discrete qualities), etc. can be done whenever one of us gets around to do it. It'd just be a waste of time to keep keep writing the general parts of gain/loss pages manually.
Rahv7 (talk) 14:51, August 24, 2018 (UTC)

I don't object to the new templates, thought they do need proper documentation and categorization.

Specifically for Picking Through the Wreckers' Cove, I don't think we need this quality's page to link to the Gain/Loss categories - it's not a quality for which players want to know all the available ways for them to raise and to lower. It's a quality that is set at a start of a story sequence, and is cleared at the end of it.
Adnoam (talk) 18:24, August 25, 2018 (UTC)

New image size

Do we want to handle the different image size for small images in any special way? I've updated a few images, for instance this one.

Here's an example what it looks like on a regular page.
Rahv7 (talk) 14:27, October 1, 2018 (UTC)

We use the images that FBG use. When they update their images, we take the latest and update ours.

Does this particular image come form a different place, or did they just update their Horseheadsmall.png?
Adnoam (talk) 12:28, October 2, 2018 (UTC)

They did just update that image. Not the large one.

I was mostly asking because the new images are squares. It seems that mixing images doesn't look too terrible. Updating all small images would be some serious work, though.
Rahv7 (talk) 22:19, October 2, 2018 (UTC)

Have all the small images been updated?

To keep things as consistent as they have been we'll need to update them all then. Perhaps there's a way we can create some tracker quality/category to know which ones still need this to be done...
Adnoam (talk) 05:26, October 3, 2018 (UTC)

Refreshing pages

Now that the page has been transferred to Fandom, the "Refresh"-option is gone from the Edit-submenu. Have you found any alternative way to manually refresh pages? Or do we simply need to wait until the wiki notices changes?
Rahv7 (talk) 16:08, December 4, 2018 (UTC)

The "Refresh" option was not always there even on wikia (it came and went and I couldn't understand the pattern).

Now there's a "Purge" option which does the same. If this isn't there, do an empty edit (open he page for editing and save it with no changes) - this has the same effect as refresh/purge.
Adnoam (talk) 11:36, December 6, 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip :)
Rahv7 (talk) 10:12, December 7, 2018 (UTC)

"Stuck in" Revert

Hello, regarding this revert here, I added the category because the category page says "Actions requiring it (or a specific level or range of it)" and the storylet requires a range of 0 <= x < 281. Was this not right? Thanks! Salaxalans (talk) 05:33, April 18, 2019 (UTC)
Salaxalans (talk) 05:33, April 18, 2019 (UTC)

Hi. In this case, it's true you can think of it as a specific range (0 <= x < 281), but in practice we see this as requiring not having this quality (or, more specifically, not having it too high).

In such cases, the wiki convention is to not include such actions in the quality's category.

I agree there's a good case to me made that such cases should be added to these categories, but since it will be inconsistent with many many other pages, it's something to discuss generally and see what the rest of the editors think, and then apply globally.

Also: Even if agreed that this category should be added in such cases, the way to handle this would not be by adding the category manually, but by using the proper templates which would handle it behind the scene - in this case, by using the template {{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}} (adds the category) to list the requirements and not {{[[Template:IL|IL]]}} (doesn't add a category).
Adnoam (talk) 05:56, April 18, 2019 (UTC)

Alright thank you very much! Salaxalans (talk) 15:38, April 19, 2019 (UTC)
Salaxalans (talk) 15:38, April 19, 2019 (UTC)

Allow me to introduce myself

Hey Fallen London Wiki! I'm Emptylord, and I’m part of a new team over at Fandom who are tasked with supporting communities, such as yours. Lucky you, you’ve been designated me! If you have any questions relating to your wiki—whether it's code-related, policy related, or otherwise—I'm your first point of contact, and your own personal liaison to full-time Fandom Staff.
Emptylord (talk) 22:38, June 3, 2019 (UTC)

Hello Emptylord and welcome to our little corner of FANDOM. Nice to make your acquaintance.
Adnoam (talk) 06:23, June 4, 2019 (UTC)

Would you like to enable Discussions?

While doing the rounds, I noticed your Fandom doesn't have any community features enabled. Would you like to enable Discussions?
Emptylord (talk) 02:50, June 20, 2019 (UTC)

(Trying again, since my reply seems to have vanished without a trace)

Hi Emptylord,

Thanks for the offer. I think that our wiki's community is not active enough to really enjoy the benefits of this. However, that does seem like a much nicer system than our current Forum. So, please do enable it and we'll try to give it a go.

(tagging Rahv7, the other active-admin).

Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 06:33, June 24, 2019 (UTC)

Watchful/Shadowy/Dangerous/Persuasive Cards categories

I noticed you removed the categories I added some days ago to a few pages.

Each of them start with "These cards test your [Attribute] skills.", which made me believe they're supposed to include cards that have one or more challenges of the associated category, so mistake on my part. Maybe it could say something like "These cards require your W/S/D/P attribute." if they're supposed to need a certain level to show up?

The pages also list many cards that don't have said requirements, but have challenges for the attributes, namely the Making Your Name cards. I assume the categories would have to be removed from all of those.
Binary7 (talk) 19:20, July 18, 2019 (UTC)

Hi,

I don't remember now offhand which changes these were (to which specific cards, so a link would be appreciated).

Basically, these categories are very old on the wiki, and personally I feel they are a bit obsolete (they are certainly less consistent than they used to be). With the change to Making Your Name those old categories became less immediately relevant for a bunch of cards (as these used to categorize cards which depended on specific levels of a specified quality).
Adnoam (talk) 21:08, July 18, 2019 (UTC)

The one I remember off the top of my head is Bringing the revolution, which actually still has a Shadowy Cards category from before my edit.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. They did come in handy when I was checking which cards I wanted to draw before raising the required attribute beyond their ranges.

If you want, I can go through the four category pages when I have some time and remove all entries except those that actually require a quality to be below/above a certain level, or in a specific range to show up.
Binary7 (talk) 21:36, July 18, 2019 (UTC)

What you suggest makes the most sense to me, but I haven't reviewed all of those cards to see that it will be consistent (as I said, these categories are very old - much older than my time on the wiki - and the wiki and game itself have changed a lot in those years).

User:Rahv7, any thoughts?
Adnoam (talk) 12:41, July 21, 2019 (UTC)

Fate-locked quality

Hi there, just wanted to ask why the page for Stars Under Skin exists? Are there any non-fate-locked branched that have this as a prerequisite?
Rahv7 (talk) 12:21, July 22, 2019 (UTC)

No, but like other Fate qualities/items, it can be placed on one's mantelpiece/scrapbook for display.

In fact, I first saw this quality on someone's profile page, before I went ahead and got my own... :-)
Adnoam (talk) 12:47, July 22, 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I hadn't thought of that!
Rahv7 (talk) 12:57, July 22, 2019 (UTC)

New Category request:Qualities Reset by Zailing

I don't know how a new category could be created, but could we please start a category page for Qualities Reset by Zailing? I always forget the full list (though a few are easy to remember), and it would be nice to link them together that way so there's more than just the new guide to list them.
174.4.190.217 10:21, September 5, 2019 (UTC)

Not a problem: Category:Qualities Reset by Zailing. Feel free to add qualities to this category.

(I've already added a few)
Adnoam (talk) 14:02, September 5, 2019 (UTC)

Thank you!
174.4.190.217 11:08, September 15, 2019 (UTC)

Tables

So I'm making a table

 on a page I've just created and it has got a new editor interface and I don't know how to make new row in the table. I had a quick look on the editing guide but I could find no mention of tables. Can you help me please.







On another page I made some time ago I'm having problems with tables. Zailing (Guide)

Saved View

The tables look differant when they're saved from what the editor shows. I'm trying to fill one coloum in the table with IL templates with a line break between them so they're stacked on each other and not next to each other.

However when I save my edits, the IL templates get all weird. Like if there are more than 3 they get double line spacing and sometimest they ignore me when i try to get them to go to the next line and rarely, it just completly fucks up.

Editor View

Can you please help me with this.
BaBoas (talk) 07:52, October 14, 2019 (UTC)

I never use the visual editor - only the source code editor. I've fixed a few things in the tables in Zailing (Guide):

# Removed "nowiki" tags for regular "-" (simply have a space between the pipe ("|") opening the next cell of the table and the actual dash ("-").
# Used references to add footnotes to a table.
# Consistently use <br/> to separate lists of items/qualities. Don't use "br" for some, and actual newlines for others.

You can look at the history of my changes of the page to see what this did to the source code.

Please let me know if this helps.
Adnoam (talk) 14:14, October 15, 2019 (UTC)

Ahh, that's works. Thank you for your help. With this and everything else. :)
BaBoas (talk) 22:39, October 15, 2019 (UTC)

Parallel creation

Looks like we created this page at the same time. Should something be done about the possibility of gleaning slightly more than 250 characters from the edit history?
Cactusorange (talk) 15:09, October 31, 2019 (UTC)

I doubt it matters much with just sentence fragments, but I've gone ahead and purged the history.

Thanks!
Adnoam (talk) 15:26, October 31, 2019 (UTC)

Spam

This page should probably be deleted.
Binary7 (talk) 10:33, November 4, 2019 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Don't know how I've missed it.
Adnoam (talk) 11:56, November 4, 2019 (UTC)

Trading confessions

Trading your Confessions is a bit simplified from what appears in-game. In-game all the trades have their own icon, and you also do it in two stages – first selecting which confession to give, then selecting which you want. But I don't know if reflecting this complexity is necessary, or what would be the best way of doing so.

Trading an NPC's Confession is a somewhat outdated name now that confessions are generic, too.
Cactusorange (talk) 07:02, November 7, 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, this was done to simplify the documentation of how it works (since it's a lot of branches which pretty much boil down to the same thing (give one confession, get one confession, with very limited variation on the text). Feel free to suggest ways to make this both more accurate and easy to use/browse.

You're right about the "NPC confession" name, which came from Hallowmas seasons of 2016-2017 and are no longer relevant.
Adnoam (talk) 08:09, November 7, 2019 (UTC)

I took screenshots of the pages for picking which confession to give and which to receive before Hallowmas ended, so I've still got an overview.

My proposal for how to make it a more accurate representation, without an explosion in the amount of pages, would be to continue disregarding which confessions you are trading but accurately reflect the storylet "depth" (storylets within storylets). Specifically:

* Trading your Confessions options link to a new page Trade a Confession.
* Trade a Confession is a redirect with only branch descriptions, pointing to a new storylet Trading a Confession.
* Trading a Confession has options going to the actual social action branch: Trade for a Confession.
* Trade for a Confession is mostly identical to Trading an NPC's Confession, the only difference being that the branch description has updated since, so it can be that page just renamed. The description will need one word replaced with […], as the ones for different confessions are identical except that one word.

It's a little more clicking when navigating the wiki, but this is how it's implemented in FL and it doesn't skip over how the game knows which confession you want to receive.

Would love to hear if this seems like a good solution.

Also, if there's some way to change which icon is used for the options on the storylet page, similar to how you can change the name to be different, that would help with making it look better and more accurate, but it's by no means necessary.
Cactusorange (talk) 21:07, November 10, 2019 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable (and we should definitely rename Trading an NPC's Confession and update its content rather than creating a duplicate).

But can you please elaborate a bit on how this part will actually look?

* Trade a Confession is a redirect with only branch descriptions, pointing to a new storylet Trading a Confession.
Adnoam (talk) 09:04, November 11, 2019 (UTC)

Just a redirect branch like Trade confessions with another player with no results screen.
Cactusorange (talk) 15:50, November 11, 2019 (UTC)

So basically just one more action/redirect page between Trade confessions with another player and the page listing the different options? No problem.
Adnoam (talk) 12:21, November 12, 2019 (UTC)

Not exactly. It's between the pages listing which to trade away and which to receive. I think I've implemented it all like it should be now: Top page Trading your Confessions.
Cactusorange (talk) 15:07, November 12, 2019 (UTC)

This looks fine. Thanks.
Adnoam (talk) 08:35, November 13, 2019 (UTC)

PoSI item crafting

If you like we can remove everything that is not actually crafted. At the moment it's a complete mess. I just noticed that the page was hopelessly outdated (both concerning items and effects) and wanted to improve it a little. But a lot of it is just duplicating information that is available elsewhere.
Rahv7 (talk) 16:06, December 17, 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not up to date and repeats info. Also, it takes effort to keep it in sync with its mobile friendly sibling.

It's currently a hybrid of POSI item crafting and a guide in the extended inventory. Possibly these two concepts were one and the same in the distant past (before Renown items, Christmas items, etc.).
Adnoam (talk) 11:47, December 18, 2019 (UTC)

Thank you

On behalf of everyone who shamefully uses the wiki without contributing, I wish to thank you for your incredible work. Have a nice day!
89.162.74.182 01:21, December 28, 2019 (UTC)

Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name

Why do you keep deleting stuff out of the guide?

I understand that pruning is required to keep things from becoming an overgrown mass, but at the same time without content there is no content. :)

I suppose I'm particularly emotionally invested in this one, because Seeking Mr Eaten's Name (Guide) is the entire reason I decided to play this game in the first place. It's a complicated storyline, and there's still plenty of room for improvement, but the key thing it did was link together all the actions, cards and storylets *in one place*. Yes, all the information is out there in other articles on the wiki, but one of the most important functions of guides is to collate and make that info concisely readable, even if it means duplication.

It doesn't matter that the candles actions in the seeking road don't *do* anything - what matters is that their SMEN unlock costs match the actual SMEN unlocks to get the associated candle (which they do). This makes the "seeking road" part of the guide a super-useful quick reference for the SMEN targets that everything requires.
D0SBoots (talk) 09:15, March 4, 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

The reason I've deleted these particular lines is because they are useless for a guide. These are "empty" actions which do nothing, therefore they add only clutter to the guide (we shouldn't guide players to use those actions). The guide page does not necessarily have to include any and all actions and branches relating to the story - just those that help players navigate it and make progress.

What you describe is the need to document the different SMEN levels in which certain options become available. This info is already there on the page (no need to look for other pages), and like more user-generated content, can always be improved.

There'a a difference between documenting the needed steps/levels to make progress and documenting every branch out there (even those which do nothing and don't help in making progress). The section on "The Seeking Road" documents a very specific storylet and its branches, and therefore should only do so for those branches which a player might need to play.

Indeed, this is a complicated storyline, with a complicated history (I really miss old SMEN, which had much more of an "edge" to it). But that it all the more reason to focus on the steps which should be documented to serve as a guide, instead of dumping everything onto a single page.
Adnoam (talk) 10:48, March 4, 2020 (UTC)

I think we're agreed on the overall issues with the guide (it's too long and hard to follow), and in general what should be done to address that, but disagreeing on the specifics.

I'm not attached to documenting every branch of every storylet, although I do think it's important to at least link in to the major ones so seekers can follow the action chains if they need to. But what I do want to see is a concise summary of what you can do at the various SMEN levels/what you should be *targeting* to do at the various levels. The old text had that (rather by accident), because of the bolded SMEN targets and the concise bulleted-list nature of how it laid out stuff in The Seeking Road section.

The candles section *does* mention the SMEN targets (and it's vital that it does), but they're buried in walls of text - you can't easily scan for them. And because the candles are in their own section, you can't see how they relate to other things, like Grieve/Hate and Final Preparations. Honestly, Sleep with the Calling Card should probably be tagged SMEN 21 too, because even though it has no direct requirement, Winking Isle is useless until then.

That bulleted list is what really tied it together for me when I first saw the guide: I understood that everything was tied to SMEN progression, and it laid out how the other pieces fit into that progression.
D0SBoots (talk) 19:42, March 4, 2020 (UTC)

The other open question, in my mind, is how much of a "guide" should the guide be? In other words, how much should it be just a reference collection of factual links to other information, vs. containing more subjective opinions about possible strategies?

I obviously thought it could use more of the latter, which is why I added the section on detailed strategy for using MMiDoS. You clearly disagreed: Special:Diff/277488/277489. Then User:Saltyseahag69 (who I invited to this discussion) re-added a section that is sort of mid-way between: Less prescriptive in terms of guidance, but still offering opinions.

If we don't agree on a direction here, then the tone of the article will fly off every which-way. (Or there will be edit-warring, which is worse.)
D0SBoots (talk) 18:53, March 5, 2020 (UTC)

I think the disagreements were more just in structure--like I agree, for example, that adding technically-useless options to the Seeking Road section is a little confusing, since then it's pulling double-duty as a roadmap and as a guide to that specific storylet. Hopefully the summary up top (which could also certainly be expanded if we want) cuts that baby in half, so we can have an overall guide and the Seeking Road section can just be a guide to the Seeking Road.

So far as prescriptive advice in the guide: I think it's generally best to steer clear of absolutes, since Seeking is very much about the journey and atmosphere rather than something that should be min-maxed. Striking a tone like Money-Making, where different options are presented but with the trade-offs left to be evaluated by the players, may be most effective here.
Saltyseahag69 (talk) 14:39, March 6, 2020 (UTC)

I do like what you've started with the summary, and I think (possibly with some edits/bolding) it can take over the role that the list was doing down below.

As to guidishness, the Money-Making guide has its own issues... but I take your point, and think I agree. So rather than this:

"Play the cards in this order: KNAVE, SEVEN, TWO, ACE, ..."

Better would be:

"Taking into account the actions needed to rebuild stats, gain echoes and/or reduce menaces, from least to most expensive the cards are: TWO, ACE, KNAVE, SEVEN, ..."

That's hopefully sufficiently objective, and leaves players the choice of using that as a quick-reference if they want to, or ignore it entirely.
D0SBoots (talk) 04:31, March 7, 2020 (UTC)

All,

I've been away from the game (and the wiki) for a couple of months so unfortunately I haven't followed up on any recent changes. I agree with the above. Guide pages on the wiki should be... guides - not instructions. They also shouldn't just repeat data points already recorded on the main storylet pages, but only those points useful to guide the confused player through the branches of the story.
Adnoam (talk) 17:28, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

I think some duplication can be helpful, but only when it's substantially transforming the information in an easier-to-comprehend way (and preferably when it's duplicating informative that's unlikely to change: I.e table of SMEN actions good, table of Cryptic Clue sources not-so-good).

I took out one of the lists and replaced it with a table; technically this repeats data points, but it's data you'd need to flip through 9 tabs to properly compare. With the table, I don't feel like there's a need for "instructions" because it's easy for everyone to evaluate the trade-odds themselves.
D0SBoots (talk) 19:02, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

Issue with Item Sources template

The Item Sources template is acting up on Category:Sighted the Storm-bird Gain. I think the hyphen in the page name is breaking the template somehow.
Optimatum (talk) 04:15, March 17, 2020 (UTC)

Hi, it's fixed now. The problem in this case wasn't the hyphen. Instead, this page required the {{[[Template:Quality_Gain|Quality Gain]]}}-template instead of the {{[[Template:Item_Sources|Item Sources]]}}-template.
Rahv7 (talk) 00:21, March 19, 2020 (UTC)

Well, that would do it! Is there a wiki-editing guide somewhere that explains which templates to use for which situations? I find myself often confused between, say, Increase/Gain/Item Gain.
Optimatum (talk) 18:01, March 20, 2020 (UTC)

I don't think there is. The reason this wasn't working in this particular case was simply that we are doing very simple string operations to find out what page a category-page is associated with. Like, for the {{[[Template:Item_Sources|Item Sources]]}}-template, we simple remove "Sources" from the page-name to get the item-name. And if page-name and template do not match, this will usually fail and strange things can happen.
Rahv7 (talk) 18:39, March 20, 2020 (UTC)

Adding docs (and links between the docs) for more of the templates is one of the things on my list, to hopefully help with this. (It's confused me too.) Editing Guidelines is locked, but one of the admins could also potentially add a blurb there.
D0SBoots (talk) 19:22, March 20, 2020 (UTC)

I all. I don't see a good reason for the Editing Guidelines page to be locked for admins only (that was done in 2010). I've removed the protection. Any contribution is welcome.
Adnoam (talk) 17:31, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

What to do about the new small icons (and new images in general)

The context for this is the massive in-place rework of many of the game images that just landed. I'm working on a script to discover where all the wiki's images are outdated compared to what's currently live. However, when manually updating the small icons, I've already seen a snag:

The new large ones drop-in at the same size: 100x130. But our existing small icons are 40x52, and seem to be just scaled-down versions of the large ones: see (original version) and (which has the border around the edge). In contrast, if you download from /icons_small/, you get 40x40 images. Mass-updating using those would change the look-and-feel of a lot of stuff, but changing only some of them would be even more inconsistent. What to do?
D0SBoots (talk) 19:58, March 20, 2020 (UTC)

Refuse to be involved shows exactly what I was worried about: It links Suspected by the Constables twice, but the images don't look the same. That's because the first link uses Template:Unlock, which uses Template:IL, which rescales the large version, while the second uses Template:Loss, which uses Template:I, which uses the *small* version.
D0SBoots (talk) 20:21, March 20, 2020 (UTC)

There's no need to update all the small images that haven't been changed except for the cropping. We've decided to ignore the size issues when the changes were made. We keep the old images but new ones have the different aspect ratio and that's just the way it is.

To address the other issues, I've adjusted the {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}}- and {{[[Template:Loss|Loss]]}}-templates to also use {{[[Template:IL|IL]]}}. I just undid the changes again because I noticed this has unintended side-effects. The small versions of the images have been updated by now, so it doesn't look as bad as it used to. I guess, we'll leave it for now until we can think of something better. Both, I & IL are among the oldest templates on the wiki and are interwoven in pretty much everything. Thinkering with them almost always has unintended effects :-/
Rahv7 (talk) 21:41, March 20, 2020 (UTC)

After some on-and-off effort, I finally got my script to a roughly finished state: https://github.com/d0sboots/FallenLondon/blob/master/scripts/update-image-db.py (Not that I'm expecting anyone else to run it, but that's insurance in case it proves useful and I wander off.)

Here's the current summary:

* 2999 Game Files
** 30 Non-PNG
*** 30 UNFETCHED
** 52 "sml"
*** 52 UNFETCHED
** 55 Header
*** 55 SAME_FILE
** 48 Cameo
*** 48 SAME_FILE
** 1318 Small
*** 1276 Paired
**** 11 CAN'T FETCH (ERROR)
**** 1123 SIZE MISMATCH
**** 3 SAME_PIXELS
**** 139 SAME_FILE
*** 42 Unpaired
**** 10 CAN'T FETCH (ERROR)
**** 27 SIZE MISMATCH
**** 5 SAME_FILE
** 1496 Regular
*** 1276 Paired
**** 9 CAN'T FETCH (ERROR)
**** 15 TOO DIFFERENT
**** 1098 SIMILAR
**** 1 SAME_PIXELS
**** 153 SAME_FILE
*** 220 Unpaired
**** 142 CAN'T FETCH (ERROR)
**** 1 TOO DIFFERENT
**** 64 SIMILAR
**** 13 SAME_FILE

1 False pairings (Named like pairings, but actually cross-category): File:Caveofthenadir.png/File:Caveofthenadirsmall.png, where the 1st file is in category Headers

In general, it looks like everyone did an excellent job: only 16 files that got missed, and (from spot-checking) they're all ones that look very similar-ish, and I'm not sure even changed in this round anyway. I can update those myself.

The caveofthenadir thing is strangely legit: /icons_small/caveofthenadir.png and /headers/caveofthenadir.png exist, while /icons/caveofthenadir.png doesn't. It's very unusual for a small icon to exist when the full-size one doesn't, but in this case that's the way it is.
D0SBoots (talk) 21:12, May 1, 2020 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for checking. I'll have to check out your script when I have a little more time. Sounds interesting! :)

The nadir-icon-issue is indeed strange. I also wasn't aware this could happen.
Rahv7 (talk) 16:47, May 3, 2020 (UTC)

Some relevant info from looking at the history of some of the templates:

It seemed that at first, the list of image names from which the IL module&template get their data used to mostly contain the name of the small image files. So {{[[Template:IL|IL]]}}'s default behaviour at first was to show the actual small image (not a scaled down version). And template {{[[Template:I|I]]}} even explicitly checks if the filename ends with "small.png", and if not it adds it.

Over the years, the list of Module:IL/images was changed bit by bit to mostly refer to the large image name. This is why templates using IL show the scaled down version, and templates using I show the real small image.

As Rahv7 said, these templates are used in so many different places now that it's hard to know the implications of tinkering with them. But if I had to guess, it would be correct to have them return the small version by default, unless told not to by a template parameter.
Adnoam (talk) 18:13, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

So, I think the first (necessary) step to be taken, if we want to normalize handling of large/small images, is to replace all the small images with their correct 40x40 version. As long as the files themselves are mixed up, we don't have a solid foundation to build on. Fixing this isn't just a matter of consistency either: many of the small icons have a non-standard crop, like vs https://images.fallenlondon.com/images/icons_small/blackcat.png

Right now, about 12% of the small files are 40x40. When I stop being distracted by other things (like the new holiday), I'm going to add upload capability to my script and test it on the 16 remaining out-of-date regular files. Assuming that works right (and that I get around to it), we wouldn't be constrained by the size of the issue and it would just be a question of whether to proceed.
D0SBoots (talk) 19:24, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the non-cropped small images used to be correct until (fairly) recently. The cropped images where only introduced with the redesigned website and changing thousands of (basically correct) images just because they're cropped differently now doesn't make sense.
Rahv7 (talk) 20:32, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

When the new website landed and it was just a matter of different cropping, I agree, there was no reason to change thousands of images then. It's only now that a significant minority of them have different sizes on the wiki that I think it makes sense to start talking about it, and only if there's an automatic way to do it.

Basically, my feeling is that as Failbetter continues to update their art, more and more icons will get changes, and the discrepancy will get more and more apparent. So I think that at some point it will become vital/necessary to sweep the remainder of the small icons and standardize on 40x40. *If* you accept that this will be needed eventually, then the logical question is, why wait? Why live with the inconsistency longer than required?

However, this would be a major change to some of the most frequently-used icons on the site, so I'm absolutely deferring to you admin's judgement on it.
D0SBoots (talk) 23:34, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

There seem to be two separate issues here: Which file version to use, and at what size to display it?

I don't much care that the images are shown at different sizes if it's in different contexts. e.g. Refuse to be involved. If the different sized are used side by side in the same context (e.g. when showing various action results) then that's a case to fix.
Adnoam (talk) 05:45, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Well... the new Whitsun pages are good examples of different sized icons side-by-side, if you care. Offer an Invigorated Scarlet Egg, for example, is a mismash of tall and short icons. There's no way to fix that short of re-uploading the old icons in 40x40, but that will just push the problem to other pages, unless it's done systematically.

Personally, I don't think it's actually *that* distracting... not as bad as I would have expected, at least. But it's a taste of what's to come, because I expect basically all new content pages will look like that, since all new art will be 40x40.
D0SBoots (talk) 07:24, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a good example, though I probably wouldn't have noticed had you not mentioned it.
Adnoam (talk) 13:47, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

As a personal opinion: I don't have any problem with the different sizes. It can occasionally look a little awkward but mostly it's not that big a deal.

The main reason why I don't want to actively update the images is that it is a lot of work. I have an image dump from ~2 years ago and at that point we had roughly different 1500 icons. Since then, lots of artwork has been added to the game.

A few weeks ago when the big artwork update was released I've spent a few hours updating images and it's no fun (and that was less than 100 images, I believe). Conversely, not updating the images doesn't make the wiki any less useful.

So if you (or anyone else) want to go for it, I won't stop you. But I spend way too much time on the wiki as it is and simply don't have the time or the energy for this. Sorry!
Rahv7 (talk) 21:24, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Oh yes, to be clear, I wasn't volunteering anyone to do this but me. :) And I would only do it once my script has upload functionality; that takes something from tens of hours of tedious gruntwork to babysitting something for a couple of minutes. (The download/report generation side runs in under a minute, even from a cold cache, and that's over 3000 images. Uploading ~1000 will take longer, but not that much longer.)

Most of my motivation for the script is to save everyone the hassle of manually updating stuff if/when another big art update comes down the pipe. But I realized, if it can do that, it can also correct this inconsistency just as easily. Of course, I still need to finish writing that part of the code...
D0SBoots (talk) 01:03, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Just be aware that Failbetters Terms & Conditions forbid "unauthorised use of automation or scripting to interact with the site".
Rahv7 (talk) 09:35, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

That should be a non-issue, because I'm barely "interacting" with fallenlondon.com - I'm just downloading images (in a one-time manner), which is less than what Google does. In particular, it doesn't require being logged in. Uploading stuff to the wiki doesn't technically require being logged in either, but I'm putting that in as a requirement so there's a user trail in the history.
D0SBoots (talk) 23:44, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for Filling In the Ravenglass Knife Option

Thanks for testing the Ravenglass option in the search for the mirror-shard.
Rostygold (talk) 09:00, April 14, 2020 (UTC)

When new content is released I often prioritize my choices also based on missing wiki pages... :-)
Adnoam (talk) 18:13, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

New category for Whitsun

Hi Adnoam,

Should we add a new category to all Whitsun related events to make it clear that they're all connected or does the seasonal template make that clear enough?
Asarta (talk) 19:13, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

The template also adds the category automatically. It should be added at the top of all storylet/article pages, just below the image name and above the main {{[[Template:Storylet|Storylet]]}}/{{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} template of the page.
Adnoam (talk) 19:18, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

Oh, didnt realise it also did that
Asarta (talk) 19:22, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

You are back!!!

Welcome back :) 
Mikey thinkin (talk) 20:12, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks :-)

Seems I came back just to find a new event unfolding. There seems to have been so many changes in the last 2 months. I don't know where to start...
Adnoam (talk) 20:15, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

Indeed! In addition to the actual content changes I've been making a few changes to the templates etc. To give you heads up:

1. I've been revising Place in line with the strategy we adopted for Qualities. So Category page is just for ctageory stuff where as the main page is for the template that populates the core content. I've gone through all (most?) place pages and did the category/core page separatuon. I've updated added {{[[Template:Places|Places]]}}, {{[[Template:Place_uses|Place uses]]}}, {{[[Template:Place_changes|Place changes]]}}, {{[[Template:Move|Move]]}}. The core of the changes is to cover the various deck behaviours. {{[[Template:Places|Places]]}} ended up becoming rather complicated so I was thinking of creating specialised templates that {{[[Template:Places|Places]]}} would wrap around but it's just early thinking...

2. I've "disambiguated" Lodgings meaning domiciles and meaning the location"Your Lodgings". Now "Lodgings" pages refer to your various homes where as the place is at Your Lodgings (this has required in template tweaks so that people can still specify "lodgings" in template parameters)

3. Going back to our old discussion about the various meanings of "Autofire" I've added "Autofire" and "NoBranch" parameters to {{[[Template:Storylet|Storylet]]}} and have been slowly converting various pages to that. Also this (as well as the new map) has pointed to the need to have "Starting storylet" parameter in various Places, which I've implemented but not yet documented

4. I've updated {{[[Template:Calculator/BestInSlot|Calculator/BestInSlot]]}} and the Module to accommodate the new "Skills" (Mithridacy, Glasswork etc)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 20:23, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

Sounds great! Thanks a lot.

(and I didn't think anyone would ever touch the ItemList module's code but me... :-) )
Adnoam (talk) 20:50, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

What did I miss, content-wise? (besides the Ambitions concluding, as that was advertised in advance)

Just browsing around I see:

* A Lab at the University
* A chessboard in Parabola
* Hunting Prey in Parabola?

Anything else? And are there guides (here, on the subreddit, or on the forums) for the mechanics of the above?
Adnoam (talk) 20:53, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

Apart from those the other big one is The Bone Market. There are also a few more minor areas in Parabola : Viric Jungle, The Dome of Scales. They are less "meaty"; they do inttroduce Favours: Fingerkings, though. The 7 new skills are fast become everpresent too.

Afraid, I don't know too much about the guides. There is one about the Bone Market floating around on Discord.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 20:59, May 11, 2020 (UTC)

When to use seasonal template?

Hi Adnoam, When should I apply the seasonal template for Whitesun. Only on pages like De Gustibus in Whitsun or also on options from that storylet(like The utmost delicacy). On the same subject a few of the redirects from De Gustibus in Whitsun lead to pages which have their from still leading to the old De Gustibus page rather than the new Whitsun variant. Asarta

Edit: Also how do you add the Broken category, as the Wiki Note on Page from the Liber Visionis isnt displaying correctly and I can't get it to work.
Asarta (talk) 08:32, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Only on Storylets/card/actions unique to Whitsun.

De Gustibus is a strange case. It's been away from the game for years and most of the content is not Whitsun specific. We have no way to know if it is tied to this new event and would return next year. For De Gustibus, I'd only put the Whitsun template on Whitsun specific branches.
Adnoam (talk) 13:49, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

What is not being displayed OK on Page from the Liber Visionis?
Adnoam (talk) 13:50, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Hi Adnoam, for now I've added both the Whitsun and De gustibus templates&links to the shared options to make it clear they're available during both events. Should I change them back to their original state? My problem with that is that you then get options which are linked with an event but look like they're part of an entirely other(and retired) event. My problem with Liber Visiones is that under "the yes I want to change my face" there is a wikinote which is displayed as [WikiNote: This adds 1 to that quality and can be used to change your cameo.] instead of the actual wiki note look
Asarta (talk) 13:51, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Ah, that's not on the Liber Visiones page itself but on the action page: Yes. I want to change my face..

I've changed the comment to the more common format.
Adnoam (talk) 17:26, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Proofread Article

Hi Adnoam, Could you perhaps proofread this article which I just created and offer me some advice?
Asarta (talk) 13:28, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Looks good.

Usually we don't put the holiday template at the top of quality/item pages (but on storylet/cards/actions), but it's not strict and I know of several pages that do this for other seasonal events.
Adnoam (talk) 13:53, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

I mainly put the template there because it seems very linked with the rest of the event
Asarta (talk) 13:58, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Some wiki editors do that for certain items/qualities. But for the most part it's uncommon.
Adnoam (talk) 17:26, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Creating Whitsun item category

Hi Adnoam, Several of the Whitesun related things(Like eggs but also treatments) now appear to be classified in the new Whitsun item category. Could you perhaps add this category to the Wiki. Asarta
Asarta (talk) 15:05, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

I saw that this was mentioned on the subreddit, but I can't see this item category myself (despite force-loading the page and trying with several accounts).

Where do you see it?
Adnoam (talk) 17:45, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Between Sustenance and Wild Words
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:55, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Here

(However it seems only visible when you already have something from that category,I couldnt see it until I bought a egg and then the egg showed up under that category
Asarta (talk) 18:04, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it finally appeared for me as well.

The thing to do is for all those items confirmed to belong in that category to add it as an argument to the Item template: "Item Type = Whitsun".
Adnoam (talk) 18:22, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Whitsun is already a category granted by {{[[Template:Whitsun|Whitsun]]}}. Should we not disambiguate the Items category?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 18:58, May 12, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought about it. There's a clash in category names going by the conventions used elsewhere on the wiki.

We already have Category:Whitsun: This is added by the seasonal marker template (like for Christmas, or The Feast of the Rose).

We also already have Category:Whitsun Items: This is added by the Item template (via the ModuleItem Module), for the *equipable* items marked with the "Whitsun" tag. The tag is used in such pages as Dangerous Items, to show the {{[[Template:FontWhitsun|FontWhitsun]]}} qualifier next to those items. (see: Category:Seasonal Items)

And now we have a 3rd concept: Items which the game itself categorizes in the new "Whitsun" inventory section (like "Wild Words, "Contraband", etc.). So what is a good name that doesn't clash with everything else?
Adnoam (talk) 04:55, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if its possible but couldnt we rename Category:Whitsun Items to say Category:Whitsun Equipment and use Whitsun Items for the normal items. Otherwise I wouldn't really know as it is hard to think of something distictive that does make clear that they are an Item category(That is my problem with things like Whitsun Possesions or something similair) It just feels wrong for Category:Whitsun Items to be something else than all items
Asarta (talk) 06:30, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Possible. Though in that case it might be better to change everything under Category:Seasonal Items to be called Equipment instead of Items, to maintain consistency in naming.

Any objections or other possible ideas to address this?
Adnoam (talk) 07:04, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

I agree that we should rename all pages then so consistency is maintained. I refer to your experyise however on if that would be possible
Asarta (talk) 07:05, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Though many of those equipable items are companions, and referring to them as "equipment" is even worse than "items".
Adnoam (talk) 08:04, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah thats also true, How are w doing that with other companions on the wiki?
Asarta (talk) 08:08, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Category:Companion is a sub-category of Category:Items.

Not ideal for companions, but "equipment" seems even worse.

Game mechanics wise: companions *are* equipable items.
Adnoam (talk) 08:51, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible to make a Category:Whitsun companions as subcategory for Category: Whitsun equipment? It makes it clear what they are but it also makes clear that they're part of the equipment of that season(after all they do show up on that part of the possesions page. That seems to me the best way to do it.
Asarta (talk) 08:55, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure if this is the same thing Asarta is referring to but what bugs me a little is this: Currently, Category:Whitsun collects both storylets using the {{[[Template:Whitsun|Whitsun]]}}-template as well as items sorted into the Whitsun-section of the inventory. Because both have the same name. Do we want to change the name for the item type to "Category:Whitsun Items" or something?
Rahv7 (talk) 09:47, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

No, the problem is that theautomaticly generated category:Whitsun Items(which as far as I understand is is made by the Whitsun template) collects all items that are tagged with whitsun including equipment while Whitsun now also has its own inventory section normally this would be tagged as far as I uderstand it like Category:Curiosity but we cant use that because thats the overarching category and Category:Whitsun Items doesnt disciminate between actual Whitsun items and Whitsun equipment. We then ran into the problem that for every seasonal event so far we simply used seasonname: Items for everything because there never were any actual items only equipment and that if we changed Whitsun:Items we would for consistency also need to change the other seasons, and Adnoam finds that Whitsun:Equipment sounds bad for companions(which most seasonal items seem to be) so I proposed if it would be possible to make the subcategory Whitsun:Companions under Whitsun:Equipment which is as far as we are right now TL/DR: Whitsun adds a new possesions category which we can't properly classify because we've already used both Whitsun and Whitsun:Items and changing it would mean changing all seasonal templates.
Asarta (talk) 09:58, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

As a category on the wiki, "Whitsun" can refer to three distinct things:

# Articles (storylets/cards/actions) available during the event. Analog: Category:Christmas
# Equipable items, which were tagged with "Whitsun" in their Module List table. Analog: Category:Christmas Items
# Items in the new inventory section called Whitsun. Analog: Category:Wild Words.

Currently we have pages matching #1 above in Category:Whitsun (comes form the {{[[Template:Whitsun|Whitsun]]}} template), and pages matching #2 above in Category:Whitsun Items (comes from template {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} via Module:ItemList).

So the question raised was: How should we catalog items matching #3 above? If under "Whistun Items", then how do we call the pages matching #2 (and keep it consistent with everything else under Category:Seasonal Items?
Adnoam (talk) 11:47, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Enhancements? Effects from Equipment? Equipment Effects? Item Effects? Item Enhancements?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 11:51, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

I'm still in favor of either Whitsun:Equipment or Whitsun:Items Equipment. With my personal favorite being Whitsun:Equipment because Whitsun:Items Equipment adds a confusing and unnecesarry Item to the description (especially if we decide to change the other seasonal events as well)
Asarta (talk) 11:57, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Of the given options, I also tend towards Equipment. It's just unfortunate that it's not so fitting for the Companions (which *are* Items in the wiki and in the game mechanics, but "equipment" is even more glaring).

But the other options seem less fitting.
Adnoam (talk) 14:08, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, the only option I see to avoid calling Companions Items would be a different Category(like Category:Whitsun Companions) but I think that would cause some serious confusion(because it implies that companions and equipment are two seperate things which they aren't) Edit:Also having a seperate category for companions would start bloating the wiki(Think about it, we would have Category:Whitsun(for all Whitsun stuff), Category:Whitsun Items(for items in the Whitsun part of your possesions), Category:Whitsun Equipment(for Equipment that you can only obtain during Whitsun) and Category:Whitsun Companions(for companions you can only obtain during Whitsun). Thats just to many categories in my opinion
Asarta (talk) 14:13, May 13, 2020 (UTC)

Any ideas for the proper/preferred name for the category of the inventory items now under the Whitsun section? I feel that the default Category:Whitsun should still be for all storylets/actions of the event (like done for Christmas, etc.)
Adnoam (talk) 05:44, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

As I've said before my preference would be Category:Whitsun Items(because it really makes it clear what the category is about Items that are sorted under Whitsun) for the item category, and Category:Whitsun Equipment for the equipment. Of course thats just my opinion
Asarta (talk) 06:30, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Are we going to have a template for the Whitsun Possessions category? In the same way that we have {{[[Template:Academic|Academic]]}}, say? If so that’s the bane we should use for the category. I know it doesn’t answer the core question, only defers it... It somewhat shifts the emphasis to finding a name for a *template* rather than for a class of items

Since we already have {{[[Template:Whitsun|Whitsun]]}} for the even header we’d need something like “Whitsun Possesions” or “Whitsun Items Type”.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 09:39, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, all other inventory classes are uniquely named.

If we're renaming the equipable item's category (for all - not just Whitsun) to be "Whitsun Equipmnets", then the items in the inventory class can be "Whitsun items".
Adnoam (talk) 13:03, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

"Whitsun Things" could possibly be an option for the inventory category. "Things" is an internal name for possessions items (as opposed to "Status" for myself page qualities), and this keeps the format of "[Event] Items" for the equipment consistent.
Cactusorange (talk) 16:45, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

While I agree that's also an option my problem with Whitsun Things would be that it is very un intuitive. Whitsun Items/Equipment makes it immediately clear what were talking about. Whitsun Things just doesn't feel as intuitive,what kind of things? were are these things?
Asarta (talk) 16:58, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

That is a con, yeah – only being clear if you already know the Storynexus lingo. Personally I prefer being consistent though. Something like "Whitsun Inventory Items" or "Whitsun Possessions Items" could also be an option, though they're a bit unwieldy and perhaps easy to confuse with just the "Whitsun Items" category...
Cactusorange (talk) 17:40, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah but if we get Whitsun Inventory Items I think we should also get Whitsun Equipment items at which point the Whitsun Items template has no more use. Also I fund that actual Items should have an higher claim to templates than Equipment
Asarta (talk) 17:52, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

I find both "Things" and "Possessions" un-intuitive. The meaning should be clear to any (or at least most) wiki readers.

Given that, I suggest:

* Items
** Whitsun Items <-- inventory items in the "Whitsun" class go here
*** Whitshun Equipment <-- equipable items go in this sub-category

(and then change all others in Category:Seasonal Items accordingly to match).
Adnoam (talk) 21:45, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

That suggestion sounds fine to me.
Cactusorange (talk) 21:55, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Sounds great to me.

Another reason to do it like this is that Failbetter seems to be adding a lot of new Item Category's lately, they also only recently added Category:Book which makes me think this might be something they'll do more often
Asarta (talk) 06:15, May 15, 2020 (UTC)

Category:(name) Sources not working

Hi Adnoam, I recently noticed that several of the new companions pages for Whitsun(like Lyrebird Educated in Three Schools) say on their page that there are now know sources for that item and to add Category:(name) Sources to pages which give them out. However their source pages(Nurture the creature that hops from your twice-augmented egg in the Lyrebirds case) do have that category. Any idea whats up with that?

Asarta

P.S. hopefully this one will take less time to get sorted out than my last question
Asarta (talk) 08:17, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Here's a look behind the scenes:

I've created the pages for all of these new companions based on the through document which was posted on the subreddit. However, it turns out that some of the names are used slightly different in game.

For example: I've created the page using the name "Lyrebird Educated In Three Schools", and created all needed meta data and categories.

Now someone has moved the page to its current name: "Lyrebird Educated in Three Schools" (notice the lower-case "in"). So as far as the wiki is concerned that's a completely different page. Not only does it miss its associated "Sources" categories, it's also missing meta-data such as image name and tags (so it isn't listed along all other, and templates such as {{[[Template:IL|IL]]}} won't show its image.

I'll fix this.
Adnoam (talk) 12:55, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Oh, okay(this is the reason I ask these things to you. I haven't got a clue how the wiki works behind the scenes). Also what do you think of this Guide I wrote about Factions(because we were missing one)Factions (Guide)
Asarta (talk) 12:58, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

I'll try to review it later but from a first glance it looks really well organized. Thanks for writing it!
Adnoam (talk) 13:05, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll add it to the wiki properly then(add category's etc
Asarta (talk) 13:09, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

Incomplete Faction pages

Hi Adnoam, I just noticed that all of the Faction: (factionname) pages are marked as incomplete. What should I add to them?
Asarta (talk) 16:06, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

That's a placeholder from an older task. We wanted to create a new article template for factions, so they all share the same look and feel. We never got around to designing it.
Adnoam (talk) 21:41, May 14, 2020 (UTC)

How does one actually create a new template. Because unless there some deeper layer of admin code underneath it I'm willing to try my hand at it.

Asarta

P.S. Rubbery Dragon displays uses on its page despite being fatelocked. I had a quick look around its category page, but that does seem to contain <nowiki>

This category contains all uses of Blankpage:

* cards and storylets that unlock if you possess it
* actions requiring it (the item may or may not be lost after completing these actions)
Asarta (talk) 06:59, May 18, 2020 (UTC)

To be fair, we almost got there, Adnoam. I'll have to rummage the history of messages but I seem to recall we had a "working prototype". Last I recall you wanted to think on it a bit but I thought we did have *something* at least 
Mikey thinkin (talk) 07:36, May 18, 2020 (UTC)

I have made a Sandbox example of what I was thinking about using the Bohemians. I lack the knowledge to make this into anything usable but that was my thought on it. I've copied the description from the Bohemians card(This would cause problems with the Factions that still use Connections as they don't have a card
Asarta (talk) 07:48, May 18, 2020 (UTC)

Whitsun Items/Equipment

Hi Adnoam, Did I see correctly that you have implemented Whitsun Items/Equipment as proposed? If that's the case maybe also make a blog post explaining why we have drastically changed the way the wiki has always done things?
Asarta (talk) 07:20, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

Still in progress...
Adnoam (talk) 07:32, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

Okay, for now I'll get busy adding Whitsun Equipment
Asarta (talk) 07:34, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

Template {{[[Template:Whitsun_Items|Whitsun Items]]}} can now be added to item pages. e.g. Invigorating Treatment.
Adnoam (talk) 08:33, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

Okay

Edit: added it to all pages instead of {{[[Whitsun|Whitsun]]}}. Also for some reason Waiting for Your Egg to Hatch isn't properly recognizing Wrap it up warm and wait as its source
Asarta (talk) 08:41, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

Fixed - it was because Wrap it up warm and wait used the {{[[Template:Gain|Gain]]}} template instead of the {{[[Template:Item_Gain|Item Gain]]}} template.

Items have a "Sources" category, and qualities have by default a "Gain" category. Which can be confusing since some Qualities increase in discreet values (i.e. not in change points) and thus also use the "Item Gain" template (despite being qualities).

(This is a very old issue on the wiki, derived from decisions made in its early stages, which would be difficult to change now).
Adnoam (talk) 09:03, May 17, 2020 (UTC)

Proofread Guide

Hi Adnoam,

I've just sacrificed something like 6 hours of my life spread over 2 days writing A Person of Some Importance (Guide). As I've only ever reached A Person of some Importance I had to pull most of my information on the higher levels from the wiki. Could you read it and check if I havent missed something important?

Thanks in Advance,

Asarta

Edit: By the way, something that's been annoying me. The Main page has a YouTube link on it that leads to a private video, is that a joke I just don't get or did that use to lead to something?(And if that's the case could we either replace or remove it)
Asarta (talk) 11:02, May 19, 2020 (UTC)

Also I was reading through your user page and agree that Social Actions really needs a rework. Are you oke with me basically deleting almost everything on that page and perhaps moving it to a new Editing Guide and then completely rebuilding it so its actually a Guide to Social Actions?

Also we should take a look Screenshot Tutorial for Editing it is rather horrendously outdated (Only today I fixed the link to the sandbox so it stopped trying to link to the echobazaarwiki) for an instance the color palette has been overhauled etc.
Asarta (talk) 12:22, May 19, 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

* I saw the new POSI guide but didn't fully read it yet. It seems very thorough!
* Social Actions is indeed very problematic (it even directs users to use the wrong - i.e. old - templates). If you have a better version of this guide in mind - go for it!
* I've removed the YouTube link from the main page. It's been there for years and apparently used to link to Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch.
Adnoam (talk) 20:34, May 19, 2020 (UTC)

Hi again

* I've basically deleted the whole original Social Actions page as it was really outdated (It still referred to storynexus links that don't work like that anymore
* I've rebuild it more as an guide to social actions than editing. I still have a copy of that part of the page but it is gone from the page now
* It's still a work in progress(need to a add a lot more actions) but I would appreciate it if you could check it out and tell me if you like the format

Also once again reading through your to do list I completely agree that Term Passing needs a overhaul. If you're okay with it I'll restructure it using bullets and sub bullets(or maybe a table per story line) instead of subheadings and probably condense it a bit so not all requirements are listed. And make it actually readable I mean Aximillo's tables had problems but what in the Name of God did 80.128.198.145 think he was doing. Edit: I have drastically changed it see: Term Passing...

Also also, how do you create pages like User: Adnoam test, or is that an Admin thing
Asarta (talk) 11:09, May 20, 2020 (UTC)

And one last thing (I hope) I think it Editing Guidelines could use a small update. A few things that stood out to me:

* Parts of that page still use EchoBazaar as the name of the wiki instead of Fallen London
* The information on rewards tells you to use Reward and then specify a image instead of the {{IL}} template which we now use
* Disambugation only links to a blog post by Neonix I think that at least a small explanation would be nice
* Add the very bottom it tells you to leave a message to Jemann Aximillio etc, instead of you and Rahv7

I'm entirely willing to fix this but considering the importance of the page I won't do so without Admin approval

* Edit: and as suggested in the comments add it to Help:Editing
Asarta (talk) 15:17, May 20, 2020 (UTC)

Adding another page to the list of outdated pages which are to important for me to randomly edit:

* Fallen London Wiki:Administrators, heavily outdated list of administrators.I propose adding the missing ones and creating a sublist with active admins (you and Rahv7)
Asarta (talk) 15:59, May 23, 2020 (UTC)

Template for uses

Hello,

FBG have recently been very liberal in the quality uses. We see more formulae, we see more QVDs (variable text) and more and more qualities which are used to only lock branch (and not to unlock them). All off these are not currently captured in our category tree.

I would like to propose a new template: {{Use}}. This would be exactly identical to {{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}} save that it will take an additional parameter (say "Type"), which can take values "Unlock", "Lock", "Math", "Text" and which will add a category depending on the Type: Category:QualityName for "Unlock" (as we have now) and new categories for the other types.

{{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}} itself would be re-implemented as a wrapper for {{Use}}.

{{Use|Type=Lock}} would not always be used in the "Locked with = " field. We will still be able to use {{IL}}, depending on the kind of lock condition (if it's just a range then we'd use {{IL}} but if it's a true locking gate then we'd use {{Use|Type=Lock}})

{{Use|Type=Math}} would be used instead of {{IL}} inside computation expressions (typically for quality changes)

{{Use|Type=Text}} would be used in QVD table headings or inside wiki notes.

What do you think?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 19:32, May 22, 2020 (UTC)

Isn't the point of {{Unlock}} to both show the image and include the category, so that you can find uses of the quality? I might just not be understanding, but what would {{Use}} be adding? To be concrete, are you proposing that in addition to the category "Wounds", there would also be "Wounds Lock", "Wounds Math", and "Wounds Text"?
D0SBoots (talk) 22:04, May 26, 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I am proposing. (Specific name choices are flexible, of course)

Recent examples of what's not captured by {{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}}: Category:Waiting_for_Your_Egg_to_Hatch (almost all "uses" in the category have been added manually rather than via a template), Parabolan Ferocity (no entries in the category, despite it being used to set multiple variables) and the various QVDs in the Lab (e.g. Go on in has no categories despite a heavy use of QVDs).

Note that we already have a similar case of use in Challenges (e.g. Category:A Scholar of the Correspondence Challenge vs Category:A Scholar of the Correspondence
Mikey thinkin (talk) 22:34, May 26, 2020 (UTC)

The issue with Category:Waiting for Your Egg to Hatch wouldn't be fixed by this proposal; it's a result of using Template:IL in the "Locked with" section of the relevant pages. Using {{Unlock}} there instead would be sufficient to capture the use, and the only issue (minor, IMO) is that it looks slightly weird to use "Unlock" in the "Locked with" section.

Parabolan Ferocity is different, though. I agree that it would make no sense to use {{Unlock}} inside math expressions or QVDs. But if they registered as separate categories, then they wouldn't show up as "uses" according to the current template logic; that would need to be changed (and made more complicated).

I think it would make more sense for your proposed {{Use}} template to just always include the base category, and not try to distinguish different types of categories for Lock/Math/Text.
D0SBoots (talk) 23:55, May 26, 2020 (UTC)

There are two points here:

1. *Whether* various uses should be categorised. I think you agree that Locks, formulae and QVDs ought to be categorised.

2. Assuming that we want to categorise various uses, *how* to categorise them.Here we seem to disagree.

Using "Unlock" for "lock" is more than a minor issue in my opinion as historically it has led to a lot of confusion and people editing and un-editing branches. But how to treat locks is a perennial difficulty that we have come to with semi-regular frequency.

Setting the slightly separate issue of Locks aside, I, personally, would find it very unhelpful to mush unlocks, QVDs and math uses into one category. I suppose it depends how you expect and want to use categories.

I, again very subjectively, like structure and clarity and ease of search. I can see *some* argument for treating unlocks and math expressions as a single combined category (although since we are treating Challenges as a separate category it makes sense to me to treat formulae separately too); but QVDs are very different - when I am looking for things that are *unlocked* by some quality I do not necessarily want to find branches whose flavour merely varies with the quality, and nice versa.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 20:06, May 27, 2020 (UTC)

So I think the best way to look at the current category use is from the qualities page:

 This category contains all uses of Waiting for Your Egg to Hatch:<br> <br> * cards and storylets that unlock if you possess it<br> * actions requiring it (the item may or may not be lost after completing these actions)

Interestingly, the current wording is more focused on "unlock" than I realized. However, I've always keyed in on the "uses" part. Specifically, when I go to an item's category page, I'm usually trying to answer the question, "Is it safe to sell this item? What is it used for?" To my mind, that means all prerequisites - locks, unlocks, fancy math, etc. - if the item is involved in allowing or disallowing a storylet or action, I want to know about it. However, I don't speak for everyone, and others might see it differently.

There's also the factor that I know that the game itself doesn't distinguish between those types. There's just a JSON array of QualitiesRequired, containing AssociatedQualityId, MinLevel and MaxLevel. If MinLevel is set but not MaxLevel, that's "Unlock" in our parlance. If MaxLevel is set but not MinLevel, that's "Lock". If both are set, that's "Unlock" with a range. Complicated math is done using one or both of MinAdvanced and MaxAdvanced, which are strings that allow for evaluating math expressions and substitutions of certain variable-like-things to allow for math on other qualities.

I do agree that the QVDs are different. They aren't "uses" by the above definition. They could be their own category, or continue to be uncategorized... I see pros and cons both ways, and don't have a strong opinion.
D0SBoots (talk) 22:10, May 27, 2020 (UTC)

I went ahead an created {{[[Template:Use|Use]]}} because with the release of Palaeontologist there have been more qualities with uses in the formulae and editors have had to add the categories manually.

Currently Type=Math categorises the page both under the normal category page and the new "Formula Uses" page. This is to avoid needing to chage {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} straight away, while keeping the formula uses tracked. But once things settle down, perhaps we should rethink that

I have not touched {{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}} at this stage.
Mikey thinkin (talk) 16:07, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

I definitely agree that we should be capturing the Lock-related uses somehow, too. I'd prefer that we change the wording/definition of the main category to include them, but almost anything would be better than the current situation where they're untracked. Ran into or again the other day where there's no link from Sympathetic about Ratly Concerns to Day 32, Blood Like Tar except in the comments, because of the use of IL.
D0SBoots (talk) 20:20, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

Though that's not really a "use" of the quality (in the meaning of "use" as in Unlock). Any idea how to best track such references?
Adnoam (talk) 20:40, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

The {{[[Template:Use|Use]]}} template is interesting. I wanted to go ahead and integrate it with all the rest of the neighboring templates (e.g. update {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} to notify in case a quality has such formula/text uses but no such category has been created, add {{<span class="new">Formula Uses</span>}} template, etc.). But then I thought we should probably agree on the full template/category structure first.

Look at An Admirer of Art -, for example. It lists two "uses": the pages which require this quality ({{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}}) and pages using this quality as a challenge. The {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} template can add other types of "uses" along the same format:

* See "Category:XYZ" for pages which require this quality (or specific levels of it).
* See "Category:XYZ Challenge" for pages which have a challenge based on this quality.
* See "Category:XYZ Formula Uses" for pages which have results impacted by this quality.
* See "Category:XYZ Text Uses" for pages which have text which depends on this quality.

And only if none of the above, then the quality/item page will show the default:

* This quality has no recorded uses.
Adnoam (talk) 20:51, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

It's not a "use" if you define "use" to mean "Unlock," but I think that's a unnaturally limiting definition. As I said above, when I think "use" I actually mean "use," as in, "what actions use this quality?" By that definition even challenges are in scope, but we have a subcategory to track them so that's already handled.

Mostly, I find it weird because (again as I said upthread) the Lock/Unlock distinction is one that is purely made by the wiki. It's not in the game data, and it's not done in the way Fallen London presents requirements: Fallen London never says "Locked because" or "Locked with". It's always "You unlocked this with X (you needed Y at most)." The language and checking for quality-too-low and quality-too-high are totally symmetric, along with the language for quality-in-range, and only the wiki decides to treat one of those like a different thing.

So, my preferred solution would be to relax the language that tries to define use == Unlock, and document that Lock criterion should use the new "Use" template (or unlock in cases where it already exists, since the effect will be the same.)
D0SBoots (talk) 21:08, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a wiki thing, but it comes from a reasonable perspective: "use" as in: which actions *require* this quality/item? When that's the approach (as it has been since the wiki started), then qualities which just lock an action don't really fit.

I agree it's useful to track somehow locking "uses", but I still think the most useful category link on a quality/item's page is for the actions which *need* this quality (hence "Unlock), even if that doesn't match 1:1 with the underlying game engine's mechanics.
Adnoam (talk) 21:34, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

And actually, this opens up a bigger problem with the category structure (that's been here since the beginning): If a quality/item XYZ has no actions which require it (i.e. "Unlock"), then there is no Category:XYZ. But the quality/item does have a source, so this means that "Category:XYZ Sources" (Or "Gain") has no parent directory.

Likewise, no parent directory to "Category:XYZ Items", etc. And no place to categorize pages which relate to this quality/item but aren't actions which require it.

I think that ideally, we'll want Category:XYZ to mostly be an empty category (except for the quality/item page itself, and some related pages), and it should have mostly sub-categories:

* Category:XYZ Uses (need to define "uses", of course)
* Category:XYZ Challenges
* Category:XYZ Items
* Category:XYZ Formula Uses
* etc.

But the current structure is embedded deep in the wiki. It can be changed, but with effort and begin really careful.
Adnoam (talk) 22:07, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

My preference, which I voiced last time we had an in-depth discussion on this topic, is exactiy what you suggest Adnoam - main category is mainly empty save for the subcategories, which capture everything, including challenges. And indeed it would tackle the issue of orphaned source categories.

The Quality template, again as you suggest, would display these (potentially under different sections) and say "no uses" all of these subcategories are empty,

As mentioned upthread, I do think we should track locks (especially for qualities whose only purpose is to lock). I am ambivalent whether they are treated as the same category as unlock or as a separate category. But treating them as a separate category might be easier to transition to when untangling the existing category structure. So my very mild preference would be for a separate category (but I am very easily swayed on this point).
Mikey thinkin (talk) 22:28, June 7, 2020 (UTC)

Easy things first:

I'm for the idea of Category:XYZ being mostly empty and just containing subcategories, as long as I don't have to do it. :) And it's really delicate work (and I don't have the history on it), so more experienced folks should be doing it anyway.

If we keep Unlocks and Locks split in two categories, I propose calling those categories "XYZ Locks" and "XYZ Unlocks" or something along those lines, rather than have one of them called "XYZ Uses". The latter just invites confusion as to "what is a use?"

On to the more difficult things:

One thing to bear in mind with this is that adding more per-quality categories has an ongoing cost - the extra categories have to be created for every new quality, and also it requires people to understand the distinction between the categories. There's also a cost in that it's harder to just see "what are all the uses of XYZ?" So that cost has to be weighed against the benefit of having the fine-grained distinction. Personally, I don't think the benefit is entirely there for splitting Lock vs. Unlock... but again, I'd much rather have the fine-grained distinction than not track Unlock at all.

If we do decide to split them, there's an awkwardness with regards to range-based unlocks. Currently, they're handled with the Unlock template, but in reality a range-based unlock belongs in both the Lock and Unlock categories.
D0SBoots (talk) 02:28, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

The term "Uses" vs. "Unlocks" makes more sense when considering this regarding items, and not qualities. There are many exceptions, of course, but for most cases, actions/storylets which require a certain amount of some item to unlock also "uses" that item.

I know it's kinda redundant, since those same actions will be categorized anyway under "Category:XYZ Loss". I'm just explaining why the terminology does make sense in many cases.
Adnoam (talk) 05:21, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

Also, once we agree on the structure, we can add code to the Quality template, such that for a given quality called XYZ, if the main category "Category:XYZ" contains pages directly in it (i.e. no in sub-categories), to flag the quality's page in a maintenance category.
Adnoam (talk) 06:29, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

I've started playing with this and I've built some skeleton templates to see how this might behave.

Try the following code in some sandbox to see a preview of various scenarios:

* {{QualityCategories|Cartographer's Hoard}}
* {{QualityCategories|An Admirer of Art -}}
* {{QualityCategories|Approximate Value of Your Skeleton in Pennies}}
Adnoam (talk) 12:30, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

I like it a lot! (Question: what does #var:desc do? I can't see that variable used anywhere)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 21:56, June 8, 2020 (UTC)

I played with different ways to do it. At first, the {{[[Template:QualityCategory|QualityCategory]]}} template deduced by itself the description text of the category, based on the supplied type (hence its local "desc" variable). Later I changed this to a Description parameter being passed to the template. This allows the calling template to format that text if needed. For example - we'll be able to use this from the {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} template to have {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} display the Sources category of the Item (and the description text for that - at least today - is phrased slightly differently).

It's still possible that it might be better to return the description text to the inner template. Possibly even better to write the whole thing in Lua later.

On second thought, I brought back #var:desc. This way the description is contained in {{[[Template:QualityCategory|QualityCategory]]}} and the calling template shouldn't worry about it.

But this needs some thought if it is to be eventually also used for Items and not just qualities, because the wiki treats those differently (even in term of what template to put in those categories).
Adnoam (talk) 04:20, June 9, 2020 (UTC)

Mild +1 to "maybe just do it in Lua"... Many of the existing templates for these things are completely unreadable beasts, and it starts getting really hairy once you have more than a couple #vars and especially nested #ifs.
D0SBoots (talk) 19:45, June 9, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, all the variables and conditions are much better in Lua. But this particular template includes calls to #categorytree, and creates HTML tags for a collapsible list. I'm not 100% sure how Lua will treat this. #categorytree is not really a template call, so I don't know how it's invoked from Lua (or if there's an equivalent)
Adnoam (talk) 21:27, June 9, 2020 (UTC)

That's funny, a side project I've been working on needed to deal with the same thing. It works fine, just call frame:preprocess('<categorytree mode="pages" hideroot="on">' .. category_name .. "</categorytree>"), or with whatever options you want in the categorytree tag. The same thing works for other similar things. You can see Module:QualityTable for the very work-in-progress code; at the very least it's documented well enough that it should be clear how that replacement works.

The result of the call is a special replacement string that the MediaWiki parser replaces later on in page processing; it's normally invisible but because it's Lua you can break the string so it no longer works. The most relevant part is that there's no way to get access to the result of the categorytree expansion, either in a template or in Lua; you only get a token that gets replaced with the final result at a later phase.
D0SBoots (talk) 00:51, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

Very interesting side project. I wonder if the cleanest approach might be to have (eventually) one Module:Quality for all such functionalities - possibly even some of of the existing {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} functionality. (and if it grows too large, possibly split the code into sub-modules it can load).
Adnoam (talk) 06:06, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

FYI - according to the manual, in the case of calling a single parser function frame:callParserFunction is preferable to frame:preprocess.

Have you tried something like that? That is, instead of:

frame:preprocess('<categorytree mode="pages" hideroot="on">' .. category_name .. "</categorytree>")

maybe:

frame:callParserFunction{ name = '#categorytree:' .. category_name, args = { mode="pages", hideroot="on"} }

Thought, again, to do everything in Lua we'll need more than just calling categorytree - we need to bind the list's contents to a collapsible button via HTML tags.
Adnoam (talk) 09:36, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

IIRC I did try that. Fandom's installation of Scribunto is older, it doesn't support all the functions documented there.

"Binding to a collapsible button" isn't anything dynamic, that's just using divs and stuff with the proper CSS classes. From the perspective of Lua, it's just string concatenation.
D0SBoots (talk) 20:45, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

But should the Lua return that string containing the HTML tags, or just create them and pass them also to frame:preprocess()?

(I asked Fandom support before about their Scribunto support and missing functionalities and they told me they plan to upgrade it "in the near future". That was over a year ago, and I haven't kept track.)
Adnoam (talk) 21:26, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

You can do it either way. I prefer to pass the minimal amount needed to frame:preprocess, so there's less work for it to do, but I doubt it makes much of a difference.

preprocess() only has an effect for things where the wiki engine does actual work - i.e. template substitution, extension tags like <categorytree>, or special things like <nowiki>. In some of these cases, it returns transformed text, in other cases you get "replacement strings" that you need to return verbatim, because the final pass of the wiki processing will replace those tokens with the true result. For everything else, like plain HTML and also things we consider "wikitext" like square-bracket links and single-quote italics/bold, that just gets returned verbatim. All that stuff gets handled in a much later pass, which Lua can't touch.
D0SBoots (talk) 22:03, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

OK, we can implement either in templates or in a module.

This is a bigger change than is fitting for a thread on a user's wall. I've created a blog post about this. Let's coordinate there.
Adnoam (talk) 07:18, June 11, 2020 (UTC)

Module:ItemList idea

I figured I'd give you a heads-up on this first, since ItemList is your baby.

I'm thinking of extending it so quality can be a comma-separated list as well as just a single quality. The obvious application is BDR, although there could be other uses (but that's pretty speculative.) Right now, BDR is special-cased for the best-in-slot code, but not handled for just listing items. The special casing could be removed (with legacy translation of BDR -> "Bizarre,Dreaded,Respectable") with a more general handling.

WDYT?
D0SBoots (talk) 21:56, May 26, 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay.

I'm not sure I follow how that might look. Do you have an example? (I think it's important to keep the structure of the Lua tables both simple to read and to edit).
Adnoam (talk) 15:04, June 3, 2020 (UTC)

Well, since you were gone for an unknown amount of time, I went ahead and did it. :/

I may have explained my plan poorly; it didn't involve any changes to how the data tables work, just the code. You can see my edits at Module:ItemList and the results at Watchful Items (no real functional changes, but new table style) and Bizarre, Dreaded, Respectable (Guide) (replaced the hand-edited, out-of-date tables with the new auto-generated one).
D0SBoots (talk) 21:28, June 3, 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and I should also say: If you don't like the direction I went, feel free to revert. Everything should be pretty contained to the Module, a couple changes to the Template, and the change to the BDR page.
D0SBoots (talk) 21:35, June 3, 2020 (UTC)

Looks impressive. I haven't code reviewed all the changes yet, but I understand the direction. The tables look much nicer now.
Adnoam (talk) 18:21, June 9, 2020 (UTC)

D0SBoots, apparently now a few pages are showing script errors e.g. Category:Affiliation, Category:Hat, etc.).

This is because the new display style doesn't support the "Other" parameter which is used by {{[[Template:ItemListByClass|ItemListByClass]]}}.

Please bring back support for "Other" so these pages can have complete item lists again).
Adnoam (talk) 06:48, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Whoops, that's a bug. One of the refactorings must have introduced it; I'll get on that.
D0SBoots (talk) 08:35, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it for now, but I have to do something about how menaces are handled, too.
D0SBoots (talk) 10:02, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm, yes. The "buff" numbers are wrong for Menace-affecting_items and Stat-reducing items.

Also probably best to rename "Buff" to "Effect", to capture correctly both positive and negative effects.
Adnoam (talk) 14:20, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

So... How important is it that menaces sort in the opposite direction in those tables?

I ask because there's a decent amount of code complexity devoted to it, and I'm going to have to add some more to fix it.

It also doesn't make sense in a world where you can add arbitrary qualities together - if you create a table sorted on the sum of Watchful and Nightmares, but Nightmares is negated, that gets really weird. This concern is mostly hypothetical, since I doubt anyone will do it - but I still have to figure out what the code will do.

The real reason I ask is that it looks a little weird for things like Category:Hat to have everything sorted one way, and then abruptly change to the opposite sort order. And then it (somewhat unavoidably) changes again, to "no real order", for the Other category.
D0SBoots (talk) 19:34, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

OK, as to the other thing, I changed "Buff" to "Value". I was trying for the shortest label possible, to keep that column from taking up extra space.
D0SBoots (talk) 20:49, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Alright, I think everything is fixed now.

The one thing that's still a little weird is the interaction between menace negation and regular negation on Stat-reducing items. The double-negation cancels out, so you end up with it listing items which raise menaces. This makes sense from a certain perspective, and I think is how it worked before, but it is also confusing.
D0SBoots (talk) 21:38, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I've removed the menaces from Stat-reducing items, since they have their own page.
Adnoam (talk) 05:12, June 15, 2020 (UTC)

Wiki policy

Hi Adnoam,

I've just updated Fallen London Wiki: Administrators with Rahv7's permission to make it more about our Wiki and update the list of administrators (I've also updated the list on Editing Guidelines). This includes this Wiki's policy on promoting Bureaucrats and Administrators. I've written that part as far as I understand it but as I'm not an Administrator I won't make a definite statement on policy. I've for now added a Wiki Note explaining this but could you review the page as soon as possible please.

Kindly, Asarta

P.S. I've send a similar message to Rahv7
Asarta (talk) 09:34, May 27, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've made some minor changes.
Adnoam (talk) 18:12, June 3, 2020 (UTC)

I've removed the disclaimer about not using it as a Guideline as both you and Rahv7 have given a seal of approval
Asarta (talk) 18:19, June 3, 2020 (UTC)

Welcome Template

Hi Adnoam,

I was searching for something entirely else when I stumbled upon Template: Welcome which I believe is a template we inherited from Community Central back when the wiki was created. Template: Welcome is also linked to Category:General wiki templates which appears to include even more of these random templates. Are any of these in use on the wiki and if not shouldn't we just delete them?

Kindly,

Asarta
Asarta (talk) 14:48, June 9, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, there are many small inherited and unused templates from the wiki's creation still around. I personally don't mind their existence (they are unused), and sometimes when a use is found they could be a good starting point to create something, instead of starting from scratch.
Adnoam (talk) 18:03, June 9, 2020 (UTC)

Okay, just wanted to make sure you actually knew they existed.
Asarta (talk) 12:42, June 10, 2020 (UTC)

Blocking User

Hi Adnoam,

Recently I got in a conflict with BedBeetle6020 on Community Central regarding their block on another wiki. He asked for help getting their block lifted and became angry when we all agreed that he should be blocked. He has since then be globally blocked. He is now back with a new account called User:BedBeetle6070 claiming that he has forgotten the passwords to his other account. However considering he is globally banned this seems to me him circumventing his block. He has now taken this conflict to my message wall on this wiki. Considering the global block on his main account could you please block him on this wiki? I will also be reporting this to Fandom Staff

Kindly,

Asarta
Asarta (talk) 06:46, June 12, 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

You're right to report the user to FANDOM staff, and possibly they'll be globally blocked again in this account as well.

But I don't think that local wikis should enforce case-by-case bans in place of global bans. I saw one message from that user on your wall, which I don't think was abusive (though out of place).

If they repeat and bother you here (beyond that one message) I'll indeed block them on this wiki - not for circumventing a global ban (which is not my place to enforce), but for bothering local wiki community members.
Adnoam (talk) 07:05, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Okay
Asarta (talk) 07:06, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

I saw that you've closed the thread they've opened on your Wall. Would you like me to remove that thread or leave it there with your response?
Adnoam (talk) 07:11, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Item order in category templates

Black Wings Absinthe Nouveau was recently updated to put it in the wines category, which is correct. But in the Wines template table, it gets ordered close to the bottom, when in fact it's the first one in the game. I'm not sure how to change that – I don't really understand templates' internal workings. I also remember from a while ago that several other categories had the items in a different order from the game too. Would it be helpful if I created a list where they differed, or is it not that important?
Cactusorange (talk) 23:56, June 12, 2020 (UTC)

It's not so much template code than it is table code (the table is at {{[[Template:Wines|Wines]]}}).

The thing is that I feel all of these templates are somewhat inconsistent now, at least as relating to their original goal. These were supposed to be "economy" templates - showing the different "tiers" of items in that item category and to easily show the conversion paths and costs.

But now we have more and more items in these categories which are not part of the category's "economy" (i.e. you can't up-convert and side-convert them, and some you can't even sell).

As for Wines specifically, click on the "shown conversions" button and you'll see the reason for the current order: All the convert-able items are at the top, then there's a dividing line and below it are the Wines which are not part of the category's economy (starting with "Bottled Oblivion", etc.).
Adnoam (talk) 07:00, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Now that you've pointed that out I can see that the tables for categories like Wines are labelled "Economy", while categories like Contraband is labelled "Category".

I notice that there is quite a lot of variety in how the different tables are ordered. I wonder if it'd be possible to create a sort of general system for their organisation, though probably with openings for ad-hoc deviations if the general structure makes it less clear than it could be.

Thinking of what sort of criteria you could make to sort:

* Conversion: for Economy-type tables, items that can be converted should probably be at the top, with the conversions and dividing line in the expand. {{[[Template:Rag_Trade|Rag Trade]]}} gives a very straightforward example of this.
* Echo value: Sorting by sell value generally seems like a good idea. Items that cannot be sold should probably be after items that can? Tangiental to this, how to decide which items that can't be directly sold should be given an echo value.
* Association with other items: Some items are clearly related, and should probably be next to each other even if the more formal criteria wouldn't place them there. {{[[Template:Book|Book]]}} is a very good example of this, as is the Screaming Map items in {{[[Template:Cartography|Cartography]]}}
* Game order: Looking at categories like {{[[Template:Goods|Goods]]}} I wonder if it is sometimes clearer to align with game order than it is to use a possibly more "structured" system.
* Item actions: The game orders by this on the Book and Curiosity categories. Not sure how relevant it'd be for a potential wiki order system beyond the conversions.
* Alphabetical order: All other points being equal, it probably makes sense to do the final sort alphabetically.

This adds up to some sort of structure, though there are still some questions where I'm not sure what would be the best solution.
Cactusorange (talk) 16:48, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Script error

Hey, someone reported that Category:Affiliation has a script error. I haven't found the issue yet but you are more fluent with your own code base :)

(Also, I am not sure if this is related or not but I noticed that all filters in the Max bonuses selection table (e.g. Mithridacy Items) now default to "No". Pretty sure it used to default to "yes". Unless it was an intentional change?
Mikey thinkin (talk) 20:26, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. The script errors were caused by the new style of item lists generated by the module, which now doesn't support the "Other" argument it used to (and is used by {{[[Template:ItemListByClass|ItemListByClass]]}}). I've asked D0SBoots to re-add that support.

As for the defaults in the max bonuses tables, this was changed a couple of weeks ago by D0SBoots. My original defaults were indeed "yes" to all items, thinking that min-maxing gear will be most in use by end game players/characters with access to lots of high end (and possible Fate and season locked) items - trying to juggle them around to get the best outfit for a particular purpose. D0SBoots reasoned that these best-in-slots tables are most in use to figure out what gear to buy from the Bazaar.

We should have a discussion to see if there's any consensus on the most useful defaults.
Adnoam (talk) 06:55, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Oh. Yeah.. I definitely don't use what gear to buy from the Bazaar.... (personally)
Mikey thinkin (talk) 08:04, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

Just going to chime in. I personally do tend to exclude basically everything except professions and faction items.
Asarta (talk) 11:34, June 15, 2020 (UTC)

Temple Club

Does FBG giving out free Temple Club invitations change anything in regard to the respective content being unavailable on the wiki?
Tfftff (talk) 11:47, June 18, 2020 (UTC)

I don't think so. It's still premium content, even if FBG have given out free samples of it. It's not the first time that premium content was made available as a one-time gift via access code.

After all, anyone was always able to get an invitation to the Temple Club for free - just by asking for such an invitation on the forums.
Adnoam (talk) 12:56, June 21, 2020 (UTC)

When Royal-Blue Feathers were given out in the advent calendar two years in a row, the option to trade them for tribute got opened. Wouldn't this be equivalent? It is a much larger piece of content, to be fair.

I'd argue that previously, it still relied on someone having paid, even if they could infinitely share it. Now the content would be accessible even if nobody had ever paid for it.
Cactusorange (talk) 17:17, June 21, 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I also feel it should be documented. There is an actual Fate story that can't be documented (the story that gives the original backers permanent acccess). But the location itself with the storylets that invitees can access should be available on the wiki, imho
Mikey thinkin (talk) 17:31, June 21, 2020 (UTC)

I'll check with FBG regarding their policy on this.
Adnoam (talk) 21:11, June 21, 2020 (UTC)

Got a response from FBG:

They don't consider the Temple Club as Fate-locked. Given the new number of invitations now in circulation, they are OK with the wiki documenting this content (keeping to the usual 250-character rule).
Adnoam (talk) 13:35, June 22, 2020 (UTC)

Fate content removal

Hi, the new ES's starting storylet & actions was added, can you delete the corresponding pages? An Unpaired Glove Take the glove Ignore the glove
SamNorrey (talk) 23:12, June 25, 2020 (UTC)

Done. Thanks.
Adnoam (talk) 21:39, June 26, 2020 (UTC)

Faction Templates

Hi Adnoam,

After being annoyed for several weeks every time I saw an {{[[Template:Incomplete|Incomplete]]}} notice I've gone ahead and created two Templates for Factions, one for reworked ones and one for the Factions which still use Connected. These Templates are currently living on User:Asarta/Templates/Template1 and User:Asarta/Templates/Template2 and examples are live on User:Asarta/Sandbox. Could you take a look at them and suggest any improvements you can think of? If you think it works I'll upload them to the actual wiki and update all the factions.

Update: After seeing some contrary points of view I've created a blog post to ask for comments.
Asarta (talk) 17:46, July 1, 2020 (UTC)

Seems nice and thanks for taking the effort.

I don't think this needs to be two separate templates - most of the content and the layout is the same. I'd suggest a parameter "Connected=yes" to change the template from the default behaviour (Favours/Renown) to the old style (Connected quality).

There are other small things I might think of adding to it, but we can certainly start with your base.

Thanks again.
Adnoam (talk) 07:39, July 6, 2020 (UTC)

Hi thanks for your comment. I'm just going to quickly redirect you to Rahv7's wall where we have a on going discussion about these templates. Also how ould such a parameter work (ie can you point me at/make an example I can pick apart)

Edit:Already found it
Asarta (talk) 07:47, July 6, 2020 (UTC)

==Problem with

Boon

Value	Item
+1	A Reflective Reputation (Glasswork +1, An Advanced Arts Advancement +1) EXCEPTIONAL FRIENDSHIP Mood FATE

Hat

Value	Item
+1	The Gant Moth (Glasswork +1, Shadowy +6, Bizarre +4, Moth-Winged +1, Dreaded -2) HALLOWMAS FATE
	The Moth (Glasswork +1, Shadowy +6, Bizarre +4, Moth-Winged +1, Dreaded -2) HALLOWMAS
	Commander's Oneironautical Helm (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +5, Bizarre +1) CHRISTMAS RETIRED

Clothing

Value	Item
+1	Strange-Shore Parabola Frock (Glasswork +1, Persuasive +8, Shadowy +5, Respectable +1)
	Strange-Shore Parabola Suit (Glasswork +1, Persuasive +8, Shadowy +5, Respectable +1)
	Aurochs-Fur Coat (Glasswork +1, Shadowy +6, Respectable +4, Neathproofed +2, Reduces Nightmares build up., Bizarre -2) WHITSUN
	Viric Frock (Glasswork +1, Bizarre -3)
	Viric Suit (Glasswork +1, Bizarre -3)

Adornment

Value	Item
+1	Viscountess' Bejewelled Collar (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +3) WORLD QUALITY

Gloves

Value	Item
+1	'Lucky' Claw (Glasswork +1, Persuasive +8) SUMMER
-2	Devil's Dictionary (Dreaded +1, Neathproofed +1, Glasswork -2)

Weapon

Value	Item
+1	False-Star Catalogue (Glasswork +1, Watchful +9, Bizarre +1) WORLD QUALITY
	Verdant Hairpin (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +8, Watchful +5) SUMMER
	A Bestiary of the Hearts' Desires (Glasswork +1, Persuasive +7, A Player of Chess +1, Respectable +1) Ambition: Heart's Desire! Item
	A Bright Brass Button (Glasswork +1, Watchful +3, Bizarre +2) Ambition: Heart's Desire! Item
	Jaguar Blade, Remembered (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +3) Ambition: Bag a Legend! Item

Boots

Value	Item
+1	Honey-Stained Shackles (Glasswork +1, Shadowy +8, Dreaded +1) SUMMER

Companion

Value	Item
+2	Silver-Eyed Scoundrel (Glasswork +2, Shadowy +6) HALLOWMAS
	Ursine Honey Connoisseur (Glasswork +2, Respectable +1) HALLOWMAS FATE
+1	November (Glasswork +1, Shadowy +9, Persuasive +5, Dreaded +2) FEAST OF THE ROSE FATE
	Prescient Automatist (Glasswork +1, Watchful +9, Persuasive +5, Bizarre +1, Mithridacy +1) HALLOWMAS
	Reflected Minotaur (Glasswork +1, Shadowy +7, Dangerous +5, Bizarre +1, Dreaded +1) WHITSUN
	Parabolan Panther (Glasswork +1, Persuasive +7, Watchful +4, Bizarre +1) SUNLESS SEA FATE
	Honey-Mazed Bear (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +4)
	Parabolan Kitten (Glasswork +1, Persuasive +3, Bizarre +1) SUNLESS SEA
	Piebald Chronicler (Glasswork +1, Mithridacy +1) FATE
	Piebald Historian (Glasswork +1, Mithridacy +1) FATE
	Piebald Mythographer (Glasswork +1, Mithridacy +1) FATE
-10	Weasel of Woe (Woeful +1, Glasswork -10, A Player of Chess -10, Artisan of the Red Science -10, Chthonosophy -10, Kataleptic Toxicology -10, Mithridacy -10, Monstrous Anatomy -10, Shapeling Arts -10, Zeefaring -10, Dangerous -300, Persuasive -300, Shadowy -300, Watchful -300, Greatly increases Wounds build up.)

Destiny

Value	Item
+1	The Lovers (Glasswork +1, Persuasive +5, Destined +2)

Tools of the Trade

Value	Item
+1	Set of Cosmogone Spectacles (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +6, Persuasive +6, Bizarre +1) Profession: Silverer Item

Affiliation

Value	Item
+1	Dream-Shadow of a Curator's Vestige (Glasswork +1, Watchful +6, Shadowy +3, Dreaded +1) Ambition: Nemesis Item
	A Questioning of Riddlefishers (Glasswork +1, Shadowy +3, Watchful +3) FATE

Transport

Value	Item
+1	Wind-Bitten Reins (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +3, Dreaded +1) CHRISTMAS FATE

Home Comfort

Value	Item
+2	Rook-Crowned Oneiropompic Stave (Glasswork +2, Shadowy +6, Dreaded +2)
	Serpent-Headed Oneiropompic Stave (Glasswork +2, Persuasive +6, Bizarre +2)
	Tiger-Furred Oneiropompic Stave (Glasswork +2, Dangerous +6, Respectable +2)
+1	Dream-Shard of the Mirror of Knives (Glasswork +1, Dangerous +10, Watchful +6, Dreaded +1) Ambition: Nemesis Item
	Mr Mirrors' Most Heartfelt Reflection (Glasswork +1, Watchful +3, Bizarre +1) CHRISTMAS FATE

Burden

Value	Item
-1	An Overplayed Hand (Poison Tolerance of Your Target +1, Glasswork -1, Kataleptic Toxicology -1, Shapeling Arts -1, Dangerous -10, Persuasive -10, Shadowy -10, Watchful -10)

.== Hi Adnoam, As pointed put by Bibliovore the Honey-Mazed Bear isn't getting added to Glasswork Items despite it having a +1 bonus to Glasswork. A quick bit of backtracking shows me that it is connected to Module:ItemList/Companions but do we need to update that one manually or is that done automatically? I will just add it in manually for now.
Asarta (talk) 13:37, July 10, 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry for the delay - I was away from the game for a while.

Indeed, when new items are added to the game, the relevant Module data tables must be manually updated. This is similar to how linking a new item/quality/page to a specific image must be done manually in Module:IL/images.

Once this item is added (once) to the relevant Module:ItemList sub-table, then all pages using the Module will show the updated data.
Adnoam (talk) 08:22, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam wrote: Hi. Sorry for the delay - I was away from the game for a while.

Indeed, when new items are added to the game, the relevant Module data tables must be manually updated. This is similar to how linking a new item/quality/page to a specific image must be done manually in Module:IL/images.

Actually this question was outdated; I found it already. Digging through Template source code for the win!
Asarta (talk) 08:28, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

When there's a new item which hasn't been updated in the proper Module:ItemList data table, then that item's page is automatically included in Category:Items without Module ItemList data.

And in that Category page there are links to all the relevant data tables, so anyone can easily click in the right one (e.g. Module:ItemList/Companions) and update it with the new item's information.
Adnoam (talk) 09:00, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

==Bug with

ID: MISSING

Spoiler warning! This page contains details about Fallen London Actions.

From: [[]]

This article is incomplete. You can help the Fallen London Wiki by expanding it.

Success

No reward narrative information available for Fate-locked actions.== Just noticed that {{Fate}} doesn't properly use NarrowDiff — it incorrectly passes NarrowQuality instead.
Optimatum (talk) 21:54, July 14, 2020 (UTC)

Quite right, Thanks. I've fixed the template.

I've also reduced the protection level for the template so registered users can update it (and not just admins).
Adnoam (talk) 08:57, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Should anything happen with comments that break wiki-page-content guidelines?

Greetings!  I asked about this subject in a comment on the Editing Guidelines page, and it was suggested there that I ask you directly.  Are there official commenting guidelines somewhere I've missed, or any requests for what, if anything, to do about comments that break overall wiki guidelines (e.g. with more than 250 characters of quoted narrative)?  Are links to journal entries allowed in comments, or are those considered to be either circumventing wiki content rules or verboten as links to Fallen London itself?  

Thanks for any insights, and for all your work on this wiki!
Bibliovore (talk) 17:16, July 23, 2020 (UTC)

Hi.

Comments which quote more than 250 characters of text from the game should be trimmed. Flag one if you see one.

Links to journal entries are fine.
Adnoam (talk) 09:02, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good.  Thank you!
73.211.181.152 10:12, July 26, 2020 (UTC)

...Actually, how does one flag a comment?  I don't see an option to do so.  But here.
Bibliovore (talk) 04:37, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam wrote: Hi.

Comments which quote more than 250 characters of text from the game should be trimmed. Flag one if you see one.

Links to journal entries are fine.

This is COMMENTS! Damn you, if trimm any.
109.206.38.119 05:25, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

Bibliovore: Thanks. I've trimmed the comment there.

Anonymous: Sure, it's comments, but the restrictions come from copyright reasons. Any game content is owned by FBG, so we can't just post the whole thing here (and in this regard, there's no difference between article bodies and comments) - that's copyright infringement. FBG have been very community friendly - since the beginning they wanted to allow the wiki to thrive, but for legal reasons they *couldn't* just let big chunks of their text be copied here, so we came to the 250-character limitation compromise. That's enough so the wiki can document the *effects* of actions, while leaving the majority of the actual text itself to the game.
Adnoam (talk) 07:58, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

I think the comments detailing results of unfinished pages can be nice as a low barrier of entry option to contribute to the wiki, and as there isn't any simple way to flag them that I know of I've ended up just leaving them alone.

But this comment really annoyed me. It's not even pretending to be anything but a violation of the trimming rules. So that's given me the push to want to point out untrimmed comments that are in good faith as well.

When I come across untrimmed comments in the future, should I just post them in this thread?
Cactusorange (talk) 17:29, August 19, 2020 (UTC)

Sure. Flag it here and it will give me a notification.
Adnoam (talk) 20:39, August 19, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam, do you think that you can introduce the same code that Action templates have for their "From" field?

I would alter the code myself (you didn't set the Card template to protected), but I am about to be unavailable at this time of writing.
Rostygold (talk) 15:15, July 27, 2020 (UTC)

Sorry - I didn't understand the question.

Where did you want to add which code?
Adnoam (talk) 18:57, July 27, 2020 (UTC)

It's the Card template, specifically the location field. I would like to have the location field updated with the code that the Storylet template has in its "From" and "From formatted" fields.

This can address the fact that there are some cards that certain non-London locations share, like the cards that are common to both the Broad Unterzee and the Sea of Voices, and Ealing Gardens and Jericho Locks.
Rostygold (talk) 22:07, July 27, 2020 (UTC)

On second thought, after mucking around with the code in the Card template, I hit the snag of auto-generating the "Category" tags. My plan would have resulted in cards common to certain locations in the Hinterlands appearing under each category of cards for each station.

Thus, I propose creating a "hub" Place page for the Hinterlands locations, and then list Ealing Gardens and Jericho Locks underneath there.

P.S. If you don't mind, I would reduce the "only drawn" phrase under the Card template to just "drawn". This should not cause any technical misinterpretation.
Rostygold (talk) 23:44, July 27, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's exactly like in Cards belonging to both Broad Unterzee and the Sea of Voices. There, the compromise used was to have "location=The Broad Unterzee" and to add the Category for "Cards - The Sea of Voices" manually at the end of the page.

It's inelegant and not 100% accurate, as it solved (manually) the categorization issue while leaving the displayed location as The Broad Untezee only.

We need a better solution, e.g.:

* Use something like I saw now, with "Hinterlands" as location. For Zailing cards available in both locations this can be "At Zee" or similar.
* Use a new "location2" field - easy to use, but messes up the template code a bit. The implementation might be simplified a bit using a MOdule (as is done with the OptionX parameters in the Storylet/Card templates).
* Make the location field accept optional multiple values, like in Action "From" field - this is easy to display, but it complex for automatically assigning categories.
Adnoam (talk) 08:20, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the response.

I had thought about additional location fields and "var" fields, but the category tags are a pain. I just realized that there are going to be multiple stations, all of which are sharing cards. Having pages on multiple category pages is just a boggling mess.

Hence, I made that Hinterlands page. Optimatum did some work too, though the location was named "Upper River" and a Places page had yet to be made.
Rostygold (talk) 08:44, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

Is there a discussion about this elsewhere (outside my Wall)?

Whatever direction this takes, there should be one agreed way to do this. (trying to tag Optimatum).

What if new locations are added, and some cards will be in a few of those locations but not all?
Adnoam (talk) 11:30, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

I just add links to the Cards - Hinterlands category on the category page for cards that are unique to specific Hinterland locations, like this.

By the way, there has been some discussion under the Jericho Locks Places page.
Rostygold (talk) 11:56, July 28, 2020 (UTC)

Template:Places

Hi Adnoam, As I also mentioned on the subreddit we probably should update Template:Places to add an option to display the ability to change outfits in locations now that Failbetter has confirmed this change will remain. I've for now written an quick fix on User:Asarta/Templates/Template2 which uses two new lines (<nowiki>{{#ifeq {{{Outfit}}} yes/no}} to display either of these lines:

if yes: You can freely change your outfit in this location.

if no: It is not possible to change outfits while you are in this location.

Are you okay with me updating the main template with these changes?
Asarta (talk) 07:40, August 1, 2020 (UTC)

The change is fine, thanks.

I don't like that we don't have a reliable default (which would mean just a single if/else check), but it's probably better to only add this info to the Places pages where we know for certain one way or the other.
Adnoam (talk) 19:36, August 1, 2020 (UTC)

Template:Quality update

Hi Adnoam On your userpage you have the following to do task: "Update {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} so that it only adds things to maintenance categories (e.g. Category:Qualities without Category‎) if it's called from the Main or Category namespaces (to ignore test pages in users' namespaces)." I've written the code to do this and stored it in User:Asarta/Templates/Template2 but not yet added it to {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}. Could you take a look at it.
Asarta (talk) 12:53, August 4, 2020 (UTC)

Also on a completely unrelated note could you perhaps trim this comment? It doesn't add anything and clutters the comment section
Asarta (talk) 16:37, August 4, 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

Probably the following code should be enough:

{{#switch: {{NAMESPACE}}|Category|=[[:Category:XYZ]]|}}

What do you think?
Adnoam (talk) 09:29, August 5, 2020 (UTC)

That seems to work as well. I'll run a few tests with it using a copy of the template and if that works I'll add it to the real one.

Edit: I'm not sure what I've done but it adds the Discrete Quality now even if discrete isn't set. Could you take a look at User:Asarta/Templates/Template2?
Asarta (talk) 10:48, August 5, 2020 (UTC)

You're missing a closing "includeonly" tag towards the end.

Also, the entire section there of "includeonly" (which adds a bunch of categories) can use one single test for the namespace (instead of checking the namespace multiple times).
Adnoam (talk) 12:26, August 5, 2020 (UTC)

Okay I tried that now I'm not getting any categories outputted. I give up for now will look at it again later
Asarta (talk) 13:00, August 5, 2020 (UTC)

Something complelty unrelated but I also saw these items:

* Standardize {{[[Template:Success|Success]]}}, {{[[Template:Rare_Success|Rare Success]]}}, {{[[Template:Failure|Failure]]}} (and possibly others) so that they all use the same param names as the "normal" {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} (i.e. "Title", "Description" and not "Success title"/"Failure title"/"Rare success title" etc.). Will require a bot.

Will you ever get around to these? because otherwise I have no problems with doing them using this account.
AsartaBot (talk) 13:14, August 5, 2020 (UTC)

I don't know when I'll get around to it. This is a change the must be done very carefully. It would probably be better to only do this after changing "success" to "result" in the action template.
Adnoam (talk) 18:54, August 5, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam wrote: I don't know when I'll get around to it. This is a change the must be done very carefully. It would probably be better to only do this after changing "success" to "result" in the action template.

True we should do that first. That however is a task thats growing by the second as more pages are added. If you can get me an working template to do it with and send out an announcement telling people to do it the new way I'm willing to start chipping away at it.
Asarta (talk) 19:19, August 5, 2020 (UTC)

It will have to be done by a bot anyway, since it will involve changing parameters name in thousands of pages. Once decided it wouldn't matter much to the bot if it's a thousand pages or two thousand.
Adnoam (talk) 04:38, August 6, 2020 (UTC)

I noticed that after the changes to the template, pages with multiple 'Unlocked with' branches (all beside the first being outside the template) have a lot of spacing between them, which didn't seem intended. Example.
Cactusorange (talk) 22:40, August 7, 2020 (UTC)

Guide update

Considering many of the newer grinds are in the 3-4+ EPA range, would it be prudent to move many of the older ones to the historical section and limit other sections to mostly 2.5+ EPA activities?
Tfftff (talk) 15:35, August 10, 2020 (UTC)

I was thinking about that, too. But most of those high-end grinds are not accessible to most players. The 4+ EPA especially is only for those with a very unique combination of Ambition and Equipment.
Adnoam (talk) 18:50, August 10, 2020 (UTC)

Just breaking in, I agree with Adnoam. While 4+ is possible it requires very specific choices and Ambition completion. However with the broken honey grind now in place the bar has been raised somewhat. I would say anything under 2 EPA and which isn't accessible until midgame (roughly after becoming a PoSI and completing Making your Name) should go.
Asarta (talk) 19:27, August 10, 2020 (UTC)

Thank you and I don't disagree about the exclusivity of some of the higher EPA grinds. However, even with more easily accessible ones rarely dipping below 2.5 EPA and the guide itself geared towards end-game players, <2 EPA regular grinds and <2.5 EPA card-based grinds (and the like) seem out of place.
Tfftff (talk) 20:32, August 10, 2020 (UTC)

Personally I like having the Affair of the Box there as a baseline, though it might be from nostalgia. For such a long time it was *the* golden standard for repeatable grinds - even for endgame players. But even with all the new additions, this is definitely accessible for many players - all it takes is Shadowy 120 to ensure 100%, not even POSI is required.

The guide is naturally more geared towards endgame players, but it shouldn't be exclusive ("a guide for making money if you've completed everything else in the game"). Even players in the mid-game are looking for good ways to earn echoes.
Adnoam (talk) 22:02, August 11, 2020 (UTC)

I would argue to include Affair of the Box and Soul Trade for historical reasons. Since the anniversary content, there are a decent number of "lapsed" players coming back to the game after an extended absence. I think there's value in keeping the historical baselines around just as a point of reference. But if a grind wasn't well-established in the community for an extended period, I would put the cut-off at either 2.0 or 2.5. The only other historical comparison I might include is Tannah-Chook.

Mid-game grinds might be worthwhile as a separate section. 
PSGarak (talk) 03:04, August 12, 2020 (UTC)

Shop pages images

Hi Adnoam, I noticed that right now all shops use a small left floating image as their main image I think it would look a lot better if we change that to a normal thumb image. Any thoughts?
Asarta (talk) 09:28, August 12, 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely
Adnoam (talk) 17:55, August 12, 2020 (UTC)

Also perhaps adding the quote thing from Template:Item (the nice grey line) around its description and what it sells?
Asarta (talk) 18:31, August 12, 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm. Except for Items, this display style is not used anywhere else on the wiki to show descriptions. I don't think changing specifically here would add real value.
Adnoam (talk) 21:22, August 12, 2020 (UTC)

I've wanted to see the display style used on qualities too, actually. I think it brings clarity. So I'd be for using it with shops as well.
Cactusorange (talk) 16:23, August 13, 2020 (UTC)

New Wiki Manager

Hey Adnoam, I'm Tephra, the new Fandom Wiki Manager to replace Emptylord. If you need anything, feel free to contact me and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Tephra (talk) 19:33, August 16, 2020 (UTC)

Paragraph Tags in QuoteSummary Template

Hi Adnoam,

I've been working on making a template for the tables of quality-dependent variations (like how Board Persuasion votes vary description & difficulty by question number). I'm trying to use the {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} template, to automatically flag text snippets over the 250-character limit. But it also adds p tags before (and after?) the text. This expands the visible size of the table, as well as causing some mark-up issues in certain contexts (like {{[[Template:Wiki_Note|Wiki Note]]}}, maybe because of enclosing span tags?).

I'm reaching out to you because the change history for that template says you're the one who added them, although it was years ago. This is also my first foray into Template editing, so I'd appreciate some guidance. I could wholesale copy-paste the length-checking functionality, add optional params to QuoteSummary for the spacing, refactor the length-checking into a different template. What would be best?

You can see the templates I'm working on at User:PSGarak/Sandbox
PSGarak (talk) 21:17, August 20, 2020 (UTC)

As you've said - it's been years. I'm also not the original write of that template. I tried tweaking it when needed and it was mostly a lot of trial and error on my part.

Please feel free to copy the code into your own template and play with it until you get no formatting problems. Then we might incorporate your changes to the main template (which still has issues).
Adnoam (talk) 21:23, August 20, 2020 (UTC)

There are some writers for the QuoteSummary template that are not active anymore. Did they fall off the game years ago?
Rostygold (talk) 04:10, August 21, 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, many (if not all) of the founding members of the wiki haven't been around here in years. Whether they are still playing the game or not, I have no idea.
Adnoam (talk) 08:08, August 21, 2020 (UTC)

I doubt they are. If they are, they would be in this wiki one way or another.

Besides, Fandom user profiles show which wiki they have been frequenting.
Rostygold (talk) 12:51, August 21, 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to pull out the logic for checking the length & flagging into a separate template, for use in more contexts. Then eventually QuoteSummary can forward the length-checking to the new template, and focus on presentation of a quote + complementing summary.

I'm also creating a {{[[Template:...|...]]}} template for my own convenience, so I don't have to keep copy-pasting the elipsis character from Wikipedia. Long-term this can help us standardize quote editing.
PSGarak (talk) 20:30, August 21, 2020 (UTC)

Excellent idea about creating {{[[Template:...|...]]}}. I can't believe I didn't think of that myself. Must check how this is counted when used as part of a block of text.
Adnoam (talk) 06:48, August 23, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam wrote: Excellent idea about creating {{[[Template:...|...]]}}. I can't believe I didn't think of that myself. Must check how this is counted when used as part of a block of text.

Running a few basic tests on User:Asarta/Sandbox it seems that it doesn't count the Template at all. As an example

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla ut euismod risus, ac vulputate magna. Nullam libero tortor, dapibus sit amet mattis quis, egestas ut enim. Suspendisse finibus purus magna, ac ornare urna sodales id. Sed volutpat est ut […]

char count:300




[Find the rest of the story at https://www.fallenlondon.com]

is 300 characters long. Replacing the last egestas (7 characters long) with {{[[Template:...|...]]}} produces:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla ut euismod risus, ac vulputate magna. Nullam libero tortor, dapibus sit amet mattis quis, egestas ut enim. Suspendisse finibus purus magna, ac ornare urna sodales id. Sed volutpat est ut […]

char count:293




[Find the rest of the story at https://www.fallenlondon.com]

Which it counts as being 7 characters shorter rather than the 4 expected (we removed 7 chars and added three ([…]))
Asarta (talk) 07:35, August 23, 2020 (UTC)

The existing code for QuoteSummary looks for bracketed elipses and skips over them when counting characters. It looks for maybe half-a-dozen different variants of how to write it, including [...], (...), […], and more. 

In other news, I found out why the trimming code isn't actually trimming anything. The Template puts <pre> tags in front of and behind the text, with special Class attributes flTruncateStart and flTruncateEnd. Some jQuery code in a file named MediaWiki:Common.js/truncate.js looks for those classes, iterates DOM needs in-between them, and does the truncation. The problem is that the iteration method (a jQuery method named "contents()") skips text nodes, which is where all of the text is.

The good news is, this rube-goldberg logic is unnecessary anyways. The Template can do the truncation itself, rather than asking JavaScript to do with with these weird DOM bookends. Long-term I might be able to make the trunacation happen before saving, but that's a few steps away.
PSGarak (talk) 19:40, August 23, 2020 (UTC)

I've disentangled what the existing {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} template does, and have separated it into two templates.

User:PSGarak/Sandbox/Game text checks the length of the text, and if it's too long, truncates it, adds a user-facing message, and flags it with the {{[[Template:Immediate_review|Immediate review]]}} template. This can be used in more contexts because it does add formatting or block-type tags to non-flagged text. Also the truncation works now, and happens in Wikimedia so it's part of the HTML rather than something that happens with JavaScript later on.

User:PSGarak/Sandbox/QuoteSummary is intended to more-or-less be a drop-in replacement for the existing {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} template. It forwards game text to the new template above, and also packages it up with optional player-provided summary and wraps it in <p> tags.

I would like to get some feedback before I proceed further.

Firstly and least-importantly, the names are all provisional. I did not think about them very hard. I'm open to suggestions. QuoteSummary is kind of baked in right now, but Game text could be trimmable, truncate, story text, etc.

Second, elipses. As I mentioned above, the current QuoteSummary template checks for several variations: [...], [..]. (...), […], and (…). All of these are skipped when counting characters for truncation. My Game text template currently only checks for {{[[Template:...|...]]}}. I could make it handle all of them, but I'd kind of rather not. Standardizing on the one will cause some short-term pain as a bunch of currently-compliant articles get flagged. As an intermedediate solution, the template could slap a category on when it finds a non-standard elipsis.

Third, a piece of buried functionality: The current QuoteSummary template adds a "find the full story at fallenlondon.com" link below some quotes. I think the logic is that the link appears when any of the following are true: The quote is cut off for being too long, or the Summary field is provided, or elipses are present. Basically some heuristics for when the game text is not the full game text. Is this feature something we want to keep around, and if so, with the same logic? In my templates it lives in QuoteSummary, not as Game text, because it's too much extra text when used in tables.

Finally, what's the criteria or process for when it's ok to begin updating core templates? No one wants to break the Wiki, after all.
PSGarak (talk) 16:28, August 25, 2020 (UTC)

While I'm not Adnoam thee are my thoughts: First of thank you for all the hard work! Now in order of your original questions:

# QuoteSummary is of course already used a lot and I think we should continu doing so. Game text however seems a bit of a poor description for what the template really does. Perhaps something more in the vein of Trimmed? (I would also like to point out that since this isn't an user facing template I don't think the name needs to be that great and Game Text still works for me)




# Regarding ellipses I think that moving in the direction of one template is indeed the way to go. If we decide to do that however I would argue for a temporary part that checks if the text is still too long without them, if thats the case flag it with Category:Immediate review and otherwise flag it with a new maintenance category to differiante between pages which still need trimming (and therefore a delete/restore) and pages in which we just need to change some ellipses.




# I'm a big fan of "find the full story at fallenlondon.com" and think we should keep it in some form. However your comment about tables does ring true and it shouldn't be included in those. I would almost argue for it to be moved to {{[[Template:Storylet|Storylet]]}}/{{[[Template:Card|Card]]}}/{{[[Template:Action|Action]]}}/{{[[Template:Success|Success]]}}/{{[[Template:Failure|Failure]]}} as it makes a lot more sense there.

Finally, what's the criteria or process for when it's ok to begin updating core templates? No one wants to break the Wiki, after all.

In my previous experience you'll fisrt get a thread like this, some random other users will drift in and point out all kinds of flaws which you fix. then eventually we all stop whining and you get admin permission, you make a blog post and implement your changes and then you discover even more flaws
Asarta (talk) 17:24, August 25, 2020 (UTC)

# Just Truncate seems descriptive to me, that's essentially what it does. (It seems you were also using that for Template:Truncate?)
# I'm not overly fond of the ellipsis template, and would like for my standard […] to remain viable. I've got … on my keyboard, and [] are easier to write than {}, so for me the template doubles the amount of button presses from four to eight, and less accessible ones at that. It also seems worth it to include the more common ellipses variations in the template to avoid having to go over a bunch of other pages. (I wouldn't mind (…) and variations being deprecated, to have presentation consistency – but it's currently accepted by the Editing Guidelines.)
# I think the present criteria are good, and that it should remain in QuoteSummary. Duplicating it into several different templates increases the amount of work that has to be done if it's to be changed, and runs the risk of causing discrepancies. It also neatly fits into the purpose of the template imo: adding the flourishes to game text. Without it QuoteSummary doesn't have much of a reason to exist at all, with the actual trimming being done elsewhere now.
Cactusorange (talk) 19:32, August 25, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the work. Some quick comments:

# Having a separate template to truncate text in various contexts is excellent. We need to use this for item descriptions as well. Also for {{[[Template:Snippet|Snippet]]}} and other instances.
# We should support at least some of the most common ways to write [...]. The template is very nice (I use it now), but it shouldn't be mandatory.
# I see in your User:PSGarak/Sandbox/QuoteSummary example that you've removed the check for the variable "suppressquote" that's in {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}}. If I remember correctly (it's been years), this is a variable that is set by {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} and checked by {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}}. Basically, this is to avoid having the Options template's expandable/collapsible area include the quoted text of the action page being referenced. Very ugly, but it got the job done.
Adnoam (talk) 20:31, August 25, 2020 (UTC)

Consolidating feedback:

I think we'll go with Template:Truncate. I starting working on this as a sub-template to do some magic to cut off overlong text before it's even saved... that was too magical and I never got it working. I'll move the existing template out of my sandbox into that page soon, since it's not being used anywhere yet. Work-in-progress on the QuoteSummary update will stay in my sandbox for now.

Note that there is no functional difference between using the {{[[Template:...|...]]}} template and just typing/pasting […] directly. The two source codes lead to the same article text. The Template is just for those of us without the elipsis character on our keyboard. Other Templates do not distinguish whether it was typed directly or via Template, and I'm not sure they even could if they wanted to.

It sounds like the majority vote is to support common variations of elipses, but there is some interest in narrowing the "acceptable" variants. I'm just going to go ahead and keep all of the ones that QuoteSummary accepts right now. Cleaning up stylistic variations can be a separate project after this one, and it will take some bikeshedding.

I'll keep the link to fallenlondon.com in QuoteSummary. I'll clean up the logic if I can, because I think it's actually checking for a different set of elipsis variants than the length-check. 

@Adnoam noted about the suppressquote variable, I'll re-introduce that. The Options template seems like a right beast, but that's understandable given what it's trying to do.

Minor note: While the choice of whether to truncate skips elipses when counting characters, the logic of how far to truncate currently does not. So in the edge-case where someone trims text with elipses but doesn't trim to below the character count, the displayed text will cut off a few more characters than necessary. I assume this is not a big deal.
PSGarak (talk) 01:56, August 26, 2020 (UTC)

The functional difference would be if you could have very slightly longer trimmed text only if you used the template. As long as there's no disadvantage to doing it the way that's easier for me, I don't mind.

Would it be possible to print the various ellipses variants as just […]? Assuming there'd be agreement on settling on that specific variant, it'd unify the presentation of everything without having to change the source of individual pages.

Re: minor note, slightly too early cutoff doesn't seem like an issue if the page will have to be edited anyway.
Cactusorange (talk) 16:14, August 26, 2020 (UTC)

As long as the pages are properly flagged for review, it doesn't matter much - in some very specific corner cases we'll replace the e-character ... with a 1-character elipsis and be done with it. For most cases it wouldn't matter either way.

Where it does matter, and multiple "..." patterns should be taken into consideration is in the part of deciding whether to add the note about "read the full story on..." which is there to indicate to the reader that there's more than could be displayed on the wiki.
Adnoam (talk) 17:55, August 26, 2020 (UTC)

@Cactusorange Brilliant idea to replace all the elipses as […]. Figuring out how to do that also lent some help to other elipsis-related issues.

All parts of both templates that deal with Elipses now use regular-expression-ish things to accept a range of possibilities rather than testing against four or five common variants. This is probably a net win for maintainability, although it's kind of hard to tell... regexen have a reputation for being inscrutable, and it seems that Wikimedia uses Lua's "patterns" which are kinda similar but have significant differences. 

The current pattern matches either [ or ( to open, ] or ) to close, and any non-zero amount of . or … in the middle. This matches all currently-allowed variants. It is overly permissive because it will match silly patterns like [....] or (………) or [.…). But such patterns are not likely to arise in practice, so disallowing them seems more trouble than it's worth. I have some tests of different elipses at User:PSGarak/Sandbox.

{{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} skips elipses when deciding whether to truncate, and replaces all variations of elipses with […]. User:PSGarak/Sandbox/QuoteSummary adds the "read the full story..." link when either a Summary is provided, or the truncated quote contains an elipsis. For the latter condition, note that elipses may be provided by the player, or provided by the Truncate template when it truncates text, so that one check covers two cases that are currently checked separately.

I have also restored the wrapper that checks for #var:suppressquote. 
PSGarak (talk) 03:34, August 27, 2020 (UTC)

Nice work!

With all those variations being presented the same, how often will {{[[Template:...|...]]}} be needed? If this allows you to write just [...] with the three dots and it all gets presented the same.
Cactusorange (talk) 14:47, August 27, 2020 (UTC)

That's a good point. It probably won't be needed much anymore.
PSGarak (talk) 16:21, August 27, 2020 (UTC)

Asarta wrote:
In my previous experience you'll fisrt get a thread like this, some random other users will drift in and point out all kinds of flaws which you fix. then eventually we all stop whining and you get admin permission, you make a blog post and implement your changes and then you discover even more flaws

Judging by the dwindling of commentary, we're either past Stage 1 of this process, or everyone would rather play Evenlode content than discuss the finer points of counting elipses. I'd like to move on towards at least getting {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} out the door. I'm suggesting the following:

0. I polish up the documentation on {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} and get a green-light from an Admin to move forward.

1. We update the {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} or {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} template to use {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} as a large-scale some test. This is a large-enough test that it should flush out  latents issue, while hopefully flagging only a reasonable number of pages for editing. 

2. After updates to {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} as needed from above, we'll swap {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} for the version that's current under development. 
PSGarak (talk) 16:13, September 1, 2020 (UTC)

PSGarak wrote:

Asarta wrote:
In my previous experience you'll fisrt get a thread like this, some random other users will drift in and point out all kinds of flaws which you fix. then eventually we all stop whining and you get admin permission, you make a blog post and implement your changes and then you discover even more flaws

Judging by the dwindling of commentary, we're either past Stage 1 of this process, or everyone would rather play Evenlode content than discuss the finer points of counting elipses. I'd like to move on towards at least getting {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} out the door. I'm suggesting the following:

0. I polish up the documentation on {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} and get a green-light from an Admin to move forward.

1. We update the {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} or {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} template to use {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} as a large-scale some test. This is a large-enough test that it should flush out  latents issue, while hopefully flagging only a reasonable number of pages for editing. 

2. After updates to {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} as needed from above, we'll swap {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}} for the version that's current under development. 

Seems great to me! Regarding 0 I've for now simply moved the documentation to its own page but I'm not opposed to even better documentation.
Asarta (talk) 16:19, September 1, 2020 (UTC)

I've come across a page that makes me want to make a feature request: Give him a report on the cedar grove should have 'We' in italics. But infuriatingly, adding that brings the character count up to 251. Would it be possible to not count the [stuff] apostrophes of italics formatting? Since they're just presentation, not really content.
Cactusorange (talk) 12:04, September 8, 2020 (UTC)

I second this - though that would mean going into the code for the character counting. I cringe at the thought of that.
Rostygold (talk) 12:20, September 8, 2020 (UTC)

I updated the Template to also skip over and ' when counting characters. The template code is getting a little hard to read, even by the standards of regex, so I might try to reformat it at some point in the future. 

Note that this change won't work its way over to Give him a report on the cedar grove until QuoteSummary is updated. 

The Documentation page now includes some implementation notes and caveats, which are not pulled into the user-facing documentation on {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}}. But I want them to exist in case anyone else ever needs to touch this.
PSGarak (talk) 19:51, September 8, 2020 (UTC)

I've only just now noticed this thread existed. Thank you so much for this, this is really excellent work!
Rahv7 (talk) 19:17, September 10, 2020 (UTC)

@Adnoam & @rahv7 Can I get a green light from one of you to update either {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} or {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} to make use of the {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} template? See my post #11 in this thread for the plan, and consider the documentation good-enough right now.
PSGarak (talk) 18:12, September 11, 2020 (UTC)

I'm okay with you updating one of these for a start. We can always revert the changes in case anything breaks.

If you start with {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}}, maybe check if Probably a Coincidence is properly truncated (the description is longer than 250 chars).

If you'd rather start with {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}, you can test with Kataleptic Toxicology which has a description slightly longer than 250 chars.
Rahv7 (talk) 20:16, September 11, 2020 (UTC)

I made the update to {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}}, and Probably a Coincidence is in fact cut off. Horay!
PSGarak (talk) 00:48, September 12, 2020 (UTC)

I actually noticed one problem with it though which is that the this article seems to long text seems to have a linebreak halfway through which causes that part to un italicize
Asarta (talk) 07:51, September 12, 2020 (UTC)

Truncating item descriptions has broken several of the ambition item pages, particularly the leasehold. I can understabd storylet text, but is it really necessary for items? Has FBG asked for those to be truncated, when they haven’t been for years?
201.27.119.123 18:13, September 12, 2020 (UTC)

@Asarta It seems that something {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} does is insert a line break before every "[" or "(" character in the Description field. That's going to cause issues with anything edited for length. I trimmed Probably a Coincidence, and it added a spurious linebreak before the "[…]" which is not part of the description.

Does anyone have an idea why that's there? I could remove it, if we don't think it's important.
PSGarak (talk) 19:05, September 12, 2020 (UTC)

My guess is that it does that because sometimes FL explains what an item is used for in square brackets, such as for Collection of Curiosities – which notably <nowiki>s the content to avoid the linebreaks. Probably the intention was to make a more visual distinction of these? FL itself doesn't usually have the linebreaks.

But these also seem like something that shouldn't be part of the description to get trimmed, since they're more akin to gameplay instructions. You've also got items such as Compromising Documents which have a source explanation. There should probably be separate fields in the item template for use explanations (in square brackets in game) and source explanations (in a separate paragraph in game) that don't get trimmed along with the description.
Cactusorange (talk) 20:29, September 12, 2020 (UTC)

@PSGarak: I think I've found the problem: It's MediaWiki's default maximum string length :-/

@Cactusorange: I agree that source information and the like should be treated as Game Instructions. Unfortunately, that either means a lot of work or some clever bot shenanigans.

I've rolled back the changes for now so that pages don't appear unnecessarily broken. Feel free to tinker around if you think you've figured out a solution for either of the issues.
Rahv7 (talk) 21:28, September 12, 2020 (UTC)

The {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} template seems to have a lot of edge-cases that may not apply to other Templates. Specifically that the Description field seems to be about 4 different fields crammed into one: Description, scarcity, use hints, and acquisition instructions. I'll noodle on this in the background, but in the meantime I'll try another test tomorrow or Monday on {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} and see if that goes better.

@Rahv7 can you explain more how the maximum string length is an issue here? I don't see how that's breaking things, and the default maximum seems to be 1,000 anyways which shouldn't be an issue.
PSGarak (talk) 03:16, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

The 1000 characters maximum is actually an issue because the Leasehold on All of London Description does break 1000 characters.

It's probably the only item that does that, but it's still something that should be kept in mind.
SacchiHikaru (talk) 05:11, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

Some qualities (just spotted Hedonist) also have game instructions. Separating this stuff and cleaning it up both in items and qualities would be tricky though...
Cactusorange (talk) 15:51, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

Actually adding to this @Adnoam I've long wanted there to be a |Game Instructions parameter for both {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} and {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}. How do you feel about adding those? Because especially as we start applying the 250 char limit to those pages thanks to PSGarak's new templates it becomes more important to sort out what is description and what is instruction
Asarta (talk) 15:57, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

So the String Module that uses Lua under the hood doesn't seem to have the same limitations as the String Extension which is part of MediaWiki. That's why the Leasehold doesn't already break the page. The {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} template currently uses the Module for whatever it's doing. There are a variety of workarounds, including just using the Module to cut text down to 1,000 characters before doing anything else. 

The issue of game text vs instructions is a thorny one. First, do we have guidance from FBG that Item and Quality game instructions shouldn't count towards the limit? And second, do we have clear guidance on what counts as an instruction? Some items actually have *two* sets of instructions on them (see Volume of Collated Research). At one least one set of instructions is mechanically privelaged (appears in italics on unmet {{[[Template:Unlock|Unlock]]}} requirements), but that doesn't necessarily mean it's free of truncation unless FBG says so.

The issues with {{[[Template:Item|Item]]}} do seem well and truly separate from {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} though, so maybe we should split that discussion out. Are there objections to attemping this experiment with {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} on Monday and seeing what happens? 
PSGarak (talk) 20:01, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

PSGarak wrote:
So the String Module that uses Lua under the hood doesn't seem to have the same limitations as the String Extension which is part of MediaWiki. That's why the Leasehold doesn't already break the page.

Ah, that's a good point. I was basically just googling the error msg and the media wiki page seemed like a reasonable explanation. Unfortunately, the true issue doesn't seem to be so obvious.

I don't mind if you test this with {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} next.
Rahv7 (talk) 22:53, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

I made the update to {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}. Confirmed that Kataleptic Toxicology description was flagged, and trimmed to fit.
PSGarak (talk) 17:34, September 14, 2020 (UTC)

The page doesn't actually link to qualities for me. I assume this might be a caching thing, but I'm not sure.

A few other pages that were tagged are Notability, Notoriety: Election, and Thhhooosothorooooothhhhh. The last of those in an Ambition achievement, and does simply appear to be too long, as do many Ambition items. Notability and the Election both have explanatory text in square brackets that might be considered Game Instructions instead of Description.

There's also a separate issue going on with Notability where the in-game text is in nowiki tags so it's not on the page at all, but there's a bunch of editor-provided helper text crammed in the description field, which happens to go over the length limit.
PSGarak (talk) 18:49, September 14, 2020 (UTC)

All of those seem fine to me except of course how to deal with Game instructions
Asarta (talk) 04:18, September 15, 2020 (UTC)

I've updated Notability. The Description field is now the "main" description. The part in square brackets has been moved to a Wiki Note. The rest of the player-provided explanatory text has been replaced with a link to the Making Waves guide.
PSGarak (talk) 14:29, September 15, 2020 (UTC)

@Rahv7 @Adnoam Now that {{[[Template:Truncate|Truncate]]}} is in use somewhere, I'd like to get back to the original point of all of this, which was {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}}. I have the modified template ready to use. Are there any particularly thorny actions I should try it out on first to see how it works? There's a mention of Give him a report on the cedar grove above, and I'll try a few with & without player summaries. 
PSGarak (talk) 16:31, September 22, 2020 (UTC)

@PSGarak: Sorry for the late reply, I've been fairly busy in RL and didn't check for wiki messages. Maybe send a PM on reddit the next time I seem to ignore you here.

Re: Notability: {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} also has a "Game Instructions"-tag. I've moved the additional information there. It's best to keep "Wiki Note" for actual notes not mentioned by the game.

Re: Truncate on {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}: Excellent work :)

Re: Quote Summary: Please go ahead. As before, should anything break we can always roll back the changes. So no worries :)

Also, many thanks for all the work you're putting into this! If this works as intended, it'll be a real improvement for the wiki.
Rahv7 (talk) 20:18, September 23, 2020 (UTC)

Well, we're live now!
PSGarak (talk) 14:26, September 24, 2020 (UTC)

Everything seems to work as intended, if I see this correctly? Excellent work :)
Rahv7 (talk) 17:38, September 24, 2020 (UTC)

I'm noticing weird spacing between the From Card/Storylet Title and Description fields in {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}}, where two <br>s are getting inserted, and after {{[[Template:Failure|Failure]]}} where one <br> is. Possibly it's other places too.
Cactusorange (talk) 17:49, September 24, 2020 (UTC)

I gotta say, Wikimedia is pernicious (and inconsistent!) about the importance of whitespace. The extra br tags were because the noinclude tags were on their own lines, so the linebreaks counted as part of the template contents. That's been fixed, and now the extra spacing on {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} is gone. 
PSGarak (talk) 18:01, September 24, 2020 (UTC)

It's a bit hard to remember how it was but it still seems off somehow. There is one linebreak above and one below the description. I tried filling in a bunch of fields and it looks like there's also one above the challenge information, though in the screenshot I took that was combined with the one below the description or something.

The failure linebreak is still there too, but now it no longer shows up in the {{[[Template:Options|Options]]}} transclusion while I believe it was there before this fix. I don't know. There's also some empty paragraph tags floating around but these have less visual effect so those might always have been there.
Cactusorange (talk) 21:29, September 24, 2020 (UTC)

If I see this correctly, there's two line breaks between the success description (or player summary) and the quality changes (i.e. one empty line) but THREE line breaks for rare success and failure (i.e. TWO empty lines).

In the same way, there is one empty line between "Success" and "Rare Success" but two empty lines before "Failure". (I 'think' two is correct here.)
Rahv7 (talk) 23:29, September 24, 2020 (UTC)

There's a lot of empty space in the {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} template. There's three empty lines in-between the From field and the Description area (one of which is filled if there's an Action Cost), and two empty lines plus a <br> tag in-between the Description area and the Challenge information. I'm not sure how these get translated into HTML, but at this point I'm convinced they do get turned into something, probably p tags. 

Spacing between the Success, Rare Success, and Failure probably depends on how many empty lines are present in the article source. 

I'm going to try to dig into the template expansion. Comparing before & after is not easy, but it's possible.
PSGarak (talk) 02:09, September 25, 2020 (UTC)

OK, here are links to before & after of the change to the {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} template. These are the wikitext that gets outputted by the templates after expansion. I made a sandbox template that uses the old source of {{[[Template:QuoteSummary|QuoteSummary]]}}, and copies of {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} and {{[[Template:Failure|Failure]]}} that reference the old QuoteSummary instead of the current one (this involved also making copies of two other templates...). 

Old templates: https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/User:PSGarak/Sandbox/QuoteSummaryTest?action=raw&templates=expand

New templates: https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/Persuade_him_to_give_you_a_free_sample_of_eoliths?action=raw&templates=expand

The difference in the source code is that after the game quote, there used to be a line break, a paragraph tag, and a line break. The new code has a paragraph tag followed by two line breaks.

Note that between the Description and Challenge fields, there are four line breaks, an empty <p> tag and a <br> tag. The new Templates changed the order slightly, but that's still a lot of spacing. 

I'll see if I can restore the proper whitespace. 
PSGarak (talk) 02:32, September 25, 2020 (UTC)

You know what it was? 

It was the line break in-between the includeonly tag at the end of the template code and the noinclude tag before the categories. That line break was part of the template.
PSGarak (talk) 02:41, September 25, 2020 (UTC)

Wiki templates and especially the mixing of wiki syntax and HTML are truly terrible. I've also spent so much time staring at code. My favourite are instances of, like, 10 curly braces closing in a row. Or nested if conditions. But linebreaks are definitely up there, too.
Rahv7 (talk) 12:38, September 25, 2020 (UTC)

Also just something I noticed but why are there two __NOEDITSECTIONS?
Asarta (talk) 15:51, September 25, 2020 (UTC)

The {{[[Template:Action|Action]]}} template adds one, right before it calls into {{[[Template:ActionResult|ActionResult]]}}. Then {{[[Template:ActionResult|ActionResult]]}} adds another.
PSGarak (talk) 19:19, September 25, 2020 (UTC)

Professions: Articles vs Categories?

Hi Adnoam,

I just noticed that all main pages for Professions are located on Category pages (i.e. Category:Notary) instead of the much more logical (to me) article pages (i.e. Notary). Are you okay with me moving those?

It also seems that we don't have a template for those yet, care if I make one?
Asarta (talk) 10:35, August 30, 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely 'yes' to both needed suggestions: normal articles instead of categories, with some sort of {{[[Template:Profession|Profession]]}} template.
Adnoam (talk) 20:25, August 31, 2020 (UTC)

Okay I'll see when I can get to it
Asarta (talk) 04:28, September 1, 2020 (UTC)

Also as a part of this I'm probably also going to be tackling the item on your profiel about differentiate between {{Unlock|Profession}} and {{Unlock|<profession name>}}. Would just using unlock and then linking to Category:Profession name from the main page be enough?
Asarta (talk) 16:06, September 1, 2020 (UTC)

I've for now created {{[[Template:Profession|Profession]]}} which just has a bunch of basic parameters for Item,Unlock,Payment and Description (regarding which what should I use for that one? I personally think using simply the description of the unlock action would be the best). I've also copied the pages which require this code from {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}}. Do you have any thought about it? If you like it please give the go ahead and I'll implement it.
Asarta (talk) 16:28, September 1, 2020 (UTC)

For Tier 2 & 3 professions, where the Unlock action comes from Unsigned Message, the options are descriptions of the professions. For other professions, the Unlock option is not as enlightening. Another complication is that some Tier 1 professions have two unlock actions! For example, can be selected from either the Urchins or Hell card. The options have different text, and neither of them is actually descriptive of what a Trickster is. Although I rather like the text of the Hell option. It's evocative, and I suppose it's no less clear than many other Fallen London item/quality descriptions.

Is it technically possible to also pull in the list of pages that require the item in addition to the pages that require the quality? Even if they're separate lists, having both of those on the same page would be a big QoL improvement.
PSGarak (talk) 19:23, September 1, 2020 (UTC)

PSGarak wrote: Is it technically possible to also pull in the list of pages that require the item in addition to the pages that require the quality? Even if they're separate lists, having both of those on the same page would be a big QoL improvement.

well that would be kind of problematic because of the way we normally do stuff but I think it should be possible
Asarta (talk) 04:28, September 2, 2020 (UTC)

Okay I think I've figured it out. Please check [1]
Asarta (talk) 04:44, September 2, 2020 (UTC)

Looks like the tubes have eaten the comment more than once...

Looks great! The two lists are what I was hoping for.

On my browser, either link expands/collapses both lists at the same time. This seems a little awkward to me, but might be convenient. Wikimedia's documentation makes it seem like the links can be targeted. I can try tinkering with that, since I'm the one asking for it.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Collapsible_elements#With_custom_toggle_link
PSGarak (talk) 19:19, September 2, 2020 (UTC)

If you ant to try it go for it but I'm probably not going to bother
Asarta (talk) 04:20, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

I've added unique IDs to the two collapsible lists. We should really encapsulate such code in a template/module.
Adnoam (talk) 10:15, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

As for the description: I'm not in favour of copying the text of the action which grants the profession. We don't do that for any other quality/item. And there's also the matter of 1st tier professions having multiple routes to them.
Adnoam (talk) 10:29, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam wrote: As for the description: I'm not in favour of copying the text of the action which grants the profession. We don't do that for any other quality/item. And there's also the matter of 1st tier professions having multiple routes to them.

True but I also really dislike the current basic Your true passion? Or just a way to earn a crust? description
Asarta (talk) 12:42, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam wrote:
We should really encapsulate such code in a template/module.

Here's a start: User:PSGarak/Sandbox/Uses list

Asarta wrote: I also really dislike the current basic Your true passion? Or just a way to earn a crust? description

I agree with this. I'd rather not have a Description field than have that for everything. Given the absence of an actual in-game description field, do we actually need one? Or would something like a Player Summary make more sense.
PSGarak (talk) 03:25, September 4, 2020 (UTC)

PSGarak wrote:

Adnoam wrote:
We should really encapsulate such code in a template/module.

Here's a start: User:PSGarak/Sandbox/Uses list

I was referring to a template/module which would encapsulate the generic code for a collapsible category tree, with a unique item ID. This is used more and more in various templates.

I'd rather not have a Description field than have that for everything. Given the absence of an actual in-game description field, do we actually need one? Or would something like a Player Summary make more sense.

Indeed, "Your true passion? Or just a way to earn a crust?" is not saying much, but for now that *is* what FBG have chosen as the quality's description. Of the mentioned choices, I also prefer to have no game-text Description field (after all, the description is that of the "Profession" quality and not of "Mifnighter/Licentiate/Doctor") etc. A player-written description should be fine in my opinion. (FYI - an equivalent case would be the various named 2nd tier levels of A Person of Some Importance - the in-game description is of the general "POSI" quality, but should we ever create separate pages for A Shattering Force, A Legendary Charisma, etc. we won't have corresponding in-game text for those as a description.
Adnoam (talk) 13:48, September 7, 2020 (UTC)

I understand and partially agree with this although I would still love to also use the Unsigned message text for the professions that have it
Asarta (talk) 13:50, September 7, 2020 (UTC)

@Adnoam The collapsible tree is what that Template does. Sorry for not making that clear, I've added a test page: User:PSGarak/Sandbox/Uses_test. 

Would it make sense to have separate "Game description" and "Player description" fields? On the one hand that seems like unnecessary complication, but on the other that would let us use the Unsigned Message text where applicable and a player-written summary for the other cases. 
PSGarak (talk) 19:52, September 7, 2020 (UTC)

This test page seems weird when expanding this first category tree.
Adnoam (talk) 06:51, September 8, 2020 (UTC)

@Adnoam/PSGarak could that be because of the style float left div?

@PSGarak great idea about the Game description/Player description. I'll look into it
Asarta (talk) 14:21, September 8, 2020 (UTC)

The style="float:left;" was copy-pasted from the {{[[Template:Quality|Quality]]}} template. But it seems that style attribute never actually did anything, because of a missing " at the end. When I fixed the attribute, it broke the styling! :S 

Template updated to no longer have the styling. It seems to work better now.
PSGarak (talk) 18:27, September 8, 2020 (UTC)

Oh the wonders of high level coding
Asarta (talk) 04:24, September 9, 2020 (UTC)

Looks good. Let's just make it more generic regarding presented text and it could be used in more situations. So, instead of receiving the parameter "Type=", it could receive "Description=" which can be used as:

* See Category:{{{1}}} for {{{Description}}}

Which will allow:

* {{Category Tree|Loitering|Description=pages which require this quality (or specific levels of it)}}
* {{Category Tree|Zee-Ztory|Description=pages which require this item}}
* {{Category Tree|Zee-Ztory Sources|Description=ways to obtain this item}}
* {{Category Tree|Watchful Challenges|Description=challenges based on this quality}}

etc. (assuming there's some way to let the template pick a unique id instead of relying on the calling code for that)

I wonder if it can be useful to add extra code to deal with the case of the category in question not existing despite pages being categorized under it. Your current template does that, but it's limited to very specific use cases. I'd like the template to be generic as demonstrated above (e,g, for challenges, for quality math usages, etc. - not for all those cases we'll want to display the same "no uses" message).
Adnoam (talk) 14:26, September 9, 2020 (UTC)

Wikia seems to eat my comments if I leave the editor open for too long, which doesn't play well with testing templates...

Creating unique IDs isn't a problem. It takes a little bit of regex/pattern because whitespace isn't valid in HTML IDs, but it's not so bad. It's also only necessary when more than one tree is on the page, which doesn't seem to come up very often. 

Now about the descriptions...

This is mostly code that I copy-pasted from somewhere else, so it's not the easiest for me to follow. The logic, simplified, is like this:

* If there are no pages in the Category, display "This {{{Type}}} has no recorded uses"

* If there are pages in the category but the category page doesn't exist, display "No Category page exists yet for this {{{Type}}}.Click here to create one. (put {{Quality uses}} in it)"

* Otherwise display the category tree.

There's three potential conditions, so three different message texts that need to be set. Passing all of those as Template arguments might be a little bulky, and I'm tempted to parameterize it as much as possible. But on the other hand, it will only be called by other Template code so maybe it's OK to be high-touch. And passing all the messages makes it more generic, which is what you want.

I'm suggesting the following syntax. The last parameter is optional, if not set, then the entire parenthetical will be elided.

{{Category Tree|Zee-Story Sources|Description=ways to obtain this item|When empty=This item has no recorded sources|Template hint = Item sources}}
PSGarak (talk) 03:12, September 10, 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone else have concerns or can I implement it?
Asarta (talk) 15:34, September 10, 2020 (UTC)

No objections from me. And I guess don't wait up on the Tree template stuff. When it's ready, I'll update other Templates to use it.
PSGarak (talk) 18:07, September 11, 2020 (UTC)

I've implemented all of it and made a blog post about it.
Asarta (talk) 18:00, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

I just noticed the new Profession pages are all Uncategorized. There is a page, but that's about the Profession quality, which we're trying to separate from. Maybe we should create and annoint it for the new pages?
PSGarak (talk) 03:09, September 16, 2020 (UTC)

Which ones do you mean? The main article pages are already categorized under both their profession and Category:profession
Asarta (talk) 04:15, September 17, 2020 (UTC)

It seems that several of them are, but not all of them. I was looking at Special:UncategorizedPages and noticed quite a few profession pages in there. But some have their categories. E.g. Crooked-Cross has categories, but its predecessors Conjurer and Trickster do not.
PSGarak (talk) 13:11, September 17, 2020 (UTC)

I figured it out: Some misplaced closing }} brackets meant that the category links were inside an #ifeq clause. This meant categories were only applied to professions where the item had uses. I've updated the template, and now Trickster & Conjurer have categories like they should.
PSGarak (talk) 14:17, September 17, 2020 (UTC)

Oopsie
Asarta (talk) 11:13, September 18, 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Category:Profession

I believe I've now removed all unnecessary pages from that category. The only things left are the Category: <Profession name> categories and the few pages that require having no profession or any profession
Asarta (talk) 04:39, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

The category tree seems fine (I haven't reviewed all pages there).

A related suggestion might be to use a dedicated template for gaining a profession (like we have {{[[Template:Move|Move]]}}, or {{[[Template:Lodgings_Change|Lodgings Change]]}}), which will also deal with the categorization (to avoid manually adding these profession-specific category for each page).
Adnoam (talk) 10:07, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

Adnoam wrote: The category tree seems fine (I haven't reviewed all pages there).

A related suggestion might be to use a dedicated template for gaining a profession (like we have {{[[Template:Move|Move]]}}, or {{[[Template:Lodgings_Change|Lodgings Change]]}}), which will also deal with the categorization (to avoid manually adding these profession-specific category for each page).

I'll look into that but I'm not sure of the name, any idea's?
Asarta (talk) 12:36, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

What do you think of [1] ? It's done using User:Asarta/Templates/Template2 until I can think of an actual name
Asarta (talk) 15:49, September 3, 2020 (UTC)

Changed it up a bit and moved it to {{[[Template:Profession_Gain|Profession Gain]]}}. It now looks something like

[[Correspondent|]] You are now a Correspondent
Asarta (talk) 08:34, September 5, 2020 (UTC)

Any thoughts?
Asarta (talk) 07:49, September 6, 2020 (UTC)

In general this should be it. Just needs to be checked with the various profession names. (in case the "now a..." might need to be instead "now an..." or something else in some cases)

EDIT: I've made some small categorization changes to {{[[Template:Profession_Gain|Profession Gain]]}}. Please have a look.
Adnoam (talk) 13:54, September 7, 2020 (UTC)

Okay I've added a variable for an and will roll this template out on the wiki
Asarta (talk) 15:17, September 7, 2020 (UTC)

How to deal with once accessible but now fate-locked items in Module:ItemList?

Per the title how do we deal with items that were once freely accessible to players but these days can only be gained to Fate? It seems we currently simply do nothing with them but that doesn't feel right, but neither does a RETIRED tag because its still technically gain able through Fate or a FATE tag because it was once freely accessible. What are your thoughts?
Asarta (talk) 14:22, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

Also would it be all right to add a link to Category:Retired to {{[[Template:FontRetired|FontRetired]]}}
Asarta (talk) 14:25, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

Asarta wrote: It seems we currently simply do nothing with them

From what I've seen, items that moved from being freely available to only being available do have the Fate tag. But we only add it at the point that they become available with fate, so stuff like election candidate items stay without a Fate tag for one year before it gets added.

Adding the link to FontRetired seems like a good idea to me.
Cactusorange (talk) 15:45, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

At least some of them haven't yet relieved that tag such as Mr Slowcake's Caducean Rose which is still tagged as being a normal item
Asarta (talk) 15:53, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

It looks like the 1896 candidate items were overlooked. I've added the fate tag to them now. Since it has to be updated manually it can be easy to forget.

Also worth noting is that while they do get the tags for itemlists and such, they do not count as fate-locked for the purposes of branches that require the items. Thus, Follow the guidance of the Caducean Rose does not have to use {{[[Template:Fate|Fate]]}}, since it is possible to play that branch without having ever spent fate.
Cactusorange (talk) 16:07, September 13, 2020 (UTC)

Bug in max bonus calculator

Hi Adnoam,

Right now when using Dreaded Items with the following settings:

* Fate Items = no
* Moods = no
* Seasonal Items = yes
* Faction Items = yes
* Profession Items = yes
* Ambition Items = no
* SMEN Items = no
* Retired Items = no

It adds Tentacle Mitts to the list. These however have a -4 Dreaded modifier which means that the max value's are of. Also I'm almost 100% sure negative items shouldn't show up in the calculator anyway
Asarta (talk) 04:59, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

I'll try to check. The main body of the table is correctly sorted. So it's probably not something in the core ItemList module functions but just in the code generating the "max bonuses" dynamic table
Adnoam (talk) 10:11, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

I see - the only thing needed to demonstrate this is just to specify "Fate = no". So if you say you're OK with Fate items, the module correctly shows that either The Neathy Tarot, Featuring all 77 of the Major Arcana or the Hand of Glory are best-in-slot Dreaded Gloves (both with +1 to Dreaded). But with Fate=no as a filter, it skips those two items and ends with the only one left - the Tentacle Mitts with its -4 to Dreaded. In short, it chooses the "best" out of the possible items, but forgets that having no item is better than one with a negative impact :-)

I wonder where else this can be observed.
Adnoam (talk) 10:22, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

OK - I hope I fixed it now. Please ping me if the fix broke something elsewhere.

Thanks for reporting the issue!
Adnoam (talk) 10:35, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

No problem!
Asarta (talk) 12:05, October 4, 2020 (UTC)

Calculators

Thorsb has proposed a solution to the calculator problem on your blog . Could you please check if it works properly and if it does implement it ? Because it relates to JS which means we need an admin to do it User blog:Adnoam/New wiki software#cs-comment-81589
Asarta (talk) 07:39, October 11, 2020 (UTC)

Also you can now write docs for Module’s (although the link will only show up when you haven’t yet written anything
Asarta (talk) 09:58, October 11, 2020 (UTC)

I’ve also written a new documentation template for it: User:Asarta/Templates/Template3
Asarta (talk) 10:05, October 11, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. For some annoying reason I get no notifications for replies to blog posts. The changes seem to work, though it seems that JS changes require approval from FANDOM. I’ve asked Rahv7’s to code-review the changes before submitting them as someone who is both an admin and knows JS

Nice to hear about the module documentation! this is something I’ve asked FANDOM a long time ago and it’s good that it’s included in this upgrade. I wonder about the need for a special template, since we don’t have that for Template documentation pages. It would require the doc page to open the template and pass the entire content in the “Description” parameter, which might be a problem if the content (free text) might include, for example, the “|” character, or other things which might mess a template parsing.
Adnoam (talk) 09:57, October 13, 2020 (UTC)

true; main reason I mentioned a new template is because the doc link disappears after you put any text in the doc page making it really fiddly to find again. (since you need to manually search Module:<modulename>/doc)
Asarta (talk) 17:12, October 13, 2020 (UTC)

Good point. Then we can have a decoration template at the top (or bottom) of the documentation page to explain this and link to it.
Adnoam (talk) 21:43, October 13, 2020 (UTC)

I’ll look into it tomorrow when I have access to a computer again. Also could you remove one of the duplicate replies since it created two when I tried to reply.
Asarta (talk) 09:41, October 14, 2020 (UTC)

Okay I’ve modified it to only include the bottom line. See Module:Asarta for an example
Asarta (talk) 14:50, October 15, 2020 (UTC)

Unrelated: a sneak peek of something else I’ve been working on
Asarta (talk) 15:53, October 15, 2020 (UTC)

MediaWiki Extensions

Hi Adnoam,

I know you’re busy with other migration-related issues, but would it be possible to ask Fandom to enable the Loops and/or Array extensions on the FL wiki? Per their post below, these are pre-approved and just need to be requested. Either of these would be a big boon in making Templates to wrangle the big tables of QDE variations that have become common, and may let us clean up some other areas where we’ve had to dip into Lua, such as the Option_n_ arguments in the Storylet template.

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Help:Unified_Community_Platform#MediaWiki_extensions
PSGarak (talk) 20:01, October 13, 2020 (UTC)

Sure. If you have some concrete ideas on how to use these specific extensions in our template I’ll ask for them. Did you want to use both or one in particular?

But note that for things like OptionX parameters, while it would be possible to code with Loops, it’s still preferable to do in Lua - more efficient, since the code doesn’t have to scan all possible OptionX parameters one by one, and it’s also limitless (and a loop in template code must have a limit).
Adnoam (talk) 21:47, October 13, 2020 (UTC)

Loops on its own probably does everything I’m planning.

This is an Extension, so it doesn’t have the limitations of kludging loops out of pure Templates. It’s much more like a real loop in a real language: It doesn’t have to be bounded, and it only evaluates until it reaches the termination condition.

Here’s the docs page for the extension. The second code sample is pretty much the Option_N_ example.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Loops

My plans for tables would be so that e.g. for the page below, lines in the table would be Template code like the following: |Value1 = 1|Effect1 = a lady in midnight blue velvet|SecondEffect1 = The lady has just purchased… |Value2 = 3|Effect2 = a scholar in Benthic robes|SecondEffect2 = The scholar proves…

Make polite conversation with a railway passenger
PSGarak (talk) 17:24, October 14, 2020 (UTC)

The Loops extension is now installed. Have fun!
Adnoam (talk) 19:24, October 16, 2020 (UTC)

Sweet, thank you!
PSGarak (talk) 19:43, October 16, 2020 (UTC)

changes to Template:Fatestory to account for new storylets?

Hi Adnoam, Failbetter recently added new starting storylets for a few Exceptional stories such as this one. What should be done with these in regard to the regular story pages and their underlying templates?
Asarta (talk) 07:36, October 16, 2020 (UTC)

Well, one option can be to add a new and optional parameter “Storylet2” to the “Fatestory” template. So in case there’s an additional starter storylet, the template can show both.
Adnoam (talk) 21:28, October 16, 2020 (UTC)

I’ve called it Permanent storylet for now. See Template:Fatestory for the new syntax and Cut with Moonlight for an example implementation
Asarta (talk) 08:54, October 17, 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm. I think I like the “cleaner” look of just a list of starting storylets, as is common for other qualities (that is, without the “permanent storylet” subtitle). Some Fate stories get a seasonal starter storylet/action, so a generic and “plain” list will capture all cases.
Adnoam (talk) 08:06, October 19, 2020 (UTC)

Template:fatestory (again)

File:Example Exceptional Story bundle.png What to with this?
Asarta (talk) 09:03, October 17, 2020 (UTC)

See: User:Asarta/Templates/Template2 for an example template and User:Asarta/Templates/Template2/test for an quick test
Asarta (talk) 08:06, October 18, 2020 (UTC)

I’m not sure it really needed. I mean, we can document this on the wiki and create templates for it, but it’s not as if we document every piece of UI for the game (e.g. the Account menu). So if you want, your suggested templates seem a decent way to do it.

The Exceptional stories themselves are documented (at least, the public starter part of them, which are actual in-game Storylets and Actions), which is the most important part (in my opinion).
Adnoam (talk) 08:12, October 19, 2020 (UTC)

A familiar name

I knew an Adnoam in Shartak. They owned a bar and hung out with the Orwhans. Same guy?
174.3.204.225 07:12, October 19, 2020 (UTC)

Since I have no idea what Shartak or Orwans even mean, then no :-) Just a coincidence.
Adnoam (talk) 08:07, October 19, 2020 (UTC)

Hi there!

Hi, I just figured I’d say hi again for old times sake. I’m back to London with a different name (now: Kiptoo), and I’ve fixed most of the trimmed pages. I think I’ll stay for a while now, but I thought so last time as well, I think…
Aximillio (talk) 23:01, December 16, 2020 (UTC)

Welcome back from beyond the mirrors!

And thanks for the fast work on the Trimmed category - I haven’t had time recently to fix more than a handful of those. And with all the recent new content the past few months we have lots of new wiki pages. Thankfully, we also have a bunch of new and prolific wiki editors.
Adnoam (talk) 08:51, December 17, 2020 (UTC)

Also, btw, I added you as a bureaucrat, so you now have the power to promote people to admins. Which is handy if I shouldn’t be around.
Aximillio (talk) 14:18, December 22, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Indeed, more often than not the bureaucrats have been away from the wiki for a long while.
Adnoam (talk) 16:23, December 23, 2020 (UTC)

Discord

If you use Discord, could you send me a message at Tephra#2372 There is something I wish to discuss with you in private.
Tephra (talk) 22:33, December 21, 2020 (UTC)

Getting 40 Masquing companions...

Quick question: Someone added all branch result texts for getting the 40 Masquing companions (which are currently available without paying Fate because of the censor’s badge). Do you agree that it’s fine to have these on the wiki? Personally, I’d rather err on the side of caution and leave the branches marked as fate-locked. But maybe that’s just me…
Rahv7 (talk) 21:45, February 15, 2021 (UTC)

They’re technically no longer fate-locked, so we’d need to make a mention about it if we want to keep them hidden. There was a preliminary discussion on Discord whether these kind of actions should be on the wiki or not and someone (I think Alan?) made an e-mail to FBG regarding whether election items actions and the Temple Club should be considered Fate locked. No reply yet I think.

We also thought about making a pseudo-fate category for gray areas like this - also to show that some items aren’t as easily available as one may otherwise think. Again, someone is working on this.

I think personally I’m also reluctant to show these very easily, but we need to follow some principle on this.
Aximillio (talk) 00:21, February 16, 2021 (UTC)

User:PSGarak/Sandbox/Item
Aximillio (talk) 00:24, February 16, 2021 (UTC)

Since undocumented Template code isn’t very clear on its own, I’ll expand on what I’m doing there.

I wanted to add a “Legacy” parameter to the Item template in support of the Fate parameter, so an item can say “This is currently Fate-locked, but was available for free during X.” (Related to this, the page for a Fate-locked item currently does not necessarily indicate that it’s Fate-locked, if it has both Source & Use categories, but that’s not the main point here.)

This is basically creating a pseudo-Fate category. But as Rahv pointed out to me on Reddit, the big-picture issue is not categorizing items, but the decision of whether to redact action text. I suppose if FBG makes a definite reply, then the decision is made for us.
PSGarak (talk) 03:40, February 16, 2021 (UTC)

The best would be to ask FBG. It’s tricky, since these are clearly still “premium” items, even if FBG gave a one-time access code which give players a way to get one of them. On the other hand, this is obviously intended and the whole point of this item is to let all players pick for free one item previously only available for Fate.
Adnoam (talk) 11:49, February 16, 2021 (UTC)

Alright, so lets wait on FBG’s replay on this. Thanks to everyone for your answers.

Also, I rather like the legacy-one time thing template parameter :)
Rahv7 (talk) 19:22, February 16, 2021 (UTC)

Personal sandbox

Hi! I’m fairly new to this wiki (and Fallen London in general), but I have a decent amount of experience with other Fandom wikis and wanted to do some experimentation with the templates here. I know Sandbox exists, but if I want to do some testing on a less cluttered page, is it okay if I make a subpage of my user page and use that? I’ve seen it done on other wikis, but I’m not sure what the policy is here.
Everlastingwonder (talk) 20:52, February 25, 2021 (UTC)

Welcome!

Please feel free to use subpages under your user page for experimentation.
Adnoam (talk) 09:29, March 1, 2021 (UTC)

New Global Policy

I want to draw your attention to a new global policy going into effect at the start of April.

Local blocks will be required to have reasons related to publicly-defined wiki rules or Fandom Terms of Use. The focus here is fostering a culture of clear rule-setting and understandable consequences, rather than users getting banned for unknown or unfair reasons. For 99% of admins, the only change might be surfacing your wiki’s rules more prominently or setting some clear ones for the first time. Fandom does not provide a platform for bullying or abuse of power, and this policy is a further embodiment of that commitment to our communities.[1]

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:MisterWoodhouse/Introducing_the_Wiki_Rules_and_Blocking_Policy

Let me know when that is done so that I can note that your community conforms to that new policy.

Thanks!
MannedTooth (talk) 11:10, March 13, 2021 (UTC)

The Monthly Opt-In and Invitation

Hello there!

If you haven’t already and are interested, make sure you opt-in for emails about The Monthly. There should be an email with info on that.

If you have opted in, be on the lookout for a new email about March’s Monthly times and the new survey! Will has been making some tweaks to the event this month and he’s excited to have you join him, if you can.
MannedTooth (talk) 19:23, March 17, 2021 (UTC)