RabbitWiki:Conventions as Categories

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This page is for discussing the best implementation for Conventions attended as Categories, including templates to include on a User page to make this easy for Rabbits to add.

I'm hoping to centralize the discussion. If there's a better place for this, feel free to move it around.

From Talk:Main Page:

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[edit] Conventions as Categories

From the Rabbits list, I have the following suggestion:

  1. Create Category pages for every convention attended by a Rabbit.
  2. Rabbits put the Category tag for each convention that they attend onto their User pages.
  3. Links in the wiki point to the Category pages for conventions, like this: [[:Category:convention_name|Convention Name]]
  4. Category page descriptions include external links to the convention site, schedules of events, and even planning (on their Talk pages).

See the Trinoc*coN Category, which is pulling from my User page (User:David Artman). Is this too kludgy; is it not "the wiki way"?

An alternate idea is to make templates for similar functionality... but I don't know how to do that yet.

I think this is a great idea, but I have noted some added possible functionality on User talk:David Artman#bio template and convention categories below. I can work on getting some templates up for these things. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 12:15, 19 July 2007 (PDT)

(MOVED) Also, what do you think about adding years to the convention categories, with perhaps super categories like this:

You could also then have a super category for each year, like this:

I may mention this on the Rabbit List as well... ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 12:11, 19 July 2007 (PDT)

I defer to your expertise. As long as it doesn't become some spaghetti of wiki code to just add a link/category/link-to-category, it's cool with me.
Will it still work as a "who's going to Con X?" tool, if folks only tag themselves with a Super-Category? For instance, I will ALWAYS go to Trinoc*coN and almost always go to Dragon*Con, but then I'd be picking and choosing by year, for other cons. Would I appear on the "2007" category for, say, Trinoc*coN if I'm only including the Super_category for Trinoc*coN (i.e. not the 2007-specific Category) on my User page? --David Artman 12:17, 19 July 2007 (PDT)
I'm not sure. I haven't thought through the whole category thing yet. The easiest way would be to always put the year specific category for each con, but that could add up quickly. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 12:22, 19 July 2007 (PDT)
The Rabbits List is handling a lot of this discussion, now. We've been sent back down. 8)
The Rabbits List gets cranky when a technical discussion continues for more than about 10 posts. I thought I'd try to pre-empt the compaints.  ;) Magus 13:25, 19 July 2007 (PDT)
I totally dig the notion of Template "badges" that are easily applied with the code to call a template (rather than a bunch of colons and braces). They can also include icons or whatever, but text-only will be more consistent and nicer looking, for folks with a bajillion badges. I suppose all it takes now is deciding how to break down (Super)Categories and someone making up a TON of badge Templates. --David Artman 13:06, 19 July 2007 (PDT)
I'm pleased with this idea as well. It looks like there may be some resources for people with 'many' badges to make something pretty on their page which groups them, or I have some further thoughts for having miniature versions of year-specific versions of miniature badges to reduce User page clutter. (You could have a large badge for the convention and then add mini-badges for every year you attended/expect to attend.) Magus 13:25, 19 July 2007 (PDT)
I suggest the following progression:
  • Create a vanilla badge for Origins (text only to start)
  • Verify that everything works
  • Clone it a couple of times (DragonCon, GenCon)
  • Verify again
  • Adjust colors and images in each one to make them look distinctive
  • Multiply and be fruitful
Who wants to start? Jwolfe 06:16, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
I agree with Jwolfe. That's roughly the direction I've been taking. I'm tinkering around a bit; I had a couple of cool ideas which I'm not sure are cool enough to be worth implementing. I'm trying to keep my tinkering in the User:Magus/Sandbox namespace for now (although I only discovered that idea after importing a couple of templates from Wikipedia). Which I guess means I've started.  ;) Magus 14:34, 20 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Badges + minibadges for conventions and individual years

Here's a sense of what I was talking about in my last comment above. The idea is that you have a big userbox for the convention (perhaps optional) and then a list of miniature userboxes for all the years you've attended/know you'll attend that convention. I'm still a little concerned about the category explosion, but I think it at least has promise on the user page.

You would add something to your user page like: {{user attends Origins}}{{user attends Origins 06}}{{user attends Origins 07}}

And see something like:

O This rabbit attends Origins
06
07




For extra coolness, someone could replace the text with cool custom logos for particularly popular conventions (e.g. Big Experiment). Magus 15:02, 19 July 2007 (PDT)

See also User:Magus/Sandbox/Userbox_Examples for examples of my latest playing around. --Magus 16:38, 20 July 2007 (PDT)

A couple of points:
  1. Can you make some/all of the userbox elements static rather than requiring users to fill out all those "=" variables? Sure, they'd be copy and pasted, usually, but I think something iconic shouldn't have tweaks, to keep it recognizable at a glance. Leaving all those variables exposed means folks will be tempted to change them, ruining recognizability.
Yes, as I suggested, an actual user would just use {{user attends origins}} in their user page. This would place the badge in that location and add them to [[:Category:Rabbits_who_attend_Origins]] (or [[:Category:Origins]] if we prefer). --Magus 14:34, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
I've just noticed that the templates I'm using do still create a template with a lot of parameters which can be overridden. I'm not sure this is desirable, for the reasons you give above. When we settle on a look, I might try to scale down the complexity. --Magus 16:07, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
  1. Smaller... MUCH smaller. I think the way BGG does their "badges" is ideal: just big enough to read, with little muss and fuss: http://files.boardgamegeek.com/images/bggadmin.png
  2. It seems that the number of categories could become unwieldy, after a few years. I mean, how many conventions do we all attend? 100? 300? And we're going to have annual categories, too? So in two or three years, we've got 1000 categories to hunt through? Or are you thinking of "killing" past annual categories so that there's, say, only three years worth at any given moment? Even if so... can anyone explain why it's valuable to know (a) past attendance and (b) future plans, which may change? I am *this close* to saying "no annuals" for my vote. I just can't see a benefit. If the goal is "legacy data" then why not just put an actual, tiny database on the site and let folks enter attendance there, for the record. The point I see for badges at all is to provide (a) a sorting category for attendees, to make plans together, and (b) to show an overview of convention attendance on a User page or sig file. Any other use, frankly, is only of value to a handful of people.
Yep, I'll say it, having written all that: NO ANNUALS. Forget about it, never mind, nice thought but who cares? Just some nice, unobtrusive badges for general plans to attend is all we really need. Folks can always remove a badge from their user page, if they're skipping a year of a con they usually attend. Then add it back, next year.
David Artman 07:24, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
Maybe I'm just ignorant as to conventions in general, but do you really attend 100 conventions a year? That's 2 every week! And I wouldn't worry about having "too many categories." That's what they're there for. To use! Finally, I may have to agree with the size. It could use to be a little smaller. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 08:28, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
Well, I meant "we" as in all of us combined--that's why I guessed at 100+. I only attend 3 or 4 a year in my region, myself
Anyhow, I'm but one voice; obviously, whatever folks actually do, vis a vis creating Categories, is what's going to "stick" as a practice. I'm not really template-savvy (in particular regarding embedding Category tags into one and making their elements more static), so I can't really take charge of any of this initiative. Though I suppose I could help with the generation of templates based on a "standard" convention badge template (i.e. change text and colors and such). David Artman 08:49, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
Ah, I misunderstood what you meant by 100/year. That makes more sense now.
Embedding a category into a template is pretty easy. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Actor-stub or any of the other stub templates. They embed a category so that whenever the template is on a page, that page gets added to that category. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 09:30, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
See my user page, and I've only listed conventions I attend fairly regularly. There are at least three others that I'm fairly likely to attend in any given year. So the number per page could get quite high; and yes, the total number out there is easily in the hundreds.
FWIW, I agree with "no annual badges." On the other hand, I don't think we need to make them BGG-sized. I doubt any one person is going to list any more than a few of them (and have a few more for other topics that we come up with), so a small banner will not be too excessive. As to variables, I think fewer is better. Perhaps just one to indicate that you won't be attending "this year" so you don't have to delete the badge entirely if you're taking a year off. Jwolfe 10:35, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
OK, this is a GREAT compromise. Instead of annual badges, we have three per con: went last year, going this year, will go next year (much like I was saying to deprecate annual categories after a year or two). Could be shorter text, too, like: Past, Present, Future.
As for badge size, once we have the "default" sized badges, it should be trivial to copy them to badge_small (and maybe badge_giant) templates with smaller (or larger) boxes and text, right? In other words, once we have a baseline, why not make variations? --David Artman 11:33, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
The size I went with was the default size for a Userbox on Wikipedia. I'm perfectly comfortable with working up our own sizes if we think those are too big. (The one advantage to having it nice and big is that it allows for a decently sized image--these assume 43px wide. We could go to 32, 24, or even as low as 16 (I think BGG uses 16px) if we prefer. I'll try to make some mockups at each of these sizes tonight...)
I now have some examples available at User:Magus/Sandbox/Userbox_Examples. --Magus 16:38, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
Although I'm comfortable with what I came up with as a potential way of doing annuals from an implementation standpoint, I'm currently inclined to agree that the information we gain probably isn't worth the overhead. (It might be sort of cool to have these strings of year boxes like BGG supporter badges, but do we really care?) I like the compromise above, although I'm inclined to go one further. At most I think there's room for two versions of each badge, one "has attended" and one "will attend the next one". The only problem with this is that the "will attend"s will get stale. But "will attend" are the people who are likely to get involved in active planning, and "has attended" are people to try to encourage to come back again this year. Magus 14:34, 20 July 2007 (PDT)
Even better, Magus. "Past Origins" or "Origins" is sufficient descriptive text for an icon which, by definition, is usually NOT descriptive at all--that's what "icon" means. Even a badge, typically, doesn't use sentence structures: it's an icon with, maybe, a designation of rank or office or whatever. See Magus's User:Magus/Sandbox/Userbox_Examples page for my ideas for aesthetics of the badge, in addition to this request for minimal textual content. David Artman 08:04, 23 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] Technical Stuff

Per Magus's request, I've installed the ParserFunctions extension, which allows for more programmability in templates. Let me know if there's anything else I can help with technically or that requires an admin. — λ 09:39, 20 July 2007 (PDT)

[edit] References

The email discussion mentioned several sources of information for setting this stuff up. Let's collect them here.

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