User Tools

Site Tools


start

Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

Link to this comparison view

Both sides previous revision Previous revision
Next revision
Previous revision
start [2020/04/26 21:55]
dan [Organizing with Namespaces]
start [2021/05/12 13:56] (current)
Line 1: Line 1:
 +====== Purpose of this wiki ======
  
 +This wiki will let us collaborate on and track our world-building for [[lore:Big Sky]].
 +
 +I think this will work better over time, as things get more complicated, than having a bunch of details in a PowerPoint document in Google Drive, for example.
 +
 +The concept behind a wiki is linking, not search (in that way it's a bit of a throwback to the early days of the web!) What this means in practice is, //no orphaned pages//; you can't just create a new page, because at the moment of creation, nothing else would link to it. Instead, the way you create a page is by linking to it:
 +
 +[[characters:Mitch Freeman]]
 +
 +This link will be **red** until you actually create the page. This is a nice convention, both because it prevents pages from being "lost" (orphaned), which would make it hard for us to know whether we've documented something or not, and because it makes it obvious when you need to go fill something in.
 +
 +That being the case, I suggest that we capture ideas that aren't fleshed out yet by linking to pages for them, but leaving those pages un-created until we actually have something to say about the topic.
 +
 +==== Organizing with Namespaces ====
 +
 +If you look at the source of this page, you'll notice that the link to Mitch Freeman's page prefixes the page name with "characters:". This creates a **namespace**, basically a sub-topic of the wiki that we can use for organization. (When you go to the page, you can see the namespace gets nicely represented in the URL, i.e. ''/characters/mitch_freeman/'')
 +
 +You can nest namespaces as well, so, for example: [[tech:vehicles:Baserunner]]—since a sci-fi story like this is probably going to contain a **lot** of technology, we can create a subgroup for articles about vehicles.
 +
 +For things that provide backstory, I'm adopting the "Lore" namespace from my favourite secondary-world wiki, [[https://uesp.net|The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages]]. So [[lore:Big Sky]] would be for background on the world of "Big Sky", whereas [[locations:Big Sky]] would describe the actual planetary body, itself.
 +
 +(This may prove to be overkill, but let's try it and see. The idea behind the "Lore" namespace in UESP is that Lore articles describe something, like an artifact sword, in terms that are applicable across all Elder Scrolls games, whereas e.g. ''Skyrim:Mehrunes' Razor'' is an article describing specifically the location, properties, and quest associated with that artifact in the game Skyrim.
 +
 +Having said that... I'm not convinced this is a good idea for us. I'm just thinking of ways to give a namespace to articles that are about the backstory, as opposed to about a //noun//—a person, place, or thing... Happy to hear other ideas.)
 +
 +I suggest a "factions" namespace for groups of people, e.g. [[factions:The Family]] (we should probably have an actual **name** for the Family, but since they're such a central faction, and since their familial ties are a crucial theme of the story, referring to them as "The Family" seems appropriate.)
start.txt · Last modified: 2021/05/12 13:56 (external edit)