Discuss AY Honors

New Icon

I'm not sure what exactly is wrong, but the "New Icon" graphic is not showing up in the main index. It will, however, show up in the individual honor categories, like Recreation or Vocational. Is this something wrong with my display or is anyone else experiencing this? --w126jep (talk) 13:11, 28 October 2014 (EDT)

It's working for me. Can you sort by the "new" column? --Jomegat (talk) 19:18, 28 October 2014 (EDT)

It is working now. I'm not sure what it could have been because I tried on different computers and logged off. Hopefully it doesn't happen again. --w126jep (talk) 22:09, 28 October 2014 (EDT)

Skill Level Grid

Is there any real reason to still have the grid below the Honor Categories that show the different skill levels and categories? I think the sortable list now takes care of that. --w126jep (talk) 10:40, 8 December 2014 (EST)

Not really. I think that perhaps the pages they point to should hang around though, and the IA pages that say "earn Nature honor at your skill level" could point to them. That was their original purpose, and it predates the IA pages (and the move from Wikibooks to here). The sortable table really does eliminate the need for a lot of pages like that. --Jomegat (talk) 12:26, 8 December 2014 (EST)

I agree that the pages should stick around, I just meant the big multi-color grid. I think I'll give it a week or so to see if anyone else has any opinions, and then probably get rid of it from the mainpage. --w126jep (talk) 12:43, 8 December 2014 (EST)

Sounds like a plan! --Jomegat (talk) 18:51, 8 December 2014 (EST)

Actually, maybe we could just come up with a workable spec for Honor_index and put those directly in the IA pages. --Jomegat (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2014 (EST)

How do you mean? --w126jep (talk) 19:07, 8 December 2014 (EST)

I was thinking that maybe tossing an index into the IA page might be a good idea, but I'm going to backtrack on that thought. Some indices are pretty large, and I think they would clutter the IA page. But to be clear, I am all for removing the grids. I think they exist on a lot of category pages too, but now that also they use the Honor_index template, they should lose the grid as well. --Jomegat (talk) 21:43, 8 December 2014 (EST)

I have deleted the grid. I have also changed Investiture Achievement/Friend/Honor Enrichment to include honor indexes in tabular form using Template:Honor_index, having decided that once filtered, none of the indices are really too big to include on an IA page after all. I did mix Arts & Crafts and Household Arts in one index, and Recreation, Vocational, and Outdoor Industries in the other. It would have been easier to make five indexes, but I think I like two. If someone cares that they are choosing A&C vs Household, they can always sort them by the Category column. But I think it's better to have an intermingled list so they're paying attention to the honor rather than to which of the two (or three) categories. I haven't addressed the other IA classes yet, as I wish to solicit opinions first. --Jomegat (talk) 23:24, 9 December 2014 (EST)

I think it looks good. I tend to agree that a person pay more attention to the honor they'd like to complete rather than what category. The purpose of changing to the sortable indices was, after all, to make them sortable. Three as the max amount of categories I think is best. More than that and you might as well put the entire list of honors, because it gets really big. --w126jep (talk) 23:44, 9 December 2014 (EST)

I don't think there is a case where IA calls out more than three categories, but if there are, I agree - three is the max. Beyond that, we just link them to the pages.

Master Award Count

Noticed the number of pages in the category is counting 25 on the front page instead of 16. JadeDragon (talk) 10:28, 16 September 2015 (EDT)

Good catch. I've pared it down to 17. We should probably change the way this works so that it only counts primary categories, but that's going to take more time than I have right now. The 17th is the deprecated Witnessing Master, and I don't want to remove it from the Master's category, as that's really where it belongs. I think I'll eventually add a "deprecated" category and use DPL to create the count (anything in one category but not in another). --Jomegat (talk) 15:30, 16 September 2015 (EDT)

excellent. The Witnessing Master is still listed on the GC site. We should leave it up with the note. JadeDragon (talk) 00:08, 17 September 2015 (EDT)

Their site is a bit behind then - the GC (i.e., Jonatan Tejel) reworked the Outreach category and replaced the Witnessing Master with the three new ones. --Jomegat (talk) 07:49, 17 September 2015 (EDT)

Three new ones? I thought it was divided into two: Family, Origins, and Heritage; Spiritual Growth and Ministries. What is the third one? --w126jep (talk) 03:01, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

He means 2 I think. The ADRA Master award is gone from the GC site, ADRA site I'd linked and the SPD site. Since I can't find it anywhere but here, I'm wondering if it is still available. I just wrote North New South Wales for one, so we shall see. JadeDragon (talk) 03:51, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

Did the SPD and GC site ever have the ADRA Master Award? I don't recall the sites having it listed, I think it was found in the manuals. The SAD still has it listed. The SAD actually also has a Botanical Master Award too. --w126jep (talk) 10:39, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

Yes, I meant two. --Jomegat (talk) 14:53, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

I had the ADRA Master sourced to the ADRA website. That link broke. I could not find another source. There are actually two versions of Zoology Master - the SPD still lists theirs and it has a different design and requirements. I've got the SPD version and enough extra honors to receive the GC version without doubling up. Maybe list it as a variation? JadeDragon (talk) 15:03, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

Smaller Cover Page & Retired Insignia Page

I went ahead and reduced the size of the Answer Key image. I also added the Retired Insignia page after the Awards and Pins category. Let me know what you think. --w126jep (talk) 16:08, 7 February 2016 (EST)

Brilliant! --Jomegat (talk) 18:47, 7 February 2016 (EST)

Page Loading

Hey Jomegat

I've talked to a few pathfinders/clubs in our area that use this website for the honors. They find the main page with all the honours takes a very long time for loading depending on their speed connection, somewhere between a couple seconds to 10 minutes. All the other pages or links are fast for them but this one takes awhile. I know the images of the honours has a lot to do with it. Some of the pathfinders that I spoke to know what honour there looking for or they want to look in a specific category to look for that honour. Just a thought is it possible to only have the categories on the main page and than have another page that lists all the honours on it? I know its a lot to ask. Ixoekea (talk) 03:13, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

List cut short

I realized that the sortable list on the main page only shows the honors up to Wattles. All other honors that would follow alphabetically, such as Weaving, Wilderness Leadership, Winter Camping, etc., do not show up. Is there a limit to how many honors can be displayed in the list? This same issue was noticed with the Spanish side in February of this year (thread here). Any ideas? -- w126jep (talk) 14:11, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I think you can find it here. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoiding_MediaWiki_expansion_depth_limit) It says maximum is 40 levels. --Ixoekea (talk) 19:25, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

No, that page is addressing a different problem. I'll dig into this as soon as I get a chance.

South England Conference

Hey guys, Hey Jomegat, w126jep,

Found a few different honors here that are not added on the site yet. I quickly skimmed it tonight. I was looking for something else and came across this. SEC UK Advent Youth I do not have some of the honor requirement for them.

Caving has a older patch

Chocolate is not on here Requirements found here Chocolate

Adinkra Honour

Raku is not on here Raku

Tutorial is not on here

--Ixoekea (talk) 03:19, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for these references, Ixoekea! Lol, I love the Chocolate one! I have added Chocolate and Raku for now, and will try to find the requirements for the other ones.

Just so you know, these honors are considered regional and are not indexed in the main page. This means that they will not show up on any of the indexes. However, the pages can be found by searching for their names.

I am pretty sure the Chocolate honor would receive some blowback from churches around the world ... lol, but it sure sounds like fun!

Let us know if you find any more honors from different divisions and conferences! --w126jep (talk) 12:03, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

South American Honors

Hey there me again. I found a massive Honor order page for Brazil. It seems like there are many honors on their website that are not on here. I do not have any of the requirements for them only what the patches look like. MHC (Brazil) It has 5 stages of computers. On the left hand side under "Especialidades" will list all the honors that they offer in the South American Division. --Ixoekea (talk) 22:31, 22 May 2018 (EDT)

Hi Ixoekea!

Actually, I have included almost all of these honors in the Wiki. You will find the South American Division (SAD) list right below the main list on the Main Page of the Answer Book. I have the manuals in Portuguese and Spanish and have translated them to English.

Originally, they had been integrated into the main list but a couple of problems occurred. First, the SAD has over 200 honors not recognized anywhere else, and this caused the main list to be cut short at the bottom. Apparently, the list software can only display 500 or so pages.

Second, many visitors to the Wiki were not paying attention to the fact that these honors were not NAD, and attempting to order the patches from NAD resources. Even though we tried to splat on the honor descriptor "South American Division" and put "Limited Availability", people just went straight to the requirements, assuming these were available worldwide.

So most of the requirements are available and can only be found in English here at this Wiki. Also, if you click to look at the honors by their categories, the SAD honors are mixed in. We've had several people contribute to answer quite a few of the SAD honors already. The requirements can be completed, but obtaining the patch will be difficult. --w126jep (talk) 12:02, 23 May 2018 (EDT)

Permitted file types

Is it possible to enable more file types to be uploaded to the wiki? Specifically, I need the "new" Office extensions: xslx, docx, pptx ... I would like to attach some original files instead of just the picture of something, so they can be easily modified in the future.

Marc3 (talk) 11:07, 7 June 2018 (EDT)

Hi Marc,

Those should all work now. Sorry for the delay in responding, but I was away from the Internet for the weekend. --Jomegat (talk) 18:20, 10 June 2018 (EDT)

2020 Changes by the NAD

The NAD Honors Task Force voted to change the requirements of some honors in February, 2020. I have made some of those changes, but forgot that the changes create NAD variants. Therefore, we need to create these as new NAD and GC variants and create a disambiguation page for all of them modified to date. Sigh...

Unless we explore other options.

We could create a template noting that the NAD and GC have different requirements, and that template could link the user to the GC site where they can find the GC version. That way we could avoid creating new variants. If the GC adopts the NAD's changes, it's a simple matter to delete the template.

Thoughts?

--Jomegat (talk) 18:30, 9 March 2020 (EDT)

That seems to make sense. The only issue I would see is of there are very different versions (such as Welding or Automobile Mechanics), there will be no resources for the GC requirements. This might actually appease some people at the top, though. --w126jep (talk) 19:02, 9 March 2020 (EDT)

Another possibility is to create a GC variant in-wiki, but use the "main" version as the NAD variant instead of making it a disambiguation page. We'd still have a template to note the difference and point to the GC page.

So something like a link to the Wiki GC requirements at the top of the page? That could work too. It would make it a lot easier that created so many disambiguation page, those really are a hassle. Especially because it's not just three pages, but SIX including translations. --w126jep (talk) 17:25, 10 March 2020 (EDT)

OK, let's do it that way (NAD=main page with pointer to on-wiki GC page). I'll start on that soon. --Jomegat (talk) 21:17, 10 March 2020 (EDT)

Reworking some of the plumbing

I just got out of a brainstorming session that Marilyn Bosimer set up to talk about the NAD Pathfinder web presence and what we can do to make the wiki more useful. Some good ideas came out of that, and now we need to think about how we can go about realizing them.

The big ask was that we have a way to separate out the requirements as a printable document, but without requiring a second copy (i.e., a PDF that we'd have to keep in sync with the wiki requirements). I'm thinking that we might want to treat honor requirements similar to how we deal with IA requirements - that is, create separate pages for each requirement, then transclude them into the answer pages as well as in a requirements-only page.

Another ask would be for us to create a Worksheet page. This could be done by transcluding the requirements, and adding in some space for answers. It's possible that the template for the requirements could indicate how much (and what type) of space each answer would need, or we could specify that in a worksheet page. I think the latter would be better than the former.

Another idea is to create a "landing page" for each honor. The landing page would be structured more like an e-commerce product description page. One problem we'd attempt to solve with this page would be to flag the "difficult" parts of an honor so that people could know right away that if they can teach that requirement, the rest should be easy. Instead, people go through almost the whole honor and then find out that they need to visit a water treatment plant. The request is to get the "money requirement" out there for evaluation by the reader before they make a big investment in the rest of the honor. Since the "activity" requirements often come near the end of the honors, they typically don't discover that until they've made an investment.

The landing page would have a link to the answer page, requirements page, and worksheet page, and would include a description of the honor. We should also tie this into the idea we discussed at the last YPAC - where we add a lesson plan, materials list, and an estimate of prep time and teaching time to each honor. A new landing page for each honor would be a good place to keep all that.

A landing page would require some significant rework to our plumbing, so we need to think about how we can do this so that it does what has been requested, but doesn't create so much work that we can't get there from here. It's possible that the landing page would be on the club ministries site rather than on the wiki, so if we find that this is something that we can't realistically do, we have that as an option instead. Even if the landing page is at clubministries, we would still want to host the requirements and worksheet pages here.

None of this is carved in stone, but I think that the ideas that were presented would indeed make the site more useful than it already is. Thoughts and ideas are invited! --Jomegat (talk) 22:21, 6 October 2020 (EDT)

There was also a request to expand to table of contents by default (which I've done). Most people don't know that if you do that, you get a reasonable list of the requirements (though there are exceptions, one of which I have addressed). I also renamed "Contents" to "Requirements" since that's what we're using it for. --Jomegat (talk) 23:37, 6 October 2020 (EDT)

This is a lot to process. I'll see if I can go point by point.

Transcluding requirements has always made sense to me as that way we can 1) prohibit access to editing them (although it hasn't really been that big of an issue); 2) makes it easier and uniform to link specific requirements in other places besides just the honor; 3) one edit is all that's necessary to a requirement and the change is automatic throughout the Wiki. The only issue is it would be tons and tons of work.

I am hesitant about making worksheets and even a separate "requirements only" file. AdventSource already does this and takes the time to do so. Maybe they would be delighted to have the Wiki take over this role, I don't know, but I think something like that would need to be cleared first with them, as the Wiki would essentially be duplicating those efforts.

A landing page would be a good idea if there is lots of content to add, like the worksheet and the lesson plans. I also like the idea of including info for if there are traveling requirements or materials or time constraints. However, a landing page adds more complexity and another "click" to have to go through, making it less user-friendly. People don't even like having to scroll down, much less clicking through more pages.

I also worry that the more complexity we add, the less likely people are to edit and add answers. I think we have to be intentional and either point out where they can edit or add some standardized text on every landing page reminding users that they are source for these materials.

I do think these are good suggestions and definitely good topics to explore, and am generally onboarding with these ideas, but these were just some thoughts and concerns that came up at the moment. --w126jep (talk) 02:38, 7 October 2020 (EDT)

I agree that this would be a tremendous amount of work, and I'd hope that some of it could be done with a robot. As for the requirements-only page, the problem that we'd be trying to address would be to have a single source of truth for the requirements. Brad had said before that he'd love to quit maintaining the requirements PDF's and even asked if we could host them. I said we could, but the idea then was to just upload all those PDF's, and that doesn't make for an editable entity. It never happened because he never sent us the PDF's.

Your concerns about increased complexity are valid, and that's something we need to watch out for and avoid if we can. --Jomegat (talk) 16:32, 7 October 2020 (EDT)

Having a "one-stop shop" makes sense. I remember having to check the Wiki, AdventSource, PathfindersOnline.org, AND the GC Youth Ministries website to see if all requirements aligned. Also, in my experience, it is not well-known that AdventSource has the worksheets and requirements, and even less how to access them (and even far less that they're available in Spanish).

I am wondering how to format worksheets and requirements sheets. What would that look like? Would we attempt to make it look as close to what AdventSource does? or something completely different? The worksheets currently have a lot more than just lines to write answers. Depending on the honor, it can include, charts, graphs, tables, columns, etc.

Regarding a landing page, I think one aspect we could incorporate would be the icons idea that was proposed a few years ago. We could create simple graphics to work as icons and that way include them on a landing page to label them with whatever info.

How soon would we be able to begin changes? Do we need approval from someone? --w126jep (talk) 15:46, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

I don't remember the icon discussion - you'll have to refresh my memory.

As for the worksheets, yes, I'd think we'd want to make them look as much like the ones people are used to - charts, graphs, lines, blank maps/unlabeled pictures, etc. We'd want to develop some templates to do that.

As far as when we start, I'd think that we could get started right away. One of the people at the meeting does e-commerce for a living and he was going to mash up something to demonstrate ideas for the landing page though, so I think we should wait a few weeks before we embark on that.

We will also want to prototype some things and experiment before we start making any wholesale changes. We should probably pick an honor (or a few honors), make an experimental copy of it and then rework it while we leave the original intact. --Jomegat (talk) 22:11, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

Plumbing Progress

I've been experimenting with the new plumbing using the Amphibians honor as a guinea pig. (Maybe I should have used Small Animal Pets instead ;)

Anyhow, you can see the experiments at User:Jomegat/reqs and User:Jomegat/reqs/es. I've proven (to myself) that the requirements can be saved in one place, translated, used in multiple places (honor answers, honor requirements, and when we're ready, in honor worksheets too). Each of these can have different styling, as the styling is done in the a template.

Basic concepts: Each requirement goes into its own page. The page name is of the form Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/<category>/<honor name>/Requirement/<requirement number>. These pages should contain no styling, but they do need translation tags. I did a fake translation of the first requirement, but that will need to be deleted. I just needed to see if it would show up OK.

There are two templates (with a third one planned). Template:Ansreq and Template:Reqreq. The first one formats a requirement for the answer book, and is based on the way we display them on the IA pages. The second one is used for formatting the requirement in a requirements-only page. I anticipate that we will keep those at Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/<category>/<honor name>/Requirements. I don't think these templates need any translation, except for what's already there.

I see more or less what you did. I think we should choose a few, maybe 3, and try it out. Preferably IA honors and also that link with each other, to see if we can assure that all connections are uninterrupted. Maybe an honor that has an advanced and is included in the Nature Study section of IA. -- w126jep (talk) 01:39, 18 October 2020 (EDT)

That sounds like a good plan. I made a small change to my example page so that the "answer" requirements 11a and 11b are displayed without the blue box. I think it might read better that way, but a second opinion would be nice to have.

Like this:

11

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Requirements

11a

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Requirements

Blah, blah, blah

11b

Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Requirements

Blah, blah, blah

Note that how the requirements are rendered is done without changing the requirement pages, and without affecting how other pages might want to render them either. We could make decisions on a case-by-case basis. I'm sure we'll find some sub-requirements that lend themselves to the box rendering better than to the bold text rendering. --Jomegat (talk) 10:35, 18 October 2020 (EDT)

I tried applying this to the Amphibians honor, and the preview showed that it really messes with the TOC. So I didn't save it. Note that the purpose of this was so that we could create a separate requirements page, or we could just summarize the requirements at the top of the answer page - so I don't think we'd need to use the TOC as a requirements summary any more. I may save it in a mock-up page so we can look at it and consider options. --Jomegat (talk) 11:04, 18 October 2020 (EDT)

Here's the mock-up: Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Amphibians/Sandbox I made the experimental version use honor_desc2 which doesn't have the changes we made to the TOC a little while ago, and I added it to the noindex category so it wouldn't show up in the indices. I made two main headers - Requirements, and Answers, so the TOC will show that, plus any sub-headers. The requirements section links to the requirements page, and includes the requirements in a collapsible box. I think this is getting close to usable. One thing I really like about this is how easy it is to find the next requirement when scrolling through the answers. Try scrolling from requirement 5 to 6. --Jomegat (talk) 11:26, 18 October 2020 (EDT)

Looks like the edit button takes us to the Ansreq template. I'll have to work on that. I did get the bot to work, but I'm still using it pretty slowly. I can do an honor in about two minutes with it. --22:15, 23 October 2020 (EDT)

Plumbing Update

DesignerThan has done some excellent work on the requirements templates, so I think those are good-to-go. I've also created some templates to replace the TOC with something very TOC-like, but it only links to the requirements, and not to every section within the answers.

I have extracted the requirements from 409 honors so far. For those 409, each requirement lives on its own page, and each honor has a requirements-only page.

Once I get them all extracted (maybe by the middle of next week), I will work on a bot to extract the translations and create those pages. It's not a done-deal, but I think it's very likely doable. The plan is to enlist a more general-purpose screen-scraper bot rather than using a wiki-bot. I have found exactly zero wikibots that can deal with the translation extension, but I think a screen-scraper will be able to do the trick.

I will make a backup of the wiki before trying a screen-scraper bot though, just in case. And once the translations are extracted, we can make another backup before switching the site over. Then I'll need to run the protect-bot to protect all the requirements pages (for individual requirements, and for the honor's requirements-only page).

All of the honor requirements-only pages need to have a template added to them, and I've not decided yet how that should be done. One idea I'm considering is extracting the honor_desc template from the honors and placing those in their own pages, and then transcluding that into both the answer keys and the requirements. Then the honor_index templates would need to know if it's trying to list answers or requirements so that it would not list both in a table. Maybe we make a requirements_index template for indexing the requirements, and leave the honor_index to only list the answers. Either way, the existing honor_index would need to exclude links to the requirements pages.

It's possible that DPL will only list the pages that have the honor_desc template, in which case we'd maybe want to make that an honor landing page with links to the requirements, answer keys, and lesson plans, and provide the "product description" and a summary of the "money" requirement.

This is still very much in the conceptual stage at this point, and is very much subject to change. We might find it won't work at all.

The times, they are exciting! Comments and ideas are welcome and appreciated! --Jomegat (talk) 16:57, 13 November 2020 (EST)

I really like the way the templates look, it feels sleek and edgy. My only question is on the color. Is there a specific reasons to use the bluish purple? Can we experiment with other colors just for aesthetics?

The screen-scraper bot sounds like the way to go for the translations. I think it should work well for what we are intending.

The more I think about it, the more I like a landing page for each honor. And it would help solve the issue easily of the DPL needing the honor_desc template. And it would also give more information in a simpler and cleaner way, instead of trying to jam everything into one page for the honor. This is especially important for mobile use, which is increasing more and more. I'm sure counselors and instructors are scrolling through their phones frantically as they try and help a Pathfinder with a certain requirement; keeping the mobile page short and collapsible makes it easier to navigate and read.

It really is exciting! It is one of the few joys I can easily think of during this crazy year! -- w126jep (talk) 22:18, 13 November 2020 (EST)

Feel free to tweak the colors (should be in the template:ansreq). I was looking to match the background jpg so I went towards the blue end of the spectrum. That selection was done back in 2012-ish when we added the IA pages. I basically modified the IA requirements template to make one for the honor pages. DesignerThan has made significant improvements since then.

The Good news is that as I write, the bot is extracting the requirements from the last honor. It will be done before I finish this note. There are several things to do after that:

1. DONE: Backup the wiki Just In Case
2. DONE: Give DesignerThan admin privs here so he can change protected templates, etc.
3. Figure out the screen-scraping bot to extract the translations. This bot will have to mark all the new pages for translation, and then navigate the translation software.
4. DONE: -ish Make a header template for the <honor>/Requirements pages. What do we want in there? (Anyone can take a shot at making this). The idea was to display the honor name in some aesthetic way, and maybe suppress the page title. We might want to think about how we can grab the skill level and intro year too. That might require some mediawiki magic to extract data from the skill level categories.
   1. Needs work to make it look nice. I have something that a bot is adding, but the goal was to work out the mechanics, not to make it look nice.
5. DONE: Use a wikibot to add that header to all the requirements pages.
6. Protect the requirements templates from editing.
7. Use a wikibot to protect all the requirement pages (including the main req page for each honor and all the individual requirement pages that those transclude - there must be ten thousand of those).
8. Backup the wiki in case the next phase goes tragically astray.

Once all of that is done I'll need to put yet-another-bot together to edit the answer keys themselves so that they replace the TOC with the internal link index template:reqreqlink template and then replace each requirement with the template:ansreq templates. Then we need to check over everything.

Fun times! (P.S. The bot is done. All requirements have been extracted... except abseiling which I skipped because it's a mess). --Jomegat (talk) 22:19, 20 November 2020 (EST)

Haha... There are 12,481 requirement pages. Also, I've not done the regional honors yet. --Jomegat (talk) 09:18, 21 November 2020 (EST)

OK, Now the bot has extracted requirements from all the honors, including the Regionals. --Jomegat (talk) 12:45, 22 November 2020 (EST)

Future Directions

Here are some thoughts we will discuss at a Zoom meeting later today.

Page Organization

We might want to create the Honor structure under a new top-level page: Honors, or AY_Honors. The main page of each honor: Honors/<honor name> would be a landing page for the honor. The honor_desc would be added to that page. This means that all of the honor indices created with Template:honor_index - such as on the main page - would link to the landing page.

The landing pages would include a description of the honor, a link to the answer key, a link to the requirements, and if we go there, a link to the worksheet. Also a link to the lesson plans we don't have yet, but voted to create. It would show the banner we fly at the top of each answer page now, so that would include the name, authority, year, skill level, and patch. We will leave redirects from the old location to the new. Note that this scheme omits the honor category from the page names. We already capture that using the categories, and we've found that when an honor is moved from one category to another it causes major pain. It also causes problems when a Regional honor is adopted at a higher level, since those honors belong to a category, but they are filed under the Regional hierarchy.

Answer keys would go under Honors/<honor name>/Answer_Key and the Requirements would go under Honors/<honor name>/Requirements - even though I just created all the Requirements pages under the old scheme. A bot can move them. If there are variants of the honor, I think we'd include that in the honor name itself as in Stars (South American Division). Though we might want to think think through why the variant exists: some variants have different requirements. Others have the same requirements, but vastly different answers.

Each requirement would be filed under Honors/<honor name>/Requirement/<requirement id> - and those get included via templates wherever they are needed, including in the Requirements page, Answer keys, worksheets, and IA pages that call them out. Editing the requirement on its page ripples out everywhere.

Alternatively, we could leave the honors under the old AYHAB top-level, but that is really a hold-over from the Wikibooks days which demanded that no abbreviations be used in book titles.

Division Variants

The other thing we want to do with the restructuring is create new index pages based on which division the reader selects. This doesn't affect the layout of the honor pages (I think), but it will affect pages that make lists of honors. The dream is to add a user profile element to specify a division. All existing users will be assigned to the NAD, but maybe we'll have a pop-up notice that says "we put you in the NAD, change it over here if you want to".

We can add tabs or maybe links to the left pane to allow the user to look at other divisions and see what honors are available there. Another option might be to write our own custom extension (not easy!) to make the division selection appear the same way that the language selection does at the top of the answer keys and IA pages. Selecting the division and selecting the language are independent.

I think I want to go through and tag all the honors as being in effect in each division. So if an honor is in effect in the GC, it will belong to all the division categories (NAD, SAD, IAD, SPD, etc). If it is in effect only in that division, it will belong to only that division's category.

These changes are not small, and we might find some of them difficult (or impossible) to pull off.

--Jomegat (talk) 13:13, 22 November 2020 (EST)

Requirements Restructuring

Progress

I'm signing at the top this time... there are sub-sections. --Jomegat (talk) 23:38, 30 November 2020 (EST)

Lots of progress over the holiday weekend (and this evening). First, I have abandoned the concept of putting each requirement on its own individual page (14K+ pages) and instead, have collected all the requirements for each honor onto a Requirements page. Each requirement is surrounded with <section begin=reqN /> and <section end=reqN /> where N is the requirement number. The requirements can be individually extracted from the Requirements page with Template:reqreq (unformatted), and with Template:AnswerRequirement.

All honor requirements pages have now been created, and I have looked (briefly) at each one. That was a huge effort, and only one laptop lost its life in the process... );

The Requirements pages use DPL to extract metadata from the honor_desc template in the parent page, using Template:RequirementsHeader to grab that info and format it (though no effort has yet been made to format it - the mechanics are all there, but the formatting could use some attention.

In other developments... I found that we don't have to have a header defined with == markup in order to be able to add a link to it. Almost all mediawiki tags support an id="some_unique_id" modifier - including the <table id="ansreq-N"> tag. So I added that to the table we create in AnswerRequirements, and baked the link into Template:reqreqlink, and removed all the ==Instruction for Requirement N== markup. So those are gone, but we can still jump straight to the requirements. This has been done on Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Amphibians/Sandbox. I think it looks much better - and props to User:DesignerThan! Without his help none of this would be possible.

With the Requirements pages in place, I changed the requirement-extraction templates to get the requirements from there. That means we can delete the 14K+ individual requirements pages, and I will kick that off as a bot assignment soon. Ish.

I did do a few translations of the requirements pages, and it is a ton easier with all the requirements on one page. All of those need to be re-marked from translation though, because I made cosmetic changes to all those pages since doing the translations. I have thus far failed at getting a bot to do any of the translation work. I'll seek advice from a test automation engineer at work as soon as I can think of it (when I'm logged into a work computer). But translating isn't so bad now, so it's way less pressing than it had been.

Next Steps

• Activate the delete bot on the 14K single-requirement pages.
• Find all the requirements that had <br> tags baked into them so we didn't have to create sub requirements for some reqs that have them, but don't need them broken out. Many of those are of the form "Be sure to discuss the following points: a. blah, b. blah blah, c. etc". Since the requirements don't have to fit into headings now, we can replace those br tags with returns and indent them with colons. It looks weird to have all the subreqs indented, but not those.
• Backup the database so User:DesignerThan can dump it into the experimental wiki.
• Document the new templates (AnswerRequirement, reqreqlink, reqreq, and RequirementsHeader and its subtemplates).
• Delete the templates we're not going to need (anssubreq, reqsubreq, et al).

Questions

Moratorium on big changes?

After I make the next backup, do we want to hold off on any further changes on this wiki until we finish our experiments on Wiki-X (which is what I'll now cal the experimental wiki)? I think that major changes should be avoided at this point, but perhaps minor ones would be OK. We can make those, and when we're ready to switch over, reproduce those changes on Wiki-X, and then bring it over.