I cannot count the number of times I have had this conversation with an engineer:

Engineer: You should regress bug X. I think I fixed it.
Me: Great. What was the problem?
Engineer: Dunno. *shrugs* But it doesn't happen anymore.

You're ready for a career in tech, Keeper.

I have noticed that often "dunno [shrugs]" seems to frequently be the answer to the question "why is this working now"

For the record, I added an #if: clause that basically, in theory, hides the entire bottom part of the infobox if there's no value for {{{extended}}}. If you don't have the line "|extended=yes" or something to that effect but instead have "|extended= " the whole thing should be hidden. But... apparently if you just don't even bother to add the line at all it will cause the empty space generated by the unused lines to just... disappear.

I have no idea why it does that.

So there is now what seems to be a 100% useless function in the metatemplate for all infoboxes that nevertheless will totally break the visuals of all infoboxes if it's removed.

It's great knowing that I'm laying down a foundation of quicksand for the entire @*$&ing wiki.

The technical term I'm used to is that the system is held together by "strings and wishes."

You know, Keeper, there really ARE a lot of Fox dudes in Jakkard, huh? And Vasilias really is a major...

Yeah I've been having fun with test text Too much fun? Probably.

How does the Plane infobox look so far?

I think it's looking good. As I said, I've been sort of at a loss for how to handle the infobox of planes, and I think this is a pretty good option so far.

These info boxes do bring up another concern, and I'm not sure there's an easy fix for it, but we need a way to get some art for these things! I know you, Keeper, and Barinellos are both pretty talented artists, but there is so much to be represented, and I can barely handle stick people. Does anyone know any artists who might be willing to provide portraits for 'walkers or landscapes for planes?

Well we had one artist but he wasn't the most stable of people

Honestly the same itch for art has been grabbing me as well, just due to looking at all those blank spaces in the infoboxes. I might have to actually learn to not be terrible at painting if only so I can add some more portraits.

This is honestly making a HUGE difference though for my sense of what all we already have to work with. I think having the wiki is going to be great.

Incidentally I wouldn't mind, and I'm sure Luna wouldn't mind, if you guys started moving character and plane entries that either belong to you or are of particular interest to you over into the wiki. The formatting isn't too hard to learn, and I've tried to set the infoboxes up so that they're easy to fill in and understand.

Well, since we seem to be divided as to how much to include on wiki pages (and I did say I tend to go overboard*), I've decided that I'm going to focus my energies on uploading $%!+ to the Archives, like it's supposed to be my job to do. I've let myself fall far behind as it is, and with our schedule just being pushed up so much, it's best I get started on it.**

Also, I feel I should make a Spaceballs reference.


*That was mostly an experiment, however, I do believe the page I set up on Ariva as a plane serves as something of a good example. Since it doesn't have an infobox, I assume no one has stumbled upon it yet.

**Kind of important note: I check the page source code or whatever it's called to make sure formatting styles like italics and bold are carried over when uploading works to the archives. I hope you all will do the same. Also, add [p] tags, please.

I tried to do some, and I think it should be easy enough, but unfortunately this came at precisely the wrong time. I'm going to be pretty much swamped with work for the next two and a half weeks as the semester wraps up, with a possible window this coming weekend. However, I'm also falling behind on my writing, which is less than ideal.

Anyway, I'm going to try to get some stuff written up for my various characters and planes, but I'm still not completely sure on the spoiler issue. I'm just concerned that without some spoiled info, my character might be a bit thin, because a lot of their visible development has come from my stories...

I'd like to bring the actors' attentions behind the curtain for a moment, if you will. How does this work for a summary of Kiss of the Shorecerers:


Also, I cannot recall offhand if that is the correct sequel and/or how many other stores Denner Fabelian has been in.

I think that's a pretty good description. It is, in fact, a direct sequel to Tears, and these are the only two (official) stories Denner has appeared in. His surname is spelled with two "L"s, however: Denner Fabellian.

Noted and prop fixed. Fit for stage presentation?

I think so. The only vague concern I have is with the phrasing "chronicle of the Expanded Multiverse's group migration," only because the story doesn't actually show that. It more chronicles the circumstances that led to said migration. I might be splitting hairs, though. I'm not completely convinced it matters.

It is your piece. And, after all, everyone has the option to improve it. Curtain is still drawn, you know. (Wait, is that right? I think I may be mixing my words, since I've never been part of the theatre.)

Yeah, that's true. Well, I'm pretty happy with that as a description, so let's go with that, unless anyone else disagrees, in which case, as you say, changes can always be made later if need be. But personally, I think it's good.

So, looking over Renn's page, I really think we do need a brief summary page for ongoing storylines. Otherwise the "availability" tag is misleading. I put this section right above the "appears in" page and added a disclaimer template that we can use on all our pages:

NOTE: Ongoing Storyline sections contain spoilers for M:EM and/or Canon works! Proceed at your own risk! View the #Appears In section to read the relevant works without getting spoiled.

Then I changed the "Available" to "Available (some caveats: see #Ongoing Storyline for details)" which links automatically to that section.

This seems to me like the best option for usability. If we can create spoiler blocks on the wiki that'd be even bigger and we could actually just add the spoiler functionality directly into the M:EM Spoiler Warning template. Template template template. I **** LOVE TEMPLATES D:< AAAAAAAHHRRGHGGH [froths]

I think that strikes a good balance.

So I added a list of all the works that are currently in our archives here on this board to the Magic: Expanded Multiverse Archive page on the wiki and looking it over and taking into account the fact that this isn't even the full archive that was on the Wizards forums...

I am 110% confident that creating an individual page for every single story is COMPLETELY impractical. And actually, we may need to rethink the organization of the archive, because we just have a LOT of stories now to the point where just listing them off, even with tags, even in roughly chronological order, is probably going to be difficult to parse as a reader.

Of course, the flip side of that is that holy crap we have been creating a LOT of material. We're pushing the boundaries of what we can feasibly map out and archive in an orderly way and that is AWESOME.

Basically, everyone deserves a round of applause and a drink.

And then we can all freak out a little bit over the fact that organizing this information is going to be very difficult.

But yeah, I just really, really do not think that creating a single page for every story is going to be practical. It's too much work, and on top of that it means that instead of clicking the link in the archive and going directly to the story, people are going to be bounced to a story summary. That's really counterintuitive.

I'm going to talk to Sara (who if you didn't know is a library scientist) and get her take on things, since this is kind of her field and she might have some suggestions on how best to order information.

I do think the Planeswalker and Plane pages are going to be especially valuable now since they make it very easy to parse reading orders and so on.

In fact, it might be most practical to organize the archive according to plane and planeswalker... and just link to the "Works Featuring" section on those pages...

i.e.

[[Vasilias#Appears In|Works featuring Vasilias]]
--->[the list of works featuring Vasilias on his page]

I mean I just tested it out and it functions properly so... it might be a thing worth doing. Just a thought.

Of course then if we wanted to put like a brief blurb description next to each story we'd have to make sure it was consistent across the wiki for all instances of the link to the story, rather than just having a list in the archive. Blurgh. Unless we create a template for every single story which seems... stupid. But maybe... JUST STUPID ENOUGH??????? I mean it's totally a thing we could do... we could do the link coding all on the backend and (normal, non-code obsessed, template worshipping) people editing the wiki could just add the story links via {{{link}}} tags rather than [[link]] tags... Of course we're then back to the problem of crowding the wiki with like 300 templates...

Wow sorry for that massive wall of text.

You don't have to tell me twice.

Seriously, though, Keeper, thanks for all the hard work you're doing on this. Making the backend work is always an unglamorous business - if you do it right, no one notices, whereas if something goes wrong... That fact that you're running with all this is just an incredible service to everyone.