Request: add a property for published documents

[bofeng]

I didn't realize there are people managing the wiki. So I did some research and added a new property in order to create a new infobox. Now I got the warning message, and am proposing it to this forum.

Basically, I was inspired by a republic realm that I am playing, and would like to document all the passed laws in the wiki. So I created an infobox which added a property called "Pass date", and another called "Effective date".

It looks like this: http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Cathay

Frankly speaking, I doubt anyone would spend time like me documenting the laws...

Alternatively, this property can be modified as "Publish date". This property can be used in various situations:
- Roleplay stories
- History records
- other Books
- laws
- different version of bulletin texts

With this nice property, we can implement the historical timeline in a fresh new manner. We can document all versions of the various bulletins. Laws can be compiled into a list. Roleplay stories can be compiled into a big archive.

[Indirik]

Is there a way we can make this a more general property? It would be nice if we can find a way to make it apply to more things. Some kind of date on which an event happened. Something like "occurrence date", but maybe less unwieldy.

Also, do we really need an "effective date"? It mostly appears to be redundant information, or of little semantic value. Effectivity dates are generally used in the real world to allow people time to prepare for the implementation of laws/rules, so they aren't blindsided by the passage of a new law. I wouldn't think this is really necessary, or would really be used much at all.

[bofeng]

I agree "Effective date" is redundant.

"occurrence date" seems fine. It can be used in multiple cases:
- Roleplay stories
- events (war, battle, take over, religion related, death)
- publications

But for that to work properly, we will need another property to distinguish the different type of event. It would be something like "event type".

If we can link the in-game events automatically to a wiki page, that would be awesome:

Once there is an important event in the continent, an event page on wiki will be created. 
- War, battle, take over
- religions related
- new players, or death
- pass a referendum
- election

This will generate something similar to the "unique item" timeline, and will provide automatic timeline for diplomatic events, region changes, a religion, referendum.

[bofeng]

I just requested this feature:

http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,6035.msg133357.html#msg133357

[Indirik]

There are a couple ways to handle the type of event. One possibility is to use another property, such as "event type", and then limit the possible choices, much as we limit what you can enter for the type of a unique item. Another way is to use categories. All of your realm law pages could be tagged like this:

[[Category:Far East]]
[[Category:Cathay]]
[[Category:Laws]]
[[occurrence date:: August 5, 2014]]

Then when you build your timeline of realm laws, you only include events that are tagged with Cathay and Laws. Or, if you want to build a timeline for all events in Cathay, just do a time of everything in the Cathay category. Or do Laws and Far East for all laws passed on the Far East.

One of the benefits of using categories is that it is easier to to find a set of pages using a category than by using a property. The wiki has built-in tools for categories, but we have to use our own tools for properties.

You can refer to the unique items time lines for an idea of how this is done. There are also other semantic templates that include semantic queries using properties and categories.