Subpage template testing and tweeks

[Chris Day]

I've set up two articles to demonstrate the subpage functions. It would be great to get some feedback so we can tweek this into a format that works for everyone. I think it is getting pretty close the point where it can be used on real articles to manage categories, subpage headers, the checklist, and the whole approval process.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Test_article_not_approved

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Test_article

These two article clusters use the {{subpages2}} template. For both I have instigated the approval process by adding my name to the [[Template:ARTICLENAME/Metadata]] template as an editor wanting to approve the representative articles. Please take a look at the placement of the ToApprove templates.  Only the Approval subpage is in the ToApprove category.

This '''Test article''' represents an approved article and is has EVERY subpage possible. Note it is not usual to have all the subpages active but it is useful in this case so people can proof read the header comments.  Please leave feed back on the relevant subpage if you feel the wording could be improved. As a contrast the [[Test article not approved]] version represents a non approved, bare bones version.

[Greg Woodhouse]

I've set up two articles to demonstrate the subpage functions. It would be great to get some feedback so we can tweek this into a format that works for everyone. I think it is getting pretty close the point where it can be used on real articles to manage categories, subpage headers, the checklist, and the whole approval process.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Test_article_not_approved

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Test_article

These two article clusters use the {{subpages2}} template. For both I have instigated the approval process by adding my name to the [[Template:ARTICLENAME/Metadata]] template as an editor wanting to approve the representative articles. Please take a look at the placement of the ToApprove templates.  Only the Approval subpage is in the ToApprove category.

This '''Test article''' represents an approved article and is has EVERY subpage possible. Note it is not usual to have all the subpages active but it is useful in this case so people can proof read the header comments.  Please leave feed back on the relevant subpage if you feel the wording could be improved. As a contrast the [[Test article not approved]] version represents a non approved, bare bones version.

What are the pound signs (#) at the right hand side of the square buttons for? Also, on my laptop at least, the icons at the bottom (particularly the second from the left, approval area) are a bit hard to make out. It would be nice if popovers could be replaced by simple tooltips within the scope of this template.

Now that, I've said all of that  , I like it.

[Chris Day]

What are the pound signs (#) at the right hand side of the square buttons for?

Did you try and click one  What would be a better, more obvious but subtle link?

Also, on my laptop at least, the icons at the bottom (particularly the second from the left, approval area)

I forgot to mention the buttons will be replaced.  I just grabbed what was available, we need a new set. You can mouse over the buttons to see the links. More to the point, do we want to go with buttons for those links or something else?

[Greg Woodhouse]

What are the pound signs (#) at the right hand side of the square buttons for?

Did you try and click one  What would be a better, more obvious but subtle link?

I did. But I'm not sure why I'd think a pound sign meant "About". Why not a question mark or a capital A in a smaller font?

Also, on my laptop at least, the icons at the bottom (particularly the second from the left, approval area)

I forgot to mention the buttons will be replaced.  I just grabbed what was available, we need a new set. You can mouse over the buttons to see the links. More to the point, do we want to go with buttons for those links or something else?

I like the buttons, but if you're going to put them in the same panel, there isn't much room for detail. The three rightmost buttons are fine, but the two to the left seem a bit indistinct. (Caveat: I remember speaking at a conference in a much larger hall than I expected. The first thing I said is that I need to see an optometrist. Maybe it's about time I do it!) It's dull, but how about a black or blue P for print, a green check mark for approved and a red x, or an A with a red slash through it for not approved? Of course, these ideas are just off the top of my head. Perhaps someone else can come up with something better.

[Chris Day]

Greg, I changed the buttons, see if that helps.  It may take a while for the server to update them. Currently the Metadata (orange M) and info link (purple ?) are working for me.

[a.a.s.]

Really good. Well designed. I appreciate very much the fact that there is a central place for categories and no more double work (before we put e.g. Biology workgroup on the article page and "Biology" in the checklist).

Now, my two cents.

I can not recognize the (new?) icons for "printable" "unused" and "approval" (maybe still under construction?) Maybe letters would do? M for metadata looks good. Draft icon is "readable" as well. (My browser: firefox/windows). I understand that that's a minor issue.

I do not understand why the Test Article has two contradictory categories: "Advanced" and "Approved". Minor fix?

Another minor remark - or just curiosity: are there advantages of putting the central place for categories in the Template namespace? I see no problem with it, but at the first sight, putting it on a subpage to the article (in the mainspace) would IMHO be more natural.

At some time we could rethink whether we need e.g. "Biology External" category at all -- only "Biology" and "External", and a tool to find the intersection. At present categories under the Test Article  do not look very good as there are obvious redundancies. Consider e.g. that "approved" or "advanced" always implies  "nonstub" and "internal". Also numerous "intersections" of "biology" category with nonstub/internal etc are implied by merely 2 "generators": "biology" and "approved".
Now, perhaps there is nothing to do about it and some of them are needed.
As far as I can tell, the great advantage of this system (the subpage template) is that once we decide to get rid of something, we can easily do it.

[a.a.s.]

One more question: how to archive the talk page and make appear the links under the checklist?

[Chris Day]

I can not recognize the (new?) icons for "printable" "unused" and "approval" (maybe still under construction?) Maybe letters would do? M for metadata looks good. Draft icon is "readable" as well. (My browser: firefox/windows). I understand that that's a minor issue.

There is a probalem in the CZ cache, even though I uploaded new designed the old design is still shown, although cramped into the tiny 17x17 px space.  I thought it might sort itself out last night but its still corrupt.  I just uploaded the new design into a new image.  I also played with the idea of just using letters.  See below for two possible options.

We can proceed from here.  All colours, sizes and positions can be adjusted quite easily.

I do not understand why the Test Article has two contradictory categories: "Advanced" and "Approved". Minor fix?

I just changed this.  If you're interested, the category placement is controlled by the following template (Template:Checklist4). Changes to this one central template will change the categories on ALL articles using the subpages template.  This will be really useful in the future are we need to adjust category names, add categories or remove categories.  Literally every article can be changed with one edit.

Another minor remark - or just curiosity: are there advantages of putting the central place for categories in the Template namespace? I see no problem with it, but at the first sight, putting it on a subpage to the article (in the mainspace) would IMHO be more natural.

Originally I had tried to do this, however, when reading the information from the matadata page it turns out that it can only be read from the template namespace (I use the following format {{ARTICLENAME/Metadata|info=status}} and for an approved article this would return a value =0). Is there way to read information from the main space?

At some time we could rethink whether we need e.g. "Biology External" category at all -- only "Biology" and "External", and a tool to find the intersection. At present categories under the Test Article  do not look very good as there are obvious redundancies. Consider e.g. that "approved" or "advanced" always implies  "nonstub" and "internal". Also numerous "intersections" of "biology" category with nonstub/internal etc are implied by merely 2 "generators": "biology" and "approved".
Now, perhaps there is nothing to do about it and some of them are needed.
As far as I can tell, the great advantage of this system (the subpage template) is that once we decide to get rid of something, we can easily do it.

All your points are valid here and at the end you hit the nail on the head. I think the original purpose for all these categories was for accounting purposes. For example, all the nice stats pages you made probably used the categories?  At some point we need to consider what categories are appropraite for each article status, 0-4.

One more question: how to archive the talk page and make appear the links under the checklist?

The archive should live at Talk:ARTICLENAME/Archive 1 or Talk:ARTICLENAME/Archive 2 (Note the space between the Archive and the number!).  If you create the archive page in that format the archive link will automatically appear in the checklist table on the talk page.

As far as the archive pages are concerned I have not modified the subpages template to function on them correctly (it can be done).  So at present the old archive box should still be used. You can see that I did this for the Test article Archive 1 and Archive 2.

[Greg Woodhouse]

I can not recognize the (new?) icons for "printable" "unused" and "approval" (maybe still under construction?) Maybe letters would do? M for metadata looks good. Draft icon is "readable" as well. (My browser: firefox/windows). I understand that that's a minor issue.

There is a probalem in the CZ cache, even though I uploaded new designed the old design is still shown, although cramped into the tiny 17x17 px space.  I thought it might sort itself out last night but its still corrupt.  I just uploaded the new design into a new image.  I also played with the idea of just using letters.  See below for two possible options.

[/quote]

It could be a that the pages are cached by an intervening proxy. Take a look at your access logs, and look for IPs that come up a lot or agents called squid (possibly the post popular HTTP cache on the web). Proxy caches are not a bad thing, but when browsers or servers don't implementing HTTP correctly, interesting things can happen.

[a.a.s.]

Now I correctly see the buttons (I did nothing). The letters look good for me and have an advantage of being almost 'self-explanatory', not to mention the word 
Anyway, I guess that look-and-feel details can be set at any time and then refreshed at occasions. For me it's pretty good.

[Jitse Niesen]

Originally I had tried to do this, however, when reading the information from the matadata page it turns out that it can only be read from the template namespace (I use the following format {{ARTICLENAME/Metadata|info=status}} and for an approved article this would return a value =0). Is there way to read information from the main space?

I'm not sure that this answers your question, but I think you're looking for {{:ARTICLENAME/Metadata|info=status}}. The colon before the article name indicates it comes from the main namespace instead of the default template namespace (if my memory is not failing me).

[Chris Day]

I think you're looking for {{:ARTICLENAME/Metadata|info=status}}

Excellent, that works!! Thanks Jitse.  This means we can have the metadata page as a subpage rather than as a template.

[Larry Sanger]

That's good news!

[Chris Day]

That's good news!

Now the bad news.  It works on the basic subpages etc. However i used a trick on the sub-subpages (such as a signed article) to be able to allow the subpages template to function there too. For example, on the sub-subpage that holds the signed article such as "NewYorkCity/Signed articles/John Smith". I would use {{../../Metadata|info=pagename}} to get the article name since {{BASEPAGENAME}} returns "NewYorkCity/Signed article" on a signed article page, rather than just "NewYorkCity". Likewise, to poll the metadata page on the status of the article, I must use {{../../Metadata|info=status}} instead of {{{{BASEPAGENAME}}/Metadata|info=status}}.  I tried using the {{:../../Metadata|info=pagename}} to read the main space version of the metadata but had no luck. Apparently the "../../" will not function with the colon in place and consequently it cannot read data off the subpage NewYorkCity/Metadata.

Of course, it is not critical to have the subpages template on the signed articles so one solution is to do without the template on signed article or similar page. The signed articles could also be at the same hierarchial level as subpages.  "NewYorkCity/Signed articles" would summarise the various signed articles, whereas the signed articles themselves would live at "NewYorkCity/John Smith" and such.  Is there a good reason why we need to use the sub-sub pages? It might be worth avoiding them if the payoff is to be able to maintain the metadata page as a subpage rather than a template?  i have not thought this through yet so any citicisms or other ideas are welcome.

[a.a.s.]

For me [[NewYorkCity/Signed Article (John Smith)]] looks like a reasonable convention, even better than a subpage with the name in the title.

This however reminds me that we have some articles that are already on subpages with no "main" page -- all those using the slash.
For example look at [[1/f_noise]] -- formally this is a subpage to [[1]] and displayed as such with ">" sign.
There are a few other examples: 40mm/56_caliber_gun, 5"/38 caliber gun and perhaps others.
Does it make a problem for the template (in any version)?

If it was a problem, I'd propose to change slightly the name  and to turn the "slashed" titles into redirects. This is already the case for GNU/Linux and dev/null, and this seems to be harmless.