Category talk:Characters

From Ravenblack CityWiki

Contents 1 deadend 2 Sorting characters 2.1 Adding optional argument to {{catc}}

deadend

Though this page lists the pages categorized as characters, it is pretty much a deadend. Maybe someone wants to enhance the article some more.

Explaining the terms alt or thrall, and/or linking/redirecting those terms on this page (mind the double redirect!).--Cliff Burton • Marco 19:04, 6 May 2012 (CEST)

Sorting characters

The †-prefix is great as it both shows it's a PC and avoids forced capitalization of the name. One downside is that all category members get sorted under †. Here is an idea about how they at least in theory could be sorted case-insensitive under the first letter in the actual name.

• Substitute the [[Category:Characters]] on all member pages with the existing shorthand template {{catc}}. There are over 1300 pages so it is a job for some sort of bot, but needs only to be done once. Character pages created with the friendly guiding example should already have {{catc}}.
• Enable the extension StringFunctions, to get the function #replace.
• Modify the template {{catc}} to include an uppercased, dagger-filtered sort argument in its output: [[Category:Characters|{{uc:{{#replace:{{PAGENAME}}|†|}}}}]]
• Characters should now be sorted case-insensitive by the first non-dagger letter. Example: The page †cliffburton would get sorted under C.

Adding optional argument to {{catc}}

• Allow an optional, custom sort argument to {{catc}} like so: [[Category:Characters|{{uc:{{{1|{{#replace:{{PAGENAME}}|†|}}}}}}}]]
• Characters should now be sorted case-insensitive by the first non-dagger letter, or case-insensitive by the optional argument. Examples: The page †the_cliff would with {{catc}} still get sorted under T. With {{catc|cliff}}, it would get sorted under C instead.

What do you think? Could it be worth it? Bots are unknown to me, perhaps it isn't that easy to auto-edit 1300 pages. --deCarnac 11:00, 5 May 2012 (CEST) and 01:40, 6 May 2012 (CEST)

I had not to think long about your idea. I tried it out. After I made a backup of the database, I started the replacement job. Right now, as I write this, the job is still running. But it looks promising. I am confident that there will be no issues. --Cliff Burton • Marco 18:53, 6 May 2012 (CEST)

Nice that it worked! I saw that you also spotted and fixed the coding error I had made (a pipe instead of the colon after #replace, just corrected those typos here above). I'll update the info on [[Category:Characters]] and {{catc}} now. --deCarnac 22:28, 6 May 2012 (CEST)

I just saw that the bot missed some pages. It seems to be because they have [[Category: Characters]] or [[Category: characters]] (with a blankspace) instead of [[Category:Characters]]. --deCarnac 11:35, 7 May 2012 (CEST)

I replaced the missing ones. --Cliff Burton • Marco 17:09, 7 May 2012 (CEST)

Excellent! --deCarnac 23:29, 7 May 2012 (CEST)

Another thing: the sub-categories are no longer auto-listed. In itself it's no disaster, but is it a related bug? --deCarnac 11:35, 7 May 2012 (CEST)

Please explain. --Cliff Burton • Marco 17:09, 7 May 2012 (CEST)

I googled and experimented, this seems to be a notorious MediaWiki bug/known issue: [1]. On category pages, any subcategories get listed above the page listing, right? But the [[Category:Characters]] subcategories don't show on the first page. If a category has 200+ members only 200 are shown at a time and although listed separately, the subcategories may get shown or hidden depending on the member page interval shown. When showing members beginning with C—F, subcategories are shown only if their names are in that interval. --deCarnac 17:37, 7 May 2012 (CEST)