Cunnan talk:Kingdom Standardisation

This is a summary of the discussion from various Village Pump pages.

Format for Kingdom Pages

From 2006

Looking at the history file some of you may have noticed I have been fiddling about with the [[Kingdom of �thelmearc]] page. Because there was a decent amount of information up there already I wanted to try and create a format that could be used on the other kingdom pages. Could other regular users take a look at the page and reformat as they think appropriate or leave comments here (is trying to standardise kingdom pages a good thing?) Conrad Leviston 08:20, 8 Aug 2005 (CDT)

• IMHO I think trying to stardardize category-related pages is a good idea albiet a lot of work unless commuincated well. I think if the Kingdom pages, for example, all have the same look and feel, it is then easier to find the info you want because its in roughly the same place as the last kingdom page you were at. I'm also wondering if anyone has a problem with the amount of graphics I'm contributing to Cunan? --Thorgrimr of Dragonsspine 09:04, 8 Aug 2005 (CDT)

I quite like more graphics, I think many users, like me, just haven't bothered learning those commands yet. I guess if the ammount of graphics is likely to significantly slow page loading for little explainatory benefit, that would be a problem, but i think we are nowhere near that point yet.
I do have one late comment on the kingdom box - perhaps where rulers are given some way of indicating when this information is out of date could be added, since they change at least every 6 months, and updates may be overlooked, and even if they aren't I might be uncertain if that is so. For example a "reigning until" field. This is less of a problem with other groups, since barons/esses and senechals tend to last for a couple of years on average. Tiff 10:49, 8 Aug 2005 (CDT)

• Would this page be useful for upkeep? Cunnan:Maintenance

Yes, it looks useful, but If i was a casual user of cunnan, but used to webpages, I'd be used to (other) webpages being out of date, and would still doubt the updatedness of such a page. Besides I think it's not a bad piece of information to have - I'm always interested if a set of royalty is newly invested or late in their reign anyway.Tiff 11:16, 9 Aug 2005 (CDT)

Barony Template Added

From 2006

I so liked the idea of the Kingdom box template that I created a Barony one. See Barony of Dragonsspine for example of use although its pretty straight forward. Let me know if you'd like to see them for the other locality types (i.e. Canton, Shire, College, etc.) Feedback on it appreciated. Tobin & Co., you have a great wiki here, I love it!--Thorgrimr of Dragonsspine 09:04, 2 Aug 2005 (CDT)

Having been partially resopnsible for the Kingdom box (Tobin did most of the work) I quite like your adaptation. The one problem with both the Kingdom and Barony boxes is the way devices are depicted. Ideally the device will have a transparent background, but even then IE 5.5 and earlier won't display them properly. A white background is the usual wy images come to us and this creates a problem (for me at least) when the Knigdom box metal is yellow. I'm not sure that there is a real solution to this, but feel free to try your own ideas.

Good job though, and I don't see why the boxes shouldn't be used for other locality types. They are a useful way of representing vital statistcs, and look pretty too.

On a related note see Barony of Stormhold for the Lochac Barony navigational aid template. Something similar for other kingdoms may also be worth considering. Conrad Leviston 09:21, 2 Aug 2005 (CDT)

I added a Shire box as well for folks to use. The template looks the same, but you only add a Seneschal instead of two people. Also, I added an image to the Device article since it was in Requested Pictures. --Thorgrimr of Dragonsspine 11:49, 2 Aug 2005 (CDT)

Any way to modify it so it doesn't put up a quasi-error message if you don't have both a Baron and Baroness? Donovan Ravenhull 09:59, 9 Oct 2005 (CDT)

There is a way to modify the template to use a portion if it isn't empty, but I'm not sure if functions on 1.4 versions of the wiki software. Two new templates are needed, HideIfEmpty and IfEmptyDo. I'll add them and see if I can help out with this! Thorgrimr of Dragonsspine 19:37, 22 Feb 2006 (CST)

UPDATE--I got the hiding code to work. To use it in an article, you still need to have the variable name (i.e. baroness= |) and it will provide the label in the infobox, but you won't get the triple-bracketed stuff after it so it's much cleaner. To implement this functionality in your own templates, you must first enclose the transclusion info in a span or div tag with a call to the "HideIfEmpty" template (i.e. <span {{HideIfEmpty|{{{baroness}}}}}>{{{baroness}}}</span>). Just send me a note on my talk page if you have questions on this, I'm no expert, but I might be able to help!Thorgrimr of Dragonsspine 19:52, 22 Feb 2006 (CST)

Style guide

From 2014

It appears that Cunnan could use a style guide for how to set out particular pages. For Example the Kingdom Standardisation Project could be adapted to be an SCA group standard style guide. Any thoughts or comments? Yves de Lyle (talk) 15:52, 1 February 2013 (EST)

The unofficial style guide tended to be me in the past. Others would write the page, normally rare editors who would not have any notion of style. I would make sure all branches started off with something like "The X of C is an SCA group in the Kingdom of Y, mundanely in CITY, COUNTRY". Then I broke the text up when I could, sometimes rewriting it and made sure the homepage link was under External Links, since it wasn't within Cunnan. The actual content depended on what the original author gave us. Things like History and Events were rare or too small to make their own section. Occasionally I had to remove regional point-of-view or change it to third-person perspective (ie. change "we" to "they").

So yes, you can try and establish a formal style, but other than a sidebar that will be out-of-date very soon if includes seneschal names etc, you probably won't have much to play around. After all, some branches are stub articles with only have one or two sentences that just say their location.

- Cian Gillebhrath (talk) 23:18, 1 February 2013 (EST)

My main thought would be to list the elements that should be included in a page (ie the stuff that is unlikely to change quickly). So a side bar with name, device, location, link to homepage/website. and the main part of the article having an overview, history, events (if any), rulers (K&Qs, P&Ps, or B&B), and external links. Other info like current seneschal, current members, current events, etc. change too quickly and would be best placed on the groups homesite.

- Yves de Lyle (talk) 10:07, 2 February 2013 (EST)