Best way to deal with multiple containers?
 

I have run into an issue where something is inside multiple containers and I haven't figured out if I can express that relationship in Realm Works. For example if I have two nations which both claim the same city falls within their borders I can't have both of them list that city underneath their topic tree (or can I?).

Does anyone have a way to handle these sort of situations?

A Topic can only have one Containing Topic.

So what you might want to do is to create a new region "Disputed Territory" and put the city there, noting that the territory is claimed by however many nations you need.

There are relationships which can be used to link the topic to both nations.

I put all cities in the continent container along with geographical features, not a state container. I keep states separate as they are fluid.

Cities contain links/relationships to states or regions so they can be quickly navigated to.

States contain a list of cities and points of interest as well as geographical features. These may be disputed or cross borders. I also establish links/relationships.

There is a feature in a PIM software that I use, Ultra Recall from Kinook. It has an interesting way of handling the same document under multiple containers. I create a linked item in the other locations and its just basically a pointer back to the one article, so when its updated all the linked items point to article regardless of which link updates it. Might be worth looking at how they do it and it would make this software that much better for it.

On you main topic for each nation have a section to list the major cities of each nation with a short one sentence description and have a link to the each city that has a separate topic and do the same for the other nation and you can have the navigation done that way. You can the contested city listed in the cities for both.

For my Red Tide/Scarlet Heroes Realm I did that and the cities are just under geographical regions and not under nations and did that so you have to go to the main nation topic to see cities are part of it and to navigate to them that way

You could also duplicate the topic for the city and put one under each, but that would be a problem as some links would go to one and not the other and updating one doesn't update the other.

I am also struggeling with the issuse. Therefore I reopend the feature request discussion "Duplicate Entries" and quoted your proposal there, HippyCraig:
http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=51586

Currently I use both realms and geographical / cultural regions as level one containers, depending on the size and boundaries of the area.
For former ownership, areas beeing parts of vanished kingdoms and the like I use relationships.

As a consequence I put contested places into the container of the party / realm currently controlling it in actuality and add a relationship "also claimed by".
Even though this approach works somehow, imho it also gives away to much information.