Author Topic: Signature Story Arc Formats  (Read 9084 times)

eabrace

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Signature Story Arc Formats
« on: September 21, 2011, 02:26:04 PM »
Per Theoden's discussion page:

Do we feel that it would be better to use the standard contact or Task/Strike Force page layout for the new mini-arcs in the Signature Story Arc pages?  How do we want to categorize them?

I'm assuming that we would reserve "Signature Story Arc" for articles that summarize the entire arc (example).  Would we want to categorize Theoden under "Hero Signature Story Arc Contacts" and Alastor under "Villain Signature Story Arc Contacts"?  (Keeping in mind, of course, that the categories for contacts are automatically added by the overview template while TF pages are manually categorized.)
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Felderburg

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2011, 02:48:58 PM »
I think it does make more sense to use Task Force formatting for the contacts.  However, the TF contacts have a separate link to their actual missions, so that would mean two articles for each Signature Story Arc: one for villain and one for hero, unless you wanted to split the Who Will Die (and other arcs) page into two sections.

When I created the Who Will Die page, my intent was for people who searched for the arc itself to go there, then go on to the contacts, who were formatted as regular contacts at the time.  I think it'd be better to keep the current Who Will Die page as an overview of the Arc, and then have separate pages for the "TF" and the contacts.

Edit: I modified Alastor, and created the Villain-Side Who Will Die page.  Let me know what you think.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2011, 03:14:45 PM by Felderburg »
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eabrace

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2011, 04:02:06 PM »
I think it's definitely better for Signature Story Arcs to have a single page to start from with a list of both hero and villain contacts on it.  I think having the overview page will be more important as the arcs grow (since I'm not certain that Theoden and Alastor will necessarily be the contacts for the entire arc when it's all said and done.)  And it just seems silly to me to have two overview pages for the same arc.

Comparing against TF contacts, I think the Arc Overview page would serve essentially the same purpose as the TF contact page, providing links to the actual missions/contact pages.  (Not that I'm suggesting the Arc Overview should be formatted the same as the TF contact pages.)  The individual Arc Contact pages would then be formatted similarly to the TF pages themselves.
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Felderburg

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #3 on: September 21, 2011, 04:45:17 PM »
Yeah, that makes sense, and means less extraneous pages.

Of course, I've already made the extraneous pages, but they can always be deleted...  :-[
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Sekoia

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2011, 06:12:14 PM »
As something of a tangent, any missions themselves should go in the Mission: namespace and should be transcluded elsewhere. This is a long-term slow work in progress for migrating old content, so a lot of articles haven't been transitioned yet. But it'd save a lot of future work if new articles get created this way. See Paragon Wiki:Mission articles for some guidelines on the namespace.

So these particular missions should probably have article names something like this:
Mission:Who Will Die? Part 1 - Part 1: Circle of Trouble

And then that would get transcluded into the article like so:
{{:Mission:Who Will Die? Part 1 - Part 1: Circle of Trouble}}

Felderburg

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #5 on: September 21, 2011, 07:48:53 PM »
Yeah, I noticed that every mission was getting its own separate page.  What's the reasoning there?  I personally found it annoying when I clicked on a link to a mission, and it gave me the individual mission page, rather than the contact's page.  I prefer to see the mission in its proper context, that of its contact, rather than a mission by itself.

Edit: I also note that most individual mission pages I've seen don't even have a direct link to their contact.  Why not?  You have to go to the category "Missions given by ___" to end up at the contact's article.
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Sekoia

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #6 on: September 21, 2011, 08:11:55 PM »
Yeah, I noticed that every mission was getting its own separate page.  What's the reasoning there?

The previous discussion on the topic is here: Mission articles. There's a lot of work to be done yet and certainly plenty of room for improvement (though much of that would be off topic for this thread).

eabrace

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #7 on: September 21, 2011, 08:14:45 PM »
The reason individual missions do not have links to the contacts that give them out is because when you transcluded them, you'd get a link to the contact on the contact page.

For instance, if Talk to the Security Chief (Atlas Park) linked Azuria, then Azuria would end up with a self referencing link on her page.

That being said, we could probably put a "Contacts" section in the mission article and surround it with <noinclude> tags, but it's probably easier just to click on "What Links Here" in the main menu rather than add a section that would have to be maintained.
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Felderburg

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2011, 09:04:03 PM »
Continuing the tangent...

I guess I don't understand why every mission needs its own page anyways. (edit: missed the post with a link to the discussion, only saw eabrace's.    further edit: the initial link in that discussion is missing, and seems to contain the crucial "why" part of the discussion.  I still see no reason for it, but I've posted in that thread to continue the discussion)

I would also think that there's probably a lot of casual users who wouldn't think to use the "What links here" button - I didn't even know about it until I started looking at the wanted pages, and looking for how to get to the "what links here" page on existing articles.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2011, 09:33:42 PM by Felderburg »
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Sekoia

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #9 on: September 30, 2011, 05:50:49 AM »
A few thoughts:

The contacts should definitely be treated more like Task Force contacts and less like standard contacts. You are not introduced to them. They do not show up in your contact list. You can run the arc repeatedly. And, when kicking the arc off, you're explicitly told you're forming a task force or strike force. Thus, most of the layout/options for a standard contact are inapplicable (such as "Introduced By", "Introduces", "No More Missions").

The arcs actually have names other than "Who Will Die, Part 1". Alastor's arc is named "One Life, One Goal", for instance.

Felderburg

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Re: Signature Story Arc Formats
« Reply #10 on: September 30, 2011, 03:44:27 PM »
Treating them like TF contacts does make sense, but the issue is that most TF contacts have their own page with their info, and a link to the TF.  There are "Who Will Die (heroes)" and "Who Will Die (villains)" pages for this purpose, if needed (I created them when earlier in this thread it seemed like that was they way things were going).  The other alternatives are containing each contact's missions on their own page, or creating a new page for each "mini TF" that's part of the Signature Story Arc.

I vote for using each contact as the page for the missions.
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