Forum:Add calculator namespace

I propose the creation of a "Calculator" namespace that would contain individual pages for each interactive tool and calculator that has been made on the wiki (a list of which can be found here). A contents page similar to Help:Contents would act as the main page of the namespace.

Certain calculators may need to be modified to work on a single page, currently the only calculator that would need to be modified is the block distribution graphs. Some way to search for specific blocks would need to be added perhaps.

Being able to quickly link to or find calculators by simply searching for them would majorly increase their ease of use, which is important if we are to push for their usage. Currently, calculators are implemented on pages where they would be relevant. This makes sense, but means they are all shoved half way down sometimes very extensive pages, so you have to first remember which page the calculator is on and then scroll down to section the calculator has been placed. Also, you could bookmark specific calculators for later use if they all had their own pages.

I believe a namespace would work best as it is simple and I don't believe individual calculator pages would fit neatly anywhere else. We could use subpages like we do for tutorials, but I'd say calculators deviate far more from what is suitable in the mainspace compared to tutorials, which are just mildly opinionated/recommending articles on the game. If you support individual pages for calculators but don't support using a namespace, please try and provide another idea.

I'd also like to note that RuneScape Wiki uses a calculator namespace, and while I don't say that as some incredibly compelling argument, I do think it's important to note since we took the entire calculator idea from them in the first place.

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 Strong support as proposer. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
19:01, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Strong Oppose There's no sense in making namespaces for few dozen of calculators. Wikipedia is a great example of this type of experiment, but with gadgets. It failed and Wikipedia's now struggling to remove the namespace and I don't think it'll be removed anytime soon.

I don't think we have to have namespace for every little thing. "MCW:Calculators/name of calculator" is way better solution in my opinion. --TreeIsLife (talk) 19:47, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

1. Please explain why the quantity of calculators is relevant to the necessity of a namespace.

2. Tools meant to be used by all readers should not be shoved behind project namespace and therefore hidden away, the only reason it would be better is because it doesn't use a namespace, but you forgot to explain why that's a positive, so I see no reason why it is better. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
20:39, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

1. So generally, it would be at least 100 pages. Also, keep in mind this is not a content namespace, so it should be futureproof.

2. I generally disagree with this aproach. Calcluators are for readers, but on their repsective pages, not in a namespace. I believe the idea Harri proposes is purely editor-oriented. You see, you generally don't go to wikis to use calculators. There are other sites designed just fot that. For me, a "each page for calc" sounds as "maintenance and maybe to promote calculators outside Dian's sandbox". As for why my aproach is better - if in namespaces and the calcs are treated as content namespaces, calculators would infiltrate the results, making MC spin-offs even harder to see (C is before M). --TreeIsLife (talk) 21:46, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I genuinely do not understand what you are trying to say with the majority of the second point. If I were thinking of only editors with this proposal, I would not have made this proposal in the first place, my proposal and its benefits are purely reader focused.

I don't know what you're trying to say with "promoting calculators outside Dian's sandbox" and talking about people not going to wikis to use calculators, that sounds like you're arguing against making calculators in the first place. If you're unaware, we agreed on implementing calculators months ago and some have been made.

As for the first point, we'll eventually get to a point where we have over a hundred calculators if development continues, but either way there's not a page count requirement for namespaces, Help namespace isn't filled out much.

As for the search results point, it's going to be rare that a calculator shares a title or similar title with a spin off article. Also, if we're worried about spin off namespace search results I'm sure we could think of better ways to improve them other than just avoiding the creation of other namespaces. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
22:00, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Support - the calculator namespace seems to be the best one we can use for importing German wiki's technik theme design onto EN wiki, since we don't have a technik wiki on the English wiki. If we add calculator namespace to to the wiki, this is a strong candidate to use DE's technik theme on English wiki. Delvin4519 (talk) 21:07, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

It's more of a technical namespace, not a content one. --TreeIsLife (talk) 21:46, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Strong support Oh, I get what you mean now. Each of the spin off games has its own namespace and a correponding theme:

• Minecraft_Dungeons:* grey with orange grass
• Minecraft_Story_Mode:* blue with cyan grass
• Minecraft_Story_Mode:* greyish blue with teal grass
• Minecraft_Story_Mode:* purple with gold grass

You're proposing we add:

• Calculator:* sandstone
• or Technical:* sandstone

That's a great idea, and I'm all for it. Maybe we could add more themes to specific namespaces in the future? Or maybe we could even allow user's to set a theme for their own namespace.

• If we did that, we'd probably want a way of accessing the CSS files. Any of these naming conventions could be used:
  • theme:[theme's name].css
  • themes:[theme's name].css
  • [theme's name]:theme.css
  • Minecraft_Wiki:theme/[theme's name].css
  • Minecraft_Wiki:themes/[theme's name].css
  • Minecraft_Wiki:[theme's name]/theme.css
• --Simanelix ^(T|C) 23:28, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

--Simanelix ^(T|C) 22:37, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Really? Justifying creation of a namespace by mere visuals? — BabylonAS 13:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Support So, the search menu on the wiki doesn't suggest things in namespaces? I guess that makes sense, since it's able to hide the things that are only for editors, such as Minecraft_Wiki:*/*, User:*/*, Talk:*/*, and Sandbox:*/*. I think it we could reprogram the search menu to include Minecraft_Wiki:Calculator/* in search suggestions and results by default. However, I understand that Calculator:* is more intuitive for users and editors. --Simanelix ^(T|C) 21:24, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I would note that it's difficult if not impossible to reprogram the search to only include Minecraft_Wiki:Calculator/* but not the entire namespace. GIM Dianliang233 T C 01:32, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Strong oppose on an extra namespace, that seems just excessive for a handful of calculators while adding all the additional maintenance work that comes with a custom namespace. I think they would be better placed directly in the article namespace. If we had more calculators, a namespace might be worth considering, but for just 7 pages that's just not needed. -- 👁 Image
MarkusRost (talk) 01:51, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I dislike shooting the idea down based on page count, page count is arbitrary while usefulness of the namespace is not. Putting them in mainspace would work but you can't deny how they wouldn't fit at all. But I can't really comment on the maintenance thing, could you enlighten me about the work it would bring? - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
20:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Why not just put the calculators at "MCW:Calculators/<name>" with "Calculator/<name>" as a redirect from mainspace to "MCW:Calculators"? I think that's a decent enough workaround for now until there are hundreds of calculators later. Delvin4519 (talk) 20:34, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the calculators would fit into the mainspace just as well as tutorials do. They aren't directly about something in the game, but are still intended for users to help them. About the maintainance work, adding a new namespace would mean we need to make sure our templates and abuse filters support as content namespace. Also any bots running on the wiki don't know about custom namespaces on their own. --👁 Image
MarkusRost (talk) 22:42, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, I 👁 Image
 Support just doing "Calculators/Calculator name" then. Honestly I just want these dedicated calculator pages to exist already, I've wanted to do tweets about calculators for a while now but it's just more annoying to do that when you have to direct someone to half way down certain pages instead of just one page. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
13:20, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Support this. GIM Dianliang233 T C 08:28, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

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 Oppose — as noted above, it's much easier to keep calculators as subpages of a mainspace article, at least at the moment. Also, just because we are hosted by the same entity as RSW doesn't mean we should do exactly what RSW does. — BabylonAS 13:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Oppose proposal per BabylonAS. Also requesting a change that requires a lot of future maintenance just to have a link to them on social media as mentioned in a comment above feels reckless to me. Not sure why this reason was left out of the original proposal if that was honestly just what was wanted here. As far as linking on social media, the list can be linked to in their current state as we were directed to in the proposal. Individual calculators can be linked to as well with the bonus feature of complete context provided by the article the calculator is featured on. -BrianGLHF (talk) 14:53, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

My entire argument was about making calculators easier to find and be linked to, how does mentioning social media change literally anything about the argument. Also sending a reader three fourths of the way down a project page naturally isn't as intuitive as a page made for being a calculator directory, the project page would just become worse and worse as a directory as more calculators are made. But, you already know I supported putting them in mainspace anyway, so it'd be more productive to talk about that. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
15:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I interpreted the "Honestly I just want these dedicated calculator pages to exist already, I've wanted to do tweets about calculators for a while now but it's just more annoying to do that when you have to direct someone to half way down certain pages instead of just one page" -Harristic as such. Seems clear. There is nothing unintuitive about sending a reader to an anchor on a page. That practice is as almost as old if not as old as hypertext itself. Since you seemingly no longer support your own proposal of putting them in mainspace and want to focus instead on namespace, I feel this proposal can be closed. -BrianGLHF (talk) 16:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Since you didn’t explain whatsoever, you seem confident the quote contradicts my entire argument somehow. Does wanting to conveniently link people to calculator pages contradict the argument that we should be make it more convenient to direct people to the pages?

Don’t be so eager to end the conversation, I support my original proposal completely and at no point did I say otherwise. But I also support the compromise suggested. Discussions evolve, putting them in mainspace is not such a disconnected idea, so I’m not sure why we’d to close this actually. The idea of putting them in mainspace can be (and has been) discussed here.

Sending a reader to a project page which is, a project page, therefore 90% not relevant at all to what the reader wants, is worse than a page designed to be a directory of calculators, simple as that. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
16:28, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

My explanation is quite clear. I never said your quote contradicts your entire argument. I said your intentions should have been included in the original proposal. Is that not fair? Also you can link directly to the calculators that are in articles as explained above. You are the one who suggested directing focus on something other than your proposal, so I simply suggested closing the proposal after supplying methods of practice to solve your linking issue. -BrianGLHF (talk) 16:42, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

The context changes nothing about the proposal itself. Saying that you can link to sections doesn’t really negate much of anything with my proposal, why is that better than just linking to a page with just the calculator? Why is the project page not simply worse than a directory page? What has not been explained once by anyone is the issue with a dedicated space for calculators. If you take out the namespace idea, you’re left with just a streamlining of the calculator concept. Babylon said we shouldn’t just copy from RSW, which is true, but the thing is, we did copy calculators from RSW but, like the forum, only implemented it half way, AKA don’t have dedicated calculator page.

Also, being able to link to sections doesn’t even solve the linking problem anyway. Block distribution is a calculator that is implemented on tons of different block pages, wouldn’t it be a lot nicer to just have a dedicated page for block distribution that lets you view the distribution of any block, instead of switching between pages and going down them a ton? I don’t think it’s far fetched to say we’ll end up with more calculators that act that way in the future. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
17:02, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

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 Strong support - I believe convenience is hugely necessary to a wiki, and calculators are indeed inaccessible at this time. I did not know they existed until just now, and I surf the wiki a fair bit, so there is definitely worth being lost in having them be buried in pages. I agree with having them in mainspace. - BD (talk) 15:37, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Calculators are not inaccessible in the current state, nor are they buried. Some are directly linked to on this very page. -BrianGLHF (talk) 16:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

They are literally buried in pages, they are only accessible in the middle of often very large pages, no other way to describe that other than buried really. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
16:28, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

They are not buried, they are accessible clearly in their appropriate sections of the article. If you feel those are too far down a page then that's a different proposal. -BrianGLHF (talk) 16:42, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Lots of comments above mentions that maintenance works can't be justified for how few calculators we've got right now. I would like to propose that we should instead create pages for calculators at Calculators/<name> to avoid this, and make the Calculator page as an overview and contents page. Please leave your concerns about this approach if you have any. GIM Dianliang233 T C 06:46, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

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 Strong support - Yes, that just makes sense.

Also, the proposer quickly realized that the idea was not good at stopped supporting it. So, no one is supporting the original proposal. Besides, even if we had 100 different calculators, putting them in the calculator folder at Calculator/ is better than the namespace at Calculator:. Just like how Tutorials is in a folder, Calculator (i.e. Calculators) can be too.

Plus I think we can still add in my really cool proposal for a technical theme (but I'm not 100% sure about the technical details. --Simanelix ^(T|C) 06:54, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

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 Strong support. Could alternatively use the Minecraft Wiki/Project namespace (i. e. Minecraft Wiki:Calculators as the root page) but it would be a bit longer (though, we have the MCW shorthand). — BabylonAS 06:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

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 Support --TreeIsLife (talk) 13:36, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

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 Support - 👁 Image
Delycache ^{(Talk | Contributions)} 18:16, 10 March 2024 (UTC)