All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XII

[Bob Schroeck]

Heads up, people. User Ilya Rysenkov just reinserted the changes to Stalin's page that Rob rolled back a couple days ago. I've removed them again and locked the page for the moment.

[robkelk]

Is anybody else not seeing any images on ATT?

(The images are showing just fine on the freebie wiki.)

[Bob Schroeck]

No, I'm seeing images just fine.

[robkelk]

Found the problem - Privacy Badger had completely blocked "static.miraheze.org" as a possible tracker. Manually changing that setting to "no cookies" brought back the images.

I've sent an error report to EFF.

[Bob Schroeck]

Fun with 503s again... It's been happening all day for me.

[Black Aeronaut]

Say, guys?  Just had a weird thought.  Does Mediawiki support tagging?

I mean, having categories is great and all, but I think tags would work even better if someone wanted to narrow down a search by virtue of using more than one tag - as opposed to filtering through categories until you find the right trope.  Plus we can really cut down on things and have actual set categories with a larger tag database.

Plus, we can make it so that tags can be made by anyone just by adding a tag (though a note to check the existing tag database first would be great so we don't wind up with various versions of the same thing just with slightly different spellings and punctuations).

Whereas categories...  As I mentioned,we can really clean house in that regard and just have a handful of categories, eg: relationships; food; sex; places; things; etc.

Even better?  Make it so you can search for specific tags in a single category.

Whatcha guys think?

[robkelk]

I know we can use DynamicPageList to search on up to four categories at a time, but DPL doesn't allow for dynamic searches - you have to write the search. And we really need to clean up the categories, yes. We need to clean up so many different things...

As for tags... I don't see an extension for them on Miraheze's pre-approved list. That doesn't mean we can't do it, just that we'd need to find a way to do it.

[Bob Schroeck]

Rob, you've been using DPL for a while now. I just tried my hand at it, reading the detailed help file I found online -- but it doesn't look like it can do what I need. Can you confirm -- there's no way to retrieve a page based on how many links it has to it?

Thanks.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, and as regards tagging... I remember, about ten years or so ago, TVT tried implementing tagging, complete with a tag cloud in the margin. It didn't seem to work that well. Not technically; people just didn't use it. <shrug> Maybe things will be different with us, but we'd need users to get really into setting the tags.

[Labster]

Mediawiki does support tagging.  Just add [[Category:tag word]] to the bottom of the page!  Super easy, works out of the box.  Someone would need to convince me that tags and categories are actually different concepts.  Warning: a search for "tags categories -wordpress" returned mostly porn results.

There is an extension called Multi-Category Search or some such, but it's pretty crufty, and having looked at it a little bit, I've never felt confident enough to approve it.  DPL does everything we need, except to provide a good UI so that normal people can use it.

[Black Aeronaut]

EDIT: Ninja'd!

The way I've seen it implemented on other website is as a search system. Instead of a tag cloud, you start typing in a search bar and a Google-like autocomplete populates in a drop-box below. Additionally, you could look through an actual listing of tags. On websites where the tag system is more directly managed these usually double as a glossary for said tags.

Additionally, in these implementations, the tags specific to that page show up near the top, so a troper doing research knows right off whether this is the trope they're looking for, or another troper doing a readthrough notices that a tag is either needed or superfluous.

I'll be honest. The best implementation for this system that I've seen thus far is a hentai manga site called tsumino.com. Their advanced search lets you not only choose tags to include in a search, but also tags to reject. Perhaps they might be willing to share the code they use for that system?

[robkelk]

Rob, you've been using DPL for a while now.  I just tried my hand at it, reading the detailed help file I found online -- but it doesn't look like it can do what I need.  Can you confirm -- there's no way to retrieve a page based on how many links it has to it?

Thanks.

I'm not aware of any way to make DPL look for popular pages, no. (And I can't access the docs from work.)

[Black Aeronaut]

Someone would need to convince me that tags and categories are actually different concepts.

A tagging system is more fluid and more granular.  Categories are meant to be broad.

Lessee, another way of looking at it...

In a library, Categories are more like how a dewey decimal system is set up; with specific number ranges representing specific topics.  However, tags are more like using a keyword search which only peripherally involves the the dewey decimal topic.

For example, you can look up the topic 'railroads' and pull up a vast quantity of information.  But you want something a little more specific such as rail line maps, so you use 'maps' as a keyword.  Or perhaps you're after locomotives of a specific era, so you use a year, say 1955, along with 'locomotives'.

[SelfCloak]

Categories on wiki can also work as tags.

To find - let's say - the 1960 film The Time Machine on ATT without using the search bar, go to the category page "Film". It'll show sub-categories like "Films of the 1960s" (in "Films by decade"), "Science Fiction Films" (in "Film Genres") and "Films Based on Novels" (in "Films Based on Works").

[Labster]

OK, I see what you want. You want a classification system called tags, and another classification system called categories, and an incompatible interface between the two. Sounds like a normal user request to me.

[Labster]

I mentioned in the other thread that I didn't have to quit my job, but explanation thereof is most relevant in this thread.  My work added a new nondisclosure agreement for employees, which had an interesting clause.  Basically, upon termination of employment, they'd be allowed to look at any digital data I possess to ensure I didn't steal anything.  Now, because I'm lazy af, I'm technically the owner of Miraheze at this point, which means that I would be agreeing to grant access to my former-to-be employer to personally identifying information stored in the European Union, which would violate the GDPR and the Miraheze privacy policy but still be legal under U.S. law anyway.  And then, because I have voter registration data, that would also be disclosed.  If it was disclosed to a noncitizen it would be illegal, but otherwise it might be legal, but I would be required to report it to the California Secretary of State as a data breach anyway, and then the party and the employer and I could possibly be liable for fines.  So at this point the potential fines are starting to look larger than my salary, so I was worried I'd have to quit now for economic reasons.

So uh, anyway, I don't have to quit because I got them to strike that clause for me.  It's just like, the assumption that the only confidential data that you could hold must belong to the company.  Like seriously, what if I was married to a journalist?

[robkelk]

I think we have a failure to communicate regarding tags.

The wiki already has tags. They have very little to do with the wiki content; instead, they're about how the wiki is used: "Mobile edit", "Made through Tor", "Blanking" (removing all content from a page), "wikilove", and so on. (And I have no idea how to make changes to that list.)

I suspect this isn't what BlackAeronaut wants.

[robkelk]

Opinions, please...

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm looking for a trope, but have had no luck finding it: the thing where someone does something awesome or impressive or cool, and someone with them turns to them and says, "Marry me."

I thought we had this, but maybe I'm misremembering?

EDIT: And it turns out Rob just edited the trope in question, Engaging Conversation, two days ago, so I found it while doing my usual troll through the Recent Changes.

[robkelk]

I was about to say "oh, I just edited that page..."

[Black Aeronaut]

Categories on wiki can also work as tags.

To find - let's say - the 1960 film The Time Machine on ATT without using the search bar, go to the category page "Film". It'll show sub-categories like "Films of the 1960s" (in "Films by decade"), "Science Fiction Films" (in "Film Genres") and "Films Based on Novels" (in "Films Based on Works").

Argh.  It's close.  But what I'm after is the ability to generate a sort of 'cross referencing' search where you can look for specific tropes based on a content tag within a set category.

For example, yes, you know you're after a 1960s film, but you're after a specific trope that in employed in that film.  And in fine human fashion, your brain is having a memetic recall failure on both the trope and the name of the film.

But I guess the current category system could work if you could cross-reference them.

[robkelk]

DPL can do that, as long as you restrict yourself to four categories or less.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, another "do we have this?" question.

Several people all take part in some critical action by taking hold of a weapon or object that is key to the action.

Examples:

• The spirits of the Sailor Senshi all joining Usagi in casting through the Moon Wand at the end of season one of Sailor Moon
  
• Harry and Ron joining Hermione in driving the basilisk fang through Riddle's diary in The Arithmancer
  
• Skuld, Rin-rin and Kaolla Su throwing the Big Switch together in this "Girls, Girls, Girls" excerpt
  

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

[Black Aeronaut]

Something akin to the cavalry has arrived?

EDIT: Or perhaps this?
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/I_Got_You_Covered

[Norgarth]

Okay, another "do we have this?" question.

Several people all take part in some critical action by taking hold of a weapon or object that is key to the action.

Examples:

• The spirits of the Sailor Senshi all joining Usagi in casting through the Moon Wand at the end of season one of Sailor Moon
  
• Harry and Ron joining Hermione in driving the basilisk fang through Riddle's diary in The Arithmancer
  
• Skuld, Rin-rin and Kaolla Su throwing the Big Switch together in this "Girls, Girls, Girls" excerpt
  

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

I'd refer to that as something like "All together now" or "A little help from my friends", but my mental shorthand rarely matches the common Trope titles.