Forum:Link templates

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I think we should standardize the several link templates to all use the same syntax as GG link. Currently we have:

To the comic:

{{GG link|DATE|link text}}

To the forum:

{{GG Page-by-Page Forum Link|DATE|link text}}

Othar’s Twitter:

[{{Otwit|INDEX}} link text]

Wikipedia:

[[wikipedia:link|link]]

or

[[wikipedia:Page name|link text]]

which is inconsistent and generally requires redundant typing.

But this will require a lot of article edits, so I’m asking first. Ordinary 09:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure any change is needed. The Wikipedia links are wiki standard, and I see no reason to change that unless we want a different appearance (and that wouldn't be standard). The forum link is never typed by users. (I think the forum link could be eliminated by incorporating the code into the places that generate the link, but if we ever want to change the style it's nicer to have a separately editable template.)

We could have a more consistent style for Othar's twitter, but that's not used very often. Argadi 10:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

To demonstrate what I meant, I’ve created Template:Wikipedia. (The spacing still isn’t right but it works otherwise.). So less typing and less redundancy. Also, if we want to change the style later, it would be easier through a template. Ordinary 10:41, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Spacing fixed. Ordinary 10:50, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't inconsistent, if you think of it as a quasi-internal namespace. You can save typing with [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|]] (although it's not obvious, as it seems to get filled in on save: Wikipedia).

I forget, do we have a template for sketches yet? Canon or no (no, of course) I'd like to see those catalogued after the basic chronology is filled in.

I agree with advancing Otwit (it fit an earlier pattern (GG_URL) I did that was made obsolete by GG_link). And look into linking to Kaja's Livejournal.

Mass edits could be done with a bot (I had trouble getting one to work for me; the recommended one was windows-only).

⚙Zarchne 11:57, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia link you added is still using the shortcut, it doesn't appear to be filled in on save. Argadi 12:47, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Since I see: filled in on save: [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]] above, I don't understand what you're saying, thus I feel you probably don't understand what I'm saying, and I know I did something confusing, so let me try again. If you want to create a link to a page in a namespace (like "Mad:Loki"), and the name of the article ("Loki") is appropriate link text in context, but you don't (of course) want the namespace name prepended, you can just type e.g. son of a giant, the god [[Mad:Loki|]] once transformed himself... which is to say, you don't have to type "Loki" twice, just the link name followed by the vertical bar followed by the two right brackets to close. The interwiki namespace "Wikipedia:" works just the same way:[[Wikipedia:Loki|]] creates a link to "Loki" in Wikipedia with link text "Loki". And if you preview the page after adding the link, it shows up correctly and the link text is still null. However, evidently this wiki markup is interpreted at save time by copying the link-sans-ns into the link text, because what you would see when going back to edit again is son of a giant, the god [[Mad:Loki|Loki]] once transformed himself..., with the link text filled in. ⚙Zarchne 08:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I see that the Wikipedia link has been made consistent since this discussion. On the other hand, the tvtrope link has not been, and I had been preparing (having seen the discussion 'How Can We Link to TV Tropes?' recently - despite it not being in the Forum: namespace, which I've fixed). I thought at first a change might be compatible, but I see that it wouldn't because the existing one doesn't include the square brackets.

Creating two templates, keeping tvtrope and creating tvtropes in the GG_link/Wikipedia style would avoid page edits, but probably is to be avoided. Was a bot used on the Wikipedia references, and, if so, can it be used on this? --Quadibloc 01:42, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I’m confused. The wikipedia links should appear to be fairly consistently [[wikipedia:article name|link text]]. Ordinary I guess created a {{Wikipedia}} template, but I probably am the most frequent linker to wikipedia and I don’t use it. The links to the comic should all be {{GG_link|datestrg|link text}}; Argadi went through and made that change manually... I think. Also Template:YG_link for Yahoo! groups posting. Recently I’ve created Template:GG_sketch and Template:GG_news. Othar’s twitter is still using an older style of template... it needs maintenance... the current links that use it may need changing... And Template:tvtrope is also of that type. It’s only used in a handful of places, though. I say we should go ahead and create a TV Tropes template in the style of GG_link, YG_link, etc. (Template:TV_trope? TT_link?) Also, links to Kaja’s LiveJournal? (Template:LJ_Kaja?) Mnenyver seems to be against linking directly to Kaja, though, so I'm not sure. ⚙Zarchne 03:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC), updated 03:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for going ahead and doing all the work of converting the wiki. Instead of asking, I suppose I could have gone first to the tvtrope template, and looked at "what links here" to find out how much work it would be to convert. But my question had really been what is the established practice: to just create the new template and gradually convert, or to quickly keep things tidy.

Now I'm going to be afraid to ask about how much work is involved in updating something, because I'll be afraid I'll be responsible for someone else doing work I was willing to do.

As for Kaja Foglio's LiveJournal, "Diary of a Cartoon Girl", I think I understand Mnenyver's concerns (although this is a guess on my part, I haven't asked her why she was concerned). LiveJournal doesn't provide a Google-like search feature for blog contents. Google itself, though, does pick up blog entries that someone links to. While what is in one's blog is publicly visible, it is not that easily accessible, so it's available to those who were ongoing readers of the blog, having a genuine interest in its subject. Thus, strange as it may seem, it can be argued that there is a privacy concern here. --Quadibloc 15:32, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Kaja created that journal as a promotional vehicle - that's why she encourages everybody to friend it, for easy reading. There's no privacy issues involved. Unless she Flocks an entry - which we'd never see, not being Alice, Savannah, Cheyenne or Phil, for a sampling - Google can pick up entries on search. Although she hasn't done a lot of it recently, she had given heads-up and a few Word-of-God explanations in there which should be cross-referenced. -- Corgi 02:45, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I had a program to assist the GG_link conversion, but not a fully-autonomous bot. I don't use the Wikipedia template, I don't see the need (as opposed to the strong benefit I see in making the comic links distinct). Argadi 14:21, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I can understand that it's helpful to people creating articles if there are handy automatic link macros for the places people commonly link to, like Wikipedia and TV Tropes, and furthermore it also helps if they all have a consistent format. You may be right that it isn't a big deal. --Quadibloc 15:32, 15 March 2009 (UTC)