wiki.LibriVox.org Staff Picks pages

[quartertone]

So while I wait for Lenovo to receive, evaluate, repair, and return my laptop, I'm doing some non-recordy things around here.

I recently found some things on the wiki that I could update/fix, so I got to fixing them.

One section I went through is the Staff Picks. I noticed that the link for the Staff Picks forum thread was broken, likely due to the transition to the new server structure some time ago. I went through each of the Staff Pick years and fixed the links, but after I had completed this mundane task I had an idea for a better, more elegant solution.

It looks like the "Introduction" section of most of the Staff Picks pages have basically the the same verbage. MediaWiki (the software that runs the LibriVox wiki) has a Template feature that makes it easy to "write once, use everywhere".

I want to propose creating a template that can be used in the introduction for all the Staff Picks pages, so that in the unlikely/possible/future event that there needs to be a change to the introduction (updated link, desire to re-word, etc), only one document needs to be edited. The template can take parameters so that the appropriate year can be inserted within the text.

Something like this perhaps:

Code: Select all

The monthly "Staff Picks" is a set of 
10 books from our catalog. Once upon 
a time, these books were showcased on the 
[https://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio 
main page for LibriVox on archive.org], 
but this feature has been discontinued. 
However, the current staff picks are still 
announced in the "news/blog" section 
on the [https://librivox.org/ LibriVox homepage].

Here are the audiobooks which featured 
as Staff Picks in {{{1}}}. A short blurb of 
these selections may be found on the linked 
blog posts. For more information and a list 
of Staff Picks in previous years, have a look 
at the main [[Staff Picks]] page.

If you prefer to download m4b files, all 
our staff picks have been converted to 
this format, which can be downloaded 
from the respective catalog pages.

Feel free to suggest any of our completed 
projects for future staff picks. Please post 
your suggestions in [https://forum.librivox.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=17058 
<u>this thread</u>]. Bonus points if they 
fit the current monthly theme.

Enjoy!

The template would be used by placing

Code: Select all

{{Template:StaffPicks_Intro|2023}}

in the Staff Picks pages where the introduction text would go. The {{{1}}} in the template would be replaced by 2023 in this example.

Thoughs? Approval? Disapproval? Ambivalence?

[Availle]

Since I'm responsible for the staff picks at the moment and also maintain the wiki, I'm going to answer this.

Thanks for looking into this, I had no idea this was possible! I understand you only need the link on the page, so where would the template be stored? Is that just another page somewhere?

It's fun to try something new, but the intro is only written once a year, and it's easy to just copy/paste, so this feels too much work for too little gain. Yes, the link may change again, but it's not a big deal to change it on all the pages (if the person in charge remembers doing it, ahem... ). Also, if I'm ever getting tired of the staff picks, maybe somebody else wants to change the way they're done and make changes to the intro accordingly - then methinks it would be nice to leave the old pages intact to show a bit of history, maybe. With our forums ever evolving and growing, things are pretty hard to find here, so the wiki may be better to keep records like this.

So, me being old fashioned, I'd say: thanks, but I'm fine with the way it is.

Now, what I would really love to see is an automatic pull-over of all the links, titles, and authors from the staff pick post on our main page. But I guess that one isn't quite that easy...

[quartertone]

No problem, I'll leave it alone then!