Editing Baka-Tsuki talk:Categories revamp project (section)

== Separating project/light novel categorizations ==

From what I can see, some of the categories that are being used are irrelevant to one of the two (projects/light novels). If the objective of this is to categorize the projects in a better way, maybe creating a light novel page separate from the translation project pages each light novel would be a better idea. The light novel page would serve mainly as a buffer, this page will contain a title, an image, links to the languages the light novel has been translated to, and maybe other general miscellaneous information regarding the light novel.

This way only the light novel page has to be added to all the categories that pertain only to the actual light novel (i.e. publisher, genres, etc.), and the individual translation project pages and be added to their own categories (i.e. language, project status, etc.). Then you can even categorize the categories so that some are used only for projects and some are only for light novels.

The cons of this method, obviously is that you guys will have to make a new page for each light novel and redo the categorization of each of them. Also this will take up more space (data wise) since there is an extra page for each light novel. I usually don't contribute to the site but it was an interesting topic. In the end this is only a suggestion from a lurker so if you guys don't like this, I guess you can just ignore this?
:Hi,
:I've been pondering the very same idea, but the drawback is having to force everyone through an intermediary page, whereas the english version, which attract most of our reader, is currently on direct access. Wonder how we could go around that. If you or anyone reading that has an idea...
:Don't worry about the space thing, it's just text :)
:[[User:Darkoneko|DarkoNeko]] <small>[[User_Talk:Darkoneko|talk]]</small> 08:10, 7 February 2014 (CST)
::Hi DarkoNeko,
::Regarding direct access, is it possible to do something similar to the "Full Text" (the pages showing the entire volume) pages? Those pages seem to reference each of the individually translated chapters rather than copy and pasting all the text from each of those pages on to a single one. So following that concept, is it possible for the light novel page to have the links to the alternate languages, an image, misc info, etc. to be referenced at the beginning of each of the translation project pages? This would allow for the sidebar to still have direct access to the English translation project page, and each translation project page will have links to each of the languages (including a link to itself).
::The cons of this is that it would be a little more difficult to set up new translation project pages (i.e. requiring the knowledge to do the above). Also the actual light novel page would probably never see the light of day unless someone specifically searches for it (which might make the categorization not as useful).
::[[User:Zeigfarr|Zeigfarr]] ([[User talk:Zeigfarr|talk]]) 14:44, 7 February 2014 (CST) <- the lurker who started this topic

Oi DarkoNeko. The only way to do that would be to somehow link the sidebar links to that new '''select language''' thingy that's added on the top of the site. So that if English is selected as the language, then the links direct to the link's project's english version; if french is selected, then the link directs to the link's project's french version; etc etc. But that would involve a high level of coding, certainly faaaar beyond template coding. First you'd need to find out what parameter is passed to the system from that '''select language''' thingy and whether that parameter can be accessed (ie: it's not private or protected; see encapsulation in computer languages). After knowing that and figuring out how to access it, you'd have to incorporate it into the links using ''if then else'' statements. Seriously, it'll be a lot of work, making the sidebar wiki-text much more complicated, unless you program it in inside the backend somehow.

No, some ALF members are opposed to it, as they don't want to change the wiki's language each time they must go see the English version or the Alternative Language version of a chapter. <br />
[[User:Devenk83|Devenk83]] ([[User talk:Devenk83|talk]]) 09:03, 7 February 2014 (CST)
:While I generally see what you mean, you seems to have the coding side all wrong : 
:*I never intended on using the <abbr title="Universal language selector">ULS</abbr>. 
:*The ULS relies on JQuery, so the addition would have been in javascript, we wouldn't have needed to alter Mediawiki's code (which is a big no).
:[[User:Darkoneko|DarkoNeko]] <small>[[User_Talk:Darkoneko|talk]]</small> 13:43, 7 February 2014 (CST)

Separating the project and English language page is the worst option.
*Website design rule 1: Less clicks the better. Especially for pages that are more popular (I'm not looking down on alternative languages, just telling it how it is).
*Webiste design rule 2: Less size the better.
If the opposition to using the '''select language''' is too strong, then I suggest you look into using '''sub'''categories to solve this problem. letting the Language be the parent-category and Genres being the subcategories or vice versa. That's all I'm going to say.
:Please sign your messages with <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> else we don't know who wrote what. [[User:Darkoneko|DarkoNeko]] <small>[[User_Talk:Darkoneko|talk]]</small> 13:41, 7 February 2014 (CST)