Talk: Community Portal

This is the talk page dedicated to the Community Portal. Any and all discussion regarding the Community Portal should be talked about below.

The book and tv series

I was thinking that we should keep the book and tv series seperate from each other. Each page of the characters tell of both the book and tv series. Some people might only be looking for information regarding the tv series. Others wil be looking for the books.

We could just add a "Legend of the Seeker" section to each character page and describe any differences in chronology, characteristics, events, etc there. SavageNoble 05:33, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Chapter Guides

I was wondering. The chapter guides for the books seem a little monotonous and redundant. I was thinking it might look and function better if each chapter was set-up as a sub-section of its book. Kind of how my personal Sandbox(s) are a sub-section of my user page. This is how it is done over on the WoT Wiki (for comparison) and it seems to make sense. We could make a list of all of the chapters in a book on the books main page (use a table to split the list into three columns or so, so it doesn't get too long) and completely get rid of what seems like a pointless page. The same could be done to the character list on the book pages as well.

Go to my Sandbox to see what it would look like and comment back here please. Ixidorsbane 02:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I love what you've done with your sandbox. It seems so intuitive. I wish we had something like that here. I would love to do the writing part and help any way that I can, but I'm crap at making wikia templates and the actual code part. Perhaps we could work together, if you want? I'm working on looking at the WikiaHelp site to learn more, but I just wanted to offer my help. MareBlair 03:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Timelines

The other day, while working, I came up with an idea. Timelines! Well, they are sorta already done somewhat here, but the idea I have makes it a little simpler.

For instance, for Rachel, it'd be:

• Wizard's First Rule
  • Already the playmate to Princess Violet
  • With Violet one day, Rachel sees a Box of Orden.
  • Wizard Giller recruits Rachel's help, he sends her out with the Box of Orden hidden in a loaf of bread. He also gives her a doll and a fire stick and talks to her through the doll.
  • Chase decides to adopt Rachel.
• Stone of Tears
  • ... etcetcetc

What does everyone think? Eric42 23:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

That was one of the things I was thinking about when starting to create my own site, but I decided that personal timelines would already be on the character page, in the biography (or character history). Instead I was going to go for a full series timeline of all major events and actions, beginning with the Great War 3000 years ago, up through Phantom. I still might do something like that here, but much later down the road. As for the personal timelines, I think it would be a good idea, but maybe we should create separate pages for them, and link to them from the characters page. Kind of the same way there is a Richard Rahl in Prophecy page, while having a summary of it on the Richard Rahl page. The timelines on the character page could be shortened down to be just the major events per book, while the timeline page itself goes into more detail.

With Rachel the above would be the timeline page itself (although it could use a few details more), while the character page could be shortened down to something like this:

Wizard's First Rule

• Wizard Giller recruits Rachel's help, he sends her out with the Box of Orden hidden in a loaf of bread. He also gives her a doll and a fire stick and talks to her through the doll.
• Chase ends up saving her from a gar and adopting her.
• Due to the kind treatment she has received from Chase and friends, Rachel decides to help and gives the Box of Orden to them.

Stone of Tears

• After battling the Screeling, Zedd gives the Stone of Tears to Rachel for safe keeping, until Richard can get it from her.
• etc., etc., etc.

Sorry about this being so long. Ixidorsbane 16:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Help Pages

Okay, seeing as how I am new here, I thought I would jot down some of the things that I noticed could use improvement to the site. Most of my thoughts are concerned about organization and site upkeep.

First off, there need to be some help pages made for those of us who don't really know how to start contributing to the wiki. I'll leave this up to the admin people, but those would really help (and I think it is a little past time for them, seeing as the wiki has been running for over a year). This topic kind of leads into the next... Ixidorsbane 16:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, the help pages. I've always wanted to create help pages, but I am terrible at that. Let me see if I can find any existing help pages that I can lift and edit to reflect SOT stuff. Dunno if or when it'll be done, but I'll try. :) Eric42 04:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I actually like the help pages at LyricsWiki, but mostly I like the editing section, especially how it gives a full template for each of the main pages (artist, album, song) that you just need to fill in with the information. Maybe you can alter some of those to help. Oh, and these are pretty good as well. Ixidorsbane 17:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Templates

I know there are a couple made, but the wiki could definitely benefit from having ones made for items, creatures, places, spells, books & chapters (definitely needed for the chapter layouts), and especially characters. Plus all the other pages that they would benefit. I could see what I can do about creating some, but I am still just learning how to write in wiki format, but I think I could come up with something. I have some idea's on what would be on the templates, but if everyone else could come up with suggestions...

Here is just my suggestion of an outline of the character page:

Characters

• Description (including titles, ranks, etc.)
• Alias'/a.k.a
• First Appearance/Mention
• Attributes
• History
  • Early Life (before WFR)
  • Current Role (WFR and after)
• Notable Quotes
• Appearances (list of all the chapters in the books that this character makes an appearance)
• Mentions (list of all locations where this character is mentioned)

Much of it would be the same as there is now, only adding more info in, in a better layout. Let me know what you think so far. Ixidorsbane 16:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Pretty much what is sorta already in place. With the major characters at least. With input like this, this place can get shaped really well. Let's try to see if we can implement that, or most of it. Eric42 04:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I didn't make a template yet, but I did create a sandbox under my user to show what my idea for the character layout would be like. Please take a look and give me suggestions on improvements. Ixidorsbane 21:55, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Eh, to be honest, it's a little overkill, in my personal opinion. The "character box" is ok, but I think the bottom part of it, the titles and such, are ugly there. Personally, if one wanted to put the titles up in a box like that and leave everything out, it'd look better. Otherwise, the character box is redundant, imho. Appearances should be taken out. First and Last appearances is perfect and should already be there, honestly. I'm not sure what Mentions is really about in the outline you've made up. Really, I think what we've got now is fine for the moment. I don't see the real need for any major changes. Maybe a little cleanup would help. Eric42 03:41, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so I changed it up a bit, here. Now that I think about it, you probably are right in the character box being redundant some. I think I was just going for something that people could glance at really quick to get a basic rundown of the character (without having to read all of the article). I changed the appearances section at the bottom, and removed the mentions. The mentions and appearances sections were meant to compliment each other (appearances for every chapter the character appeared physically, mentions for every chapter the character was brought up in conversation or thoughts) so that there was a list that showed every place that that character was used in the series. I was basing it off of this website, but maybe that is a little more scope than what this wiki is about, and much of those sections would be repeated in the History section as well, now that I think about it. Ixidorsbane 17:19, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Navigation

Just a quick suggestion. I would like to see if it would be possible to add the equivalent of the knowledge base section on the main page to the sidebar on the right. That way from anywhere in the wiki, you can go to the major categories and find what you need without having to go through the search or back to the main page. Just a thought. Ixidorsbane 16:56, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Despite having ran this wiki, and Nintendopedia, for well over a year, I've still not figured out how to do any edits to that bar over there. But to be honest, I focused more on content that editing that kinda stuff. I'll get with Angela and see what I can figure out. Eric42 04:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

It would also be good to have a wiki logo. Maybe a picture of the Grace, with SOT printed in the middle. Just a suggestion. Markrox91 06:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey Mark, Eric and I were talking about doing just that. Check this page. Ixidorsbane 17:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh ok =] I've uploaded a very basic design of what i imagined. Very basic. I like your designs alot better, however. In terms of the presentation of the wiki, i think we will be able to make it look alot better once the miniseries has been released, because we will finally have visual aids. Markrox91 02:40, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Very basic indeed, but a lot better than anything I could do. Personally, the grace looks (I hate to say) satanic in nature and people visiting would get the wrong idea. Personally, I find the grace very intriguing to even just look at, even more so since I know the meanings behind each line. Anyways, I would rather having the Sword of Truth itself be the icon of this wiki, an example of what stands behind this place. :) I liked the sword version of Ixi's examples, even.

Ixidorsbane, how about just going ahead and uploading all four versions of the logo's you uploaded. Both of them with both backgrounds. I've been thinking, that the sword (or book) version with a gray background will still work fine, I just want to see how it looks when uploaded. Could you do that? Eric42 16:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Images are loaded. Ixidorsbane 00:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I think they look great. I'm going to get Angela to try one out first and see what they look like from there. Eric42 03:41, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Logo part 2

Well, with some help from the people over in #wikia, I learned how to change the logo myself, so I've tried a couple and you know what? I personally love the gray background logos over any of the others. The gray looks odd at first, like it stands out a lot, but then it looks very natural to me. I'm trying out the book version first and maybe around next week sometime, I'll put another up. Want to see if you can do a grace version based off of what Markrox91 put up? Eric42 04:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

It might take me a little time, but I'll see what I can do. Ixidorsbane 16:35, 13 May 2007 (UTC)