Community Central talk:Wikia tour/Create a new tour stop

Directions easy to follow
These directions were really easy to follow. I love the idea! I can't wait to see the others join in. -- JamesTeterenko 04:02, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Adding to Meatball Wiki?
I would like to add this wikicities tour bus stop system to the main hub at meatball wiki. this would mean that there would need to be a pointer to meatball:tourbusstop at an appropriate place. do folks think this would be an ok idea? I really love your system! Best, [MarkDilley]
 * It makes sense to put Wikia on one or more of the Meatball Wiki tours. I also made this suggestion at the Community Portal. --JWSchmidt 14:59, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Am I right in thinking that any individual Wikia can be added to the meatball tour(s) independently? Robin Patterson 06:24, 7 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * In theory they can, but when I checked (several months ago) the instructions at Meatball wiki indicated that only large established wikis should be linked to the tours that are coordinated by Meatball wiki. The first thing that should be done is to link a tour from Meatball wiki to TourBusStop. --JWSchmidt 12:49, 7 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Getting more Wikia on this tour
I've been working through the project page and the copy on "Genealogy" today. A few thoughts come to mind (and there may be more before I finish): Robin Patterson 06:24, 7 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) One's sandpit is perhaps not the best place to put one's copy on, because the full process may take a while and you don't want blunderers fiddling with it; I've put my copy on a matching-name page Genealogy:Genealogy:Wikia_tour/Create_a_new_tour_stop, while Protoscience has used the article namespace http://protoscience.wikicities.com/wiki/Wikia_Tour
 * 2) In places the project page could be more helpful, eg
 * 3) saying exactly what you replace the scratchpad thing with (rather than just "to point at the Central Wikia")
 * 4) saying you can replace ALL of the intro paras with your own description (as some of ours have done but some have not, possibly through not realising it was OK to replace all)
 * 5) The Wikia_tour/List_of_wikis_in_this_tour (13?) seems to be longer than the actual tour (about 6?); it seems White Wolf failed to link on (because the "next" link from http://protoscience.wikicities.com/wiki/Protoscience:Wikia_Tour goes back to Central) (and later additions haven't realised the chain is incomplete), so the instructions for getting that right need to be emphasised.
 * 6) I looked at the meatball page; preferable to concentrate on getting all active Wikia on a WC list first? - maybe have more than one Wikia tour (so that not all 500 were on a single tour!)?, divided by subject-matter or something; maybe the list could be divided by subject-matter too; or maybe I haven't understood enough yet...
 * There is always the danger that when a new wikicity is added to the wikicities tour, some of the tour links will not be updated. In the case of WhiteWolf, the local Protocience wikicity tour end page was linked to the next wikicity in the tour, but the link on the local Protocience wikicity tour starting page was never updated. I fixed that now. --JWSchmidt 12:46, 7 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * "more than one Wikia tour"....I agree that there could be a network of bus lines organized according to categories of wikicities with related subject matter. At the Protoscience bus stop, I played around with the idea of a bus line for science-related wikicities. --JWSchmidt 12:58, 7 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * Hey, JWS, I think that's one excellent approach! I've just seen that bus stop - full-blown transport terminal in the making!! Every Wikia could offer its own bus stop as a way of inviting tourists to concentrate on a particular circuit or two of similar theme. Robin Patterson 11:18, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * This reminds me of Webring. Definitely similar ideas. Robin Patterson 11:18, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * Anyway, I'm halfway through the full baker's dozen, since adding Genealogy as a fully-working tour. 'Bye for now - tie a yellow ribbon somewhere if you want me to get off... Robin Patterson 11:18, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Fixed another link in the chain. The whole thing works as it should. Disappointing to see that only 24 people had looked at one of the tour pages that I noticed.

Problems in operation
I greatly enlarged one of my pages because it had been included in the Genealogy tour. Now the link to that page points to the old version instead of the much bigger version. See how you get on clicking the "Continue..." link here: http://genealogy.wikicities.com/wiki/Genealogy:Wikia_tour/Main_Page

Robin Patterson 12:36, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, John WS, for explaining (on my talk page over there) that it's a cache problem. Page is fully expanded now.

NEXT problem - are there any tricks with including other namespaces as tour pages? I've tried to include a category with only partial success: there's a blank where it should say the page name in the sentence "The content below is from on this wiki", and no subcategories or articles show.

This is the bulk of my intended page:
 * {{wikicities:Wikia tour|namespace=Category|page=Renner Surname|next=James Blackman (1754-1842)|commentary=Here is a category showing the subcategory structure and a list of individuals who have that surname.....

Any ideas?

Robin Patterson 13:12, 9 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm just guessing here, since I do not know the MediaWiki code conventions. It seems like any template that contains a statement of this type: 

{{ Page Name }}  will access the stored contents of the page called "Page Name" and display that as part of what is displayed on a page using a template that contains " {{ Page Name }} ". Everytime a page for a category is called, say by: Category:Category Name  the software seems to go into the database for the wiki and collect the latest information about what the existing subcategories are and what articles are in the category and then displays that information along with what ever is actually placed on the category page through user edits. If a category page is called by a template using {{ Category:Category Name }}  only what has been placed on the category page through user edits is displayed (ya, I tried it, too). This may be a bug in the routine by which templates evaluate {{ Category:Category Name }}. It also may be a "feature" if the developers found that people were making scripts that would make lots of calls to {{ Category:Category Name }} and bog down the system with all of the required database access needed to render category pages. --JWSchmidt 21:38, 9 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Copy template to individual wikis
I had to copy over the template Template:Wikia tour to the LOTR wiki itself in order for the tour to work, rather than using the interwiki link. I have noticed that it does not seem to be working on the other wikicities so maybe this is what has to be done. Gimli 05:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * We were hoping that the upgrade would fix this, but it hasn't. So I've made sure the whole tour is working with local copies of the template and changed the instructions to reflect that.  Hopefully it will  get the tour growing again -- sannse (talk) 15:09, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Sannse. Anyone trying to fix an earlier model should note the above. I'm just now adapting the long-ago-started-under-old-regime tour of "Cities". Robin Patterson 01:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)