EG Redesign - Ideas and Suggestions?

[Drashner1]

Let's see here...replying to multiple posts at once to save space...

1) Hi Trond! Thanks for joining in - it's very helpful having the creator of the website on hand to discuss this stuff.

2) Re the pain points/desired enhancements in the existing website - addressing this to all the folks here (or who can come here) that have raised issues leading to this thread - it sounds like it would be helpful to compile a list of these so we can provide Trond a concise description of the 'problems we are wanting to solve'. It might work better to discuss/compile that in the Discord and/or via forum DM to myself/other editors and admins and then bring the finished product here so it isn't spread across multiple posts in this thread. Perhaps we could agree on a due date for it to be posted here in that case?

3) Re the way the timeline works in the EG - The 30-some primary timeline pages I mentioned above are just EG topic pages that contain long lists of manually entered dates/events. The scrollable timeline (IIRC) is a self-contained software package/construct that we found and acquired some years ago and that Trond set up for us, including creating an editor interface section in our existing Content Management System. Unfortunately, after the initial load up we haven't maintained it as well as we should.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[1of3]

Re: Tinelines, that seems to be a typical fate of separately curated documents. Someone has to separately curate them. An alternative is to allow to create a hint from within articles and complie the timeline configuration in an automatic manner.

E.g. scan for <a href=link_to_timeline#my_event_description>YYYY AT</a> and additionally grab the type of entry from the articles' category.

[xorgnz]

Yeah, it's preferable to generate the timeline from the article records I actually thought it was done that way, but it's long enough ago that apparently I dreamed that. Instead, it's a separately editable list of items that link articles to the timeline with the addition of extra timeline specific information like ranges, a cutdown description to fit in the timeline, some style commands (this roughly corresponds to the article's category). Being separate from the list of articles, though, means that we can have things on the time line that aren't full articles, such as structuring elements.

I would probably want to do it by moving all of the relevant metadata into the article records, and establishing some conventions on how we use existing fields. Articles already have short descriptions that could take the place of the description, the dates and stuff are easy extra fields, and the category could be generated automatically. You'd still need some other way of handling structuring elements, but while the current system supports them, I don't think they're really used, so they could be set aside for now.

The other problem with the existing timeline is that it was built using what is now a very old set of Javascript librarys, and could definitely be improved using more recent (JS graphics libraries have come a long, long way since then).

[xorgnz]

As examples of wikis done pretty well, StrategyWiki (https://strategywiki.org/) and TVTropes (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M...estFailure) are good examples of very large wikis that have received a lot of customization and look really good. One runs on MediaWiki, the other PMwiki. My general concerns about wikis still stand, but these are good examples of large systems that have been heavily tailored for a particular purpose and which look pretty nice.

[ProxCenBound]

Thanks for the replies, lots to consider.

Minor thing, here is a typo that the rest of us could not figure out how to fix on the timeline page; you are our only hope for this one : https://www.orionsarm.com/forum/showthre...4#pid79484

I'll probably comment more on CMS improvements later.

[Drashner1]

Just to make sure we are all on the same sheet of music on this -

Right now OA has the History pages (the 30 some topic pages mentioned) and the scrollable timeline (which is where I assume the Java script stuff comes in) - Would we want to have 'one History/timeline page to rule them all' or continue with the current set up?

On a possibly related note - I notice that in the CMS both the Topic and Article pages have a field for 'Tags/Keywords' - which I don't think we really use much and whose function I'm not clear on. Firstly, what does this field actually do/what is it intended to do? Secondly, might it be possible to use this field in some fashion to address some of the issues that have been raised, whether in this thread or in earlier discussions around CMS functionality?

Todd

[1of3]

Would we want to have 'one History/timeline page to rule them all' or continue with the current set up?

The cleanest solution is likely to create an intermediate dataformat that can be queried. 

Give me culture events from the second federation era as a bullet list.
Give me all technology events as a scrollable timeline.

It's also likely the largest deviation from the current state, so might not be the most practical.

[Drashner1]

So - to keep things moving here...

2) Re the pain points/desired enhancements in the existing website - addressing this to all the folks here (or who can come here) that have raised issues leading to this thread - it sounds like it would be helpful to compile a list of these so we can provide Trond a concise description of the 'problems we are wanting to solve'. It might work better to discuss/compile that in the Discord and/or via forum DM to myself/other editors and admins and then bring the finished product here so it isn't spread across multiple posts in this thread. Perhaps we could agree on a due date for it to be posted here in that case?

So far, I've had a couple people contact me via DM with lists of 'problems we are wanting to solve' and no one has raised an objection here. I did get a question about whether I preferred Discord or forum DM to which I replied that I like the forum, but realize a lot of people like discord and am fine if they want to use that for the 'discussion leading to list' part of things. At the end of the day, I just want lists of suggestions delivered to myself or other staff (Editors or Admins) so we can create an organized list on this thread without cluttering it up with a lot of discussion posts that work toward the lists.

With that in mind - two things:

a) Does anyone have any objections or better ideas to the suggested process above? If so, please speak up.

b) Assuming no one has objections and with an eye to keeping this ball rolling, I'm going to propose that we set a deadline of July 31st for people to compile and submit suggestions with the goal of posting a combined list by 8/7. If anyone has a problem with that, please speak up. Silence will be assumed to = assent.

Thanks!

Todd

[1of3]

a) Does anyone have any objections or better ideas to the suggested process above? If so, please speak up.

I would only suggest to make a notification on the discord as to the process, and maybe extend to 4 weeks from when that notification is given.

[Drashner1]

a) Does anyone have any objections or better ideas to the suggested process above? If so, please speak up.

I would only suggest to make a notification on the discord as to the process, and maybe extend to 4 weeks from when that notification is given.

I have no problem with either of these things, but will give it until tomorrow morning my time (Eastern Standard Timezone in the US) for anyone to add anything else or raise objections before I actually post the announcement.

Thanks!

Todd