Author Topic: Repurposing {{WIP}}  (Read 4061 times)

Blondeshell

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Repurposing {{WIP}}
« on: January 11, 2013, 11:08:04 PM »
One of the other thoughts I've had about the post-CoH era of PWiki concerns the {{WIP}} template. Other than the final projects that a few editors (like myself) might still be working on, I would guess that most articles that currently are labelled as {{wip}} are never gonna be finished.

I'd propose that the {{wip}} template for the likely-abandoned articles be changed to something like {{unfinished}} where it says "This article was unfinished at the time of CoH's shutdown," or somesuch message. The wording sounds a little clumsy to me, but it's the best I can think of at the moment. Anyone have any feedback?

Sekoia

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Re: Repurposing {{WIP}}
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2013, 08:14:01 PM »
I think this is a good idea. An alternative to {{unfinished}} might be {{incomplete}}. (I'm fine with either.)

I would suggest the text include something that encourages people to help supply missing info, if they have it. A bit like {{stub}}. Maybe something like...

This article was incomplete at the time of City of Heroes' shutdown. You can help the Paragon Wiki by <edit link>helping us complete it</edit link>.


If we do this, would we want to auto-convert all {{wip}} to the new template? Or manually/selectively do so?

Blondeshell

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Re: Repurposing {{WIP}}
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2013, 04:40:40 AM »
I definitely like your text line better. I think it'd be best to change the current {{wip}} pages manually, as there are some that will likely still be finished. There aren't that many that it'd be too time consuming to do.

Felderburg

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Re: Repurposing {{WIP}}
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2014, 05:01:13 AM »
So I just thought I'd share what I've been doing in this arena, and why. Although I note what I'm doing in the edit summaries, I just want to be clear about it.

My goal is to eventually have the WIP category completely empty, so that future editors only need to go to one place (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Incomplete) to find all the articles that need work done on them. I'm editing / completing articles as I can, but my knowledge only goes so far, so when I can't, I think it's important to gather everything unfinished in one place, so those that can complete it have an easier time of things.

There are basically five types of articles addressed here:

1. Works in Progress ({{wip}} template).
2. Incomplete Articles ({{incomplete}} template)
3. Articles missing minor pieces of dialog (various {{missing}} templates)
4. Articles missing images ({{MIA}} template, articles manually added to [[Category:Articles_Missing_Images]], and articles with [[File:Badge question mark.png]] and [[File:Icon clue generic.png]] in them)
5. Stubs ({{stub}} template)

I look through the WIPs somewhat regularly, and pick random ones to edit. If the WIP I look at has notes about what needs to be done, I try to do as the notes suggest. If I don't feel like it at the time but it is something that can readily be fixed, I leave the article as a WIP. If I can't do as the notes suggest (maybe because I don't know about what's missing or because the article is in such a state that it can't be much improved) I change the WIP to an Incomplete and leave the notes intact, per the discussion in this thread (and because that's a better category than WIP for an article that isn't being worked on).

Often, an article has lines of text noted in orange or red that say "missing _____ here", or something like that. Every time there is in-text missing notes, I replace it with one of the {{missing}} templates (See http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,8715). Depending on the type of missing info, I will remove any WIP or Incomplete template. I do that for minor things, like a line of text from an NPC that's missing, or the things that the missing templates are designed for (for example, {{Missing Store}} is specifically for contacts that don't have their store unlock dialogue recorded (for example: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Daedalus)). This puts the article in the "Missing Dialogue" category, which is a sub-category of "Incomplete", so it can still be found from that page. However, because these articles are only missing small things, they aren't in the main "Incomplete" space.

"Articles Missing images" is also a sub-category of "Incomplete". Again, if the only thing missing is images, that's not the hugest deal, and putting it in the main "Incomplete"category does a disservice to all the articles that are actually missing substantial pieces. There are actually several articles missing images that are WIPs - on pages that have many images missing (mostly costume sets) I tend to leave the WIP template, so that there is a note about what images need to be added (and with Icon, an article missing images does not necessarily have its missing information lost forever). However, I've found that on articles that aren't already WIPs and need many images (like several faction pages missing pics of the enemy NPCs) I am lazy, and just put one {{MIA}} template so the page is marked in the category, instead of putting an MIA for every missing image.

Furthermore, there are many pages that have a missing image indicated not by a template, but by a question mark picture. I have been trying, wherever possible, to change a missing image indicated by the "Icon Clue Generic" to "Badge question mark". Because the Icon ? is actually used to indicate mission clues, and the Badge ? is only used to indicate a missing picture, using the "What links here?" on the Icon will give many false positives for missing images, while the same link on the Badge ? will give a list of articles missing images - in fact, a more complete list than the category itself, since many places the Badge ? is used by itself, not in the MIA template.

As for stubs, in the aforementioned thread about the missing templates, this is discussed in greater detail. There have been a few pages marked as WIP that I don't think really need any more work - they're just a bit short. They could use some fleshing out, and are probably technically "Incomplete", but per the other thread, they don't have editing notes and were never fleshed out enough to begin with. At some point, it would likely be a good idea to go through and see which stubs are actually as complete as possible (like Gagarin Station) and which are actually stubs in need of fleshing out (liek virtually every dev article).



So that's it for how I'm categorizing things as far as completeness is concerned. I hope that works for everyone.
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