Global Clear All Content Links and Rescan
 

Now that we have a global scan for new content links option (yay!), it would be nice to be able to also chuck out the old links beforehand. This would be especially useful in cases where text was previously designated as a "non-link", preventing it from properly linking to new content created later.

I'll +1 this

I don't think clearing ALL content links would be that helpful. Clearing items previously marked as "non-links" only would. overall, be more useful. Most of the time, the things I have marked as links i would want to keep as links, and clearing them would create more approval pop-ups than I would want to bother with.

true, didn't think of that

Cool. So just to clarify, this request is for users other than people like Silveras who apparently have never made a mistake when it comes to linking content in RW. ;) Obviously, using this feature would be optional, allowing the users who do want to bother with it to do so.

In the Quick Edit menu are options to both search for new links and to clear existing links on a per topic basis. I'm requesting that the Clear All Content and Rescan option be brought into parity with the new Global scan option, allowing the user to perform the operation across all or a subset of topic/articles.

I do agree that being able to remove the "non-links" from a topic and/or as a bulk operation could be very useful.

So did this ever get answered? Possibly in another thread?

I will necro here with +1.

Today did major upload and renames. Many links should be renamed and currently it involves manual effort either via fixup or worse(I don’t wanna copy, delete and rename articles to do that...).

God no. -1.

If you rename a topic RW specifically asks you if you want to also change all the inbound links to match so that isn't a problem.

However anyone working on a shared realm, Nibirum is an example anyone can get and try, would find doing such a thing, or even a global scan for new links, would be agony.

It is a problem.

If i have topic "Senate" and this is linked, renaming it later to "The Senate" will make in the body of the text "the The Senate". Depending how you rename it, can cause other nonsense. It is inconvenient to manually go to each article post "Scan for fixups" to manually fix the links after rename.

If you don't have the use of such feature, it does not mean that others don't :)

That isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a frequent problem. Sometimes you will have to do things manually.

The logic that bulk prunes and tags articles is there. Links clean and re-scan is just another operation that can be handled by it.

Also just because you won't use a feature, does not mean it should not be there. Tomorrow you might end up in the same situation. :)

Wanting to clear every link in a realm and relink? Never. Why would I ever want to do that.. Scan for new links sure. I was a big proponent of the feature but I completely fail to see the benefit of actually clearing existing links.

Below are some examples from a realm, that i am working on for 6 months. I hope I am clear enough, as i had no sleep and soon my mind will shut down. I work in the IT and if I have to do a task more than once I will script it. Here the same principle applies. Realm Works is already having a fabulous foundation to implementing it again (we agree that there is already bulk prune and tag).

Example 1: You have article named "Temperance". Later you add second one named "Sons of Temperance".

Unfortunately you have many topics that already contain the string "sons of temperance", but only "temperance" is linked as it was the only article existing back then.

This makes the links wrong and you want to fix it. If I have to do it once or twice - sure. But when it comes to dozens of pages - not so OK.

Example 2: In the life of your realm, you might end up creating articles with the same name - one in Mechanical section, one in the World section. Again, because you created those at different times and the linking was done in a mixed way, you want to make the links "right" and prune.

Example 3: Same as above, but you rename article and add "the" in front (or other stuffs). If you allow RW to automatically change the link in hundreds of articles, you are screwed, as there will be for sure another "the" here and there. Better wait 5 min to rescan the whole thing than suffer the manual link fix.

On example 3 i can copy the original article, delete it and rename the copy of it. This is dirty trick that does not scale well.

I hope I managed to make you see my point of view :)

No, you did not. All examples are extremely contrived.

You are asking for a feature that, based on what I know of the existing feature, would take a lot of developer time to get and I simply doubt it would get used by more than 1 in 1000 users and then rarely.

Your desire seems to be derived from having used the CSV tool rather than entering data by hand. Pouring a lot of stuff into RW will never equate to entering data by hand and using the program to run games. This is why I've always been very skeptical of this whole idea.

The examples are not contrived but experienced first hand. All about articles in the world almanac related to the world - adventures, setting information, organizations and etc. A realm for me is living document, can't get perfect or final from the beginning and the more tools you have to manipulate large amount of data/obejcts, the better. Especially if it is obvious that such logic is already implemented in the program at many places.

On the frequency of the usage - yes, it is something that might be low compared to other. Here comes the product owner and the priority that will be assigned in the product's backlog (if it even gets there). :D

Lets see what happens when (or if...) LW resume their work on the product. ;)

Your examples:

The only reason all instances of "temperance" would be linked including those in "sons of temperance" is because you had set it to auto. That is your own fault. Auto is a bad idea. You should always manually review every link. This is one of the main reason I'm very skeptical of the CSV tool. You dump so much material into RW at once it is too tempting to simply auto accept all the links.

Links to topics and articles with the same name. Again would never happen except by auto linking. I have many cases of the same name in my realm, even topics with the same name, and I have never felt the need for this.

Adding an article to a topic name? Either you do or you don't do this. Again this is only a problem if you have imported a lot of text you didn't author yourself by a tool that let you do it without even reading the material.

The problem boils down to you misused the bulk import tools provided by someone else and now you have a realm that is a mess and you want the devs to give you the tools to get you out of it. Since the rest of us are waiting for other features we've needed for years that would make running our games better and make actually using RW in the ways most of use RW better I don't think this feature should ever be a priority.

With mechanics in particular, there is usually no reason to go through the long and tedious method of entering all the data by hand.

I've long argued there is little to no point in entering mechanics at all.

Today I had long flights and transits, quite irritated, so I am not sure on the "tone" of your post. I give the benefit of the doubt that you are not going offensive and just let you know that none of the assumptions and the conclusion are correct. Apologies from my side if I misinterpreted your intention. :)

If you don't like the feature, just don't vote, simple as that. Developers will decide what goes in the backlog. ;)

Is there thread on that, I find this interesting - no mechanics at all?

There are many ways to use the tool, and different people use the tool to store different sorts of information.

There is no right or wrong way to use the tool.

For those who use the tool in a particular way, then having built-in support to help them is always good.

Usually it is the Product Owner ;-)

Indeed. I am tired as hell :)

Many.

Fundamentally RW is terrible as a substitute for a PDF of the rules of a game. RW is best at managing the game world and the adventures you run in that world. The bigger the realm gets the worse the performance gets. So putting tons of rules crunch that you can easily enough look up in a PDF simply degrades performance for little gain. Look at the stuff you'll actually use in the game session and see how many links, that you'll ever really follow, are to links to all those rules articles. If the reality is zero, and it almost certainly is then why have all that stuff in RW in the first place?

I find links to spells and feats very useful for the quick nature of look-up within Realm Works.

I only entered important articles that were likely to get linked, like some of the pathfinder combat manoeuvres.

I find having mechanics in my Realm Works realms more useful while creating than playing, especially when you're looking up a thing or things that are scattered between various sources (perhaps including your own creations).

Seems we are from different schools of thought :) My group plays with a lot of supplements involved, and having more than 1 PDF to scroll back and forth during session is not convenient. Using hardcovers is much better, but there comes the issue of owning all or carrying them around.

The main reason to buy Realm Works back then was the Mechanical section. Second was the possibility at late stage to put everything inside and no longer use PDF or books.

And it happened. It does an EXTRAORDINARY job of improving the preparation and running of a game session. It is the best digital tool in the world for aggregating information in a way that allows you to reach all you need in 1-2 clicks. No PDF will ever give this flexibility. even with proper bookmarking, as I have extracted the rules and the most important things out of the paragraphs.

A "Global Clear All Content Links and Re-Scan" makes (some) sense when the realm is small. As it gets bigger and more and more content is added, the option makes less and less sense.

If you have "auto-accept" on various topics, you will get some of the same incorrect links you had before, and maybe new ones as well.

In any case, the more content has been added, the more time you will need to spend clicking "Accept", "Accept", "Ignore", "Accept" as it churns through the various possibilities.

Even scan for new links makes little sense once the realm reaches a certain size.

Try it on the community realm Nibirum discussed over in the RW in action forum. I tried it. After well over a half hour I gave up.

I agree, but only in theory. The performance issues are a problem.

My main realm has had some performance problems as it grew but I've been having just terrible performance issues since I started working on Nibirum, its approaching 1000 topics with lots of maps. Just opening a map sometimes hangs RW.