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I once made a list of every holy day for every deity, if anyone needs a list? Some do fall on the same same days, especially the five holidays and the solstices and equinoxes, so they would get crowded.
Thoughts:
Present tense, since it is tied to the current day.
I'd recommend using the ordinal numbers, that is, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, ..., 12th, etc. That's just how we normally say and read dates ("12th day of January", "January the 12th"). So that would be either "12th of Hammer" or "Hammer 12th". That also helps clarify that we're dealing with a month to new readers ("Twelve hammers?"). Or that might too hard to code.
Being a US franchise and we're using US English, I'd recommend using the standard US date style, month followed by day. So, Hammer 12th?
Maybe it's just me, but a Realms date just isn't incomplete without the year: the Year of X, or such-and-such DR. Could these be worked in? We'd need to stay separated from the time-line, so it couldn't be tied to the current setting date (1479 or so), so maybe a random year? Perhaps with a link to the year in question? Never mind, that might be too complicated and confusing.
Instead, how about the common name for the month? Say "12th Hammer, Deepwinter" or "21st Alturiak, the Claw of Winter". Just to get a bit more fluff in there.
Regarding the presentation of the date, I suggest losing the second, outer box around it to save space and avoid the clutter. I'll fiddle with that. Ah, I see, it should contain the holy day, but it looks empty without one.
Holy days might be generalised to a range of local customs, such as the Bone Dance (itself holy) or The Arming in the Vast.
Present tense it is.
I looked for calendar info in various sources and the 4th edition Forgotten Realms Player's Guide says on page 155 that "days of the month are noted as numbers followed by the month name". This doesn't mean we have to follow the convention, however. I might see if I can make a formatting template that would translate the date into fluffier presentation styles, including the common names for the months. I also would like a special date calendar page that shows all the items in one place, so I'm working on that.
Perhaps we could add another box on the front page that transcludes a random Years page, but I would keep it separate from the "current date" box to avoid confusion.
We can try it without the second box and see how it looks. Tomorrow (13 Hammer) there will be a holy day entry btw.
Any special date can be put in the {{Holy days}} template. I just called it holy days because it was a short name that was easily understood. I'll add the Bone Dance and the Arming unless you beat me to it.
Date format: Grand History follows a different format, number followed by month: Hammer 13, Kythorn 25. I can't recall many other day/month dates in Realms sources. But if the FRPG wants to be so specific about it, we might as well follow suit.
I played around with the location and presentation of the date information at User:BadCatMan/Main Page. I simply put it in the format of the other content boxes, for symmetry. That makes it easily and neatly expandable with additional information: holy days and celebrations, a random year, maybe a line for "On this day in...". What do you think?
We'd need to finish de-plagiarising the Years pages before we advertise them on the Main Page however.
I'm at GMT +8 myself, so the date and feature article change-overs come relatively late. I see 13 Hammer and the Communion of Laughter now however.
I would like to put together a full calendar of all the days, but there is a limit of 100 loop iterations per page (including any transclusions) so for now I've had to break it up into four different pages with roughly three months in each. I asked the Wiki Community Help guys and they said performance issues prevent them from allowing any more than 100 iterations of a loop on a single page.
- User:Moviesign/Cal1 — Hammer, Alturiak, Ches
- User:Moviesign/Cal2 — Tarsakh, Mirtul, Kythorn
- User:Moviesign/Cal3 — Flamerule, Eleasias, Eleint
- User:Moviesign/Cal4 — Marpenoth, Uktar, Nightal
Looks like I'm going to have to change the spelling of Eleasis also. Please look these over and make suggestions on the content, or you can change it yourself by editing {{Holy days}} if you wish. Another solution they suggested was making each day a separate page and including them all into one page with a Dynamic Page List. I'm going to check that out also because it looks like we can do lots of nifty stuff with it.
Unless anyone has any objection, I'm going to put the FR date in it's own fancy box at the top of the left-hand column on the Main Page.
Woops, I just remembered I was going to add the colloquial names of the months. Back to the drawing board.
Check out the calendar links above and add more factoids to the {{Holy days}} template if you have them. If you use a source that is not already listed in documentation, please add yours to the list.
I'm still a little uncomfortable with the format however. Every section heading just gives a brief description of what follows and shouldn't change ("Featured article", "Did you know..."). But your date box presents information in the heading, and this can get very long and unbalancing against the other headings. I've tried an alternative at User:BadCatMan/Main Page. I think it's a bit neater. Once we starting adding in local festivals and historical information, we should get some information every day, so a small or empty box won't be a problem.
If we start adding dates from history then the {{Holy days}} template is going to get unwieldy. It's already the 12th largest file on the wiki, beating out Menzoberranzan! I think breaking it up into separate files, one for each day, is going to be the best option (much as I hate to admit it). I propose changing {{Holy days}} to {{On this day}} which will test for the existence of the date page and if found, print out "On this day:" and the factoids from the file. The category system can be used to organize the files as well as allow DPL to generate a full calendar as Eli inquired about. (DPL can include up to 500 files which is more than enough. There is no elegant way to get around the 100 iteration limit.) In addition, the individual files could contain a References section surrounded by <noinclude> tags so each factoid could be referenced—something that sorta bugged me as I populated the Holy days template (hmmm...I'd better test that). What do you think, sirs?
First is this page that demonstrates the aggregation of the individual date pages and shows that the presentation is just like the {{Holy days}} template (to be superseded by {{On this day}}) with the added date headings, which are links to the pages showing the citations. Here they are for quick reference: Hammer 1, 13, 15, 22, and 30. And finally, a category to organize them and provide the sort order, otherwise Hammer 2 comes after Hammer 15 and before Hammer 22.
Please take a look and tell me if you think it's worth doing and any suggestions to make it better.
Yeah, making 366 "Holy day"/"On this day" templates would ultimately be easier and quicker, I guess. I can generate a list of links to fill out using a mathematics program (Mathematica). We can publish a page with only a single character, which is fairly quick. We can get a few editors on it to make it go quicker. A bot can then populate them with generic code and text. Information unique to each day would have to be copy-pasted manually, of course, but saving and moving to the next page can be done with only one click in AutoWikiBrowser (the bot managing program).
I don't think we need references on the Main Page, just to avoid clutter. We haven't had them on Featured Articles or Did You Know? and I can't think of a wiki that does. Ideally, one should just click of the primary link and find the reference there. Ah, do you mean to have references appear only on the individual day pages? That's okay then.
I can't follow the code these days, but those day pages look fine and easy enough.
Single character: I meant, someone can press a single key then hit publish, just to put a dummy blank page in the system. Then the bot can come along, remove the dot, and put in categories and code. It would only be a temporary measure on the road to creating all the pages.
If you know what name format you want to use for them (Hammer 1 or 1 Hammer or...?), I can begin work on generating them, while I have the time and the ideas how.
Or would you rather have them as fully fledged articles in the main namespace, with References and such? Judicious use of the noinclude tag could make the Midwinter article, say, serve dual purposes as an article about Midwinter and as a list of events on that day. Though regular historical events that occurred on one Midwinter would be weird.
Otherwise, if Midwinter (date) would work, that should be fine.
It's weird coming to FRW and having it tell its the Claw of Winter when here it's the height of summer.
Would you like me to add an option to the {{Format FR date}} template that flips the date by 6 months so you can make your own southern hemisphere date tool? :)
After that, it's easy to click each link, open a bunch of tabs in a browser, then hit a key and publish in each one. A couple of minutes work per month. If every regular editor takes a month or two or three, we can get it down quite quickly. Or we can leave them and create them as needed, but it's easier to run AutoWikiBrowser (the bot program) through a full list and do the work all at once.
Next, I used AutoWikiBrowser to remove the placeholder period and paste in your noincluded Reference section and category. The only problem is updating the category sort-key for month and day; it's easier to do it month by month, and correct the first nine days by hand while in AWB. Days after the ninth don't need the sort-key anyway. Again, a couple of minutes to do that.
Then I copied in the date information you prepared. So, Hammer 1 is identical to User:Moviesign/Hammer 1.
How does it look to you? Is the format correct and useful? Anything more I should add?
Thanks, but I think we Antipodeans will get by. :) There's always the phases of the moon, if you want to get really busy. ;)
<noinclude>This page is for listing calendar events and it transcluded by other pages. Please observe the placement of "noinclude" tags when editing this page.</noinclude>
DPL might require that each category have its sortkey set, I don't know for sure yet. Hopefully not.
Yes, that's certainly doable.
What is "DPL"?
How would the sort-key need to be set? I'm trying to think of a semi-automatic way of working these out that isn't more work than it saves.
PS: I should note I forgot to update the edit summary on those pages, using my Years work instead.
Ah, how should we spell "Eleasis" or "Eleasias"? Both are used in the sourcebooks, I went with FRCS 3e for "Eleasis".
I went with Eleasis and made a redirect for the other one.
Thanks for the help with the boilerplate! And thank you DW :)
I will also add a "the" feature to the {{Format FR date}} template so it will optionally add "the" in front of the date. The way the Main Page is now, it will say "the Deadwinter Day" when printing out the common name of Midwinter. I should be able to fix that, unless there is a case I haven't considered yet.
I've decided to use the sortkey of the category for the day-of-the-year number (from 1 to 366). It's the easiest way to make sure a calendar page, or any range of dates, comes out in the proper order. I've done the first two months so far. Also, pages with actual factoids in them, and not just boilerplate, will need a section heading entitled "On This Day" in order for the {{On this day}} template to pick it up. Do not put this heading in an otherwise empty page.
I've been manufacturing blank day pages, a month or two here and there.
What format do you want "On This Day" to be in? Would "==On this day...==" be fine?
Currently, the template looks for an equals sign, followed by any amount of white space, followed by "on this day" (case insensitive), followed by any amount of white space, followed by an equals sign. I didn't put an ellipsis in there because none of the factoids begin with an ellipsis, but I can change the regexp to look for three dots if you'd like. Edit: Oh, and don't put the heading on pages with no content, just the ones with at least one factoid. Thanks!
I also included the notice, but it came out oddly on standard article pages, such as Midwinter and Greengrass. If these are to be merged into standard articles, then maybe we should indent and italicise them on a separate line? I'll update that next chance I get.
Is zero white space fine? I don't bother putting spaces in myself. I'll also have the bot update next time, before moving on with the rest of the year.
For these, I run the bot semi-manually, or semi-automatically, since the format is a bit variable and you've already done the holy day pages. I've been updating the sortkeys by hand.
For the notice, I was thinking maybe we should replace it with a template like {{nofootnotes}} or {{FA}}. That way it is set off by a box and we could change the wording in just one place rather than 366. A small graphic of a calendar would be cool. The template could even take the day-of-the-year as an argument and generate the category for the page. I should have thought of it sooner. How's that sound? Edit: I made a quick example. See Hammer 1.
Zero white space is fine. Both ==On This Day== and == On This Day == should work.
{{datepage|032}} (The leading zero is important). The template automatically adds the category, so all hand-placed Category:Calendar date category may be deleted.
Here are the ranges for the months, if you need them:
- Hammer 001 – 030 (already done)
- Midwinter 031
- Alturiak 032 – 061
- Ches 062 – 091
- Tarsakh 092 – 121
- Greengrass 122
- Mirtul 123 – 152
- Kythorn 153 – 182
- Flamerule 183 – 212
- Midsummer 213
- Shieldmeet 214
- Eleasis 215 – 244
- Eleint 245 – 274
- Highharvestide 275
- Marpenoth 276 – 305
- Uktar 306 – 335
- Feast of the Moon 336
- Nightal 337 – 366
Thank you in advance, anyone who pitches in :)
Changing "Calendar date" to "Calendar dates" is no problem with the bot.
BTW, I posted a message on the Wikia forum here about the problem I'm having with excluding the references from the calendar page. We might see some unknown Users taking a poke at some of these pages if they decide to look into the problem.
Comparing against my list...
How did you pick the "four seasonal festivals" for Loviatar's Rite of Pain and Purity? I'd assumed Midwinter, Greengrass, Midsummer, and Higharvestide.
Talos: I had assumed Calling Down the Thunder occurred every festival, but looking again, it appears to be one undated festival.
Sseth: I had assumed the Sagacious Slumber for Midwinter, but this seems to be rather less well-defined. Similar with Sheela Peryroyl.
Segojan Earthcaller: DD says "the first day of each new season", so I took this to be Ches 1, Kythorn 1, Eleint 1, Nightal 1, but you went for the equinoxes and solstices. I think you may be right here.
The Feast of the Moon should appear after Uktar. Trying again:
- Uktar 306 – 335
- Feast of the Moon 336
- Nightal 337 – 366
Okay, I've fixed it now.
But you've got everything I have, plus those I missed and got wrong. :)
I think you are right about the "four seasonal festivals"; they take place in the middle of the seasons, roughly, and have names. The equinoxes and solstices are traditionally the start of the seasons in our world, but that doesn't preclude the author stating it incorrectly. I would go with that until a newer source contradicts. (edit: Part of the confusion arises from page 77 of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3rd edition where it states Greengrass is "the official beginning of spring", which is clearly not the case when you look at the diagram on the same page—Greengrass is right in the middle of the Spring quadrant. Same thing on page 155 of the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide. I'm going to change the Loviatar entries to the festivals you listed above. Feast of the Moon is clearly not about autumn.)
How do you want to style the specific events from the last pages of The Grand History of the Realms? Something like "In 1365 DR, blah blah"? I think it reads well when it shows up under the heading "On this day:". Are those Years pages still in need of a rewrite?
The Years pages certainly still need checking, and almost all rewriting, from 260 DR to the present. That will get harder in the campaign years after 1356 DR as so much more happens in them. The years 1372 DR to 1375 have daily events in GHotR that could really fill out the On This Day entries. Those from other years will need more searching. But yes, "In 1365 DR, blah blah..." would be the best way of putting it.
<noinclude> tags on our date pages—some fancy applications of regular expressions did the trick. I have rewritten the User:Moviesign/Template:On this day template and my own User:Moviesign/Calendar3 to work with pages that do not use <noinclude>s. Unfortunately, this means going through all the date pages again, removing all the noinclude tags and inserting the ==On this day== on any page that doesn't have it (including the "empty" pages). Is this acceptable? We would have some empty pages with a heading on them and nothing else for content except the ==References== section—I would reword the {{datepage}} template appropriately. I'm sorry to bother the bots again, but this is a much cleaner approach to the date pages. I can insert the "On this day" heading if that makes it easier. Please let me know.
Knocking out the noinclude tags is certainly possible: just find and delete <noinclude></noinclude>, <noinclude>, and </noinclude>. That would leave some spaces to clean up, however. I can also add ==On This Day== to any page that doesn't have it, but placement may be a bit trickier. I'll see what I can do after this.
I have to do them separately, but both are easy to do with the bot. I can even run it on automatic, as I am now. Fortunately, the wiki hides extra spaces when it shows the page, so they're a non-issue as well.
Finally botting like I should. :)
Greengrass[]
Also, the list of events got rather long, shifting down the features replacing the first view of the main page with a wall of text. Would it be worthwhile introducing, say, an AM/PM switch on busy days like this?
As for the wall of text, I might be able to limit how much it puts out and put a "More..." link for people to follow.
Do you want an "archive" page for the On This Day feature? User:Moviesign/Calendar could be a candidate. If you want it without references, see User:Moviesign/Calendar3.