Adding new Geographic location types

[weogarth]

Hi,

I thought I saw something similar to this at one point but I can't find it. I'm still just getting into using RW but wanted to make a new category in the Region: Geographic. There are continents, sub-continents, etc. I'd like to make something like 'region' (yes, redundant) or 'area' to indicate an area smaller than a subcontinent. Is this possible?

I suppose if not, I could just make another 'subcontinent' entry and make it a child of the one I wanted to split up.

Thanks in advance!

Gary

[weogarth]

Since apparently posts cannot be deleted, I will just mention I dug into the 'Manage' area and now have a Region: Geographical type of 'area'.

[Laura]

We certainly allow you to create your own structure via the Manage section as you've done, but you need to be aware of the consequences of doing so. Changes to the structure of your content make it less compatible with third-party content and may make it harder to share your content with others once the community content and commercial content features come online. If you don't plan on sharing your realm with others this isn't a significant concern. We will have tools to help reconcile changes, but the greater the changes you make the more work will be required if something turns out to be incompatible.

[weogarth]

Originally Posted by Laura

We certainly allow you to create your own structure via the Manage section as you've done, but you need to be aware of the consequences of doing so. Changes to the structure of your content make it less compatible with third-party content and may make it harder to share your content with others once the community content and commercial content features come online. If you don't plan on sharing your realm with others this isn't a significant concern. We will have tools to help reconcile changes, but the greater the changes you make the more work will be required if something turns out to be incompatible.

Fair point, Laura. I don't see this one being a huge deal. I suppose I could have just done a nested sub-continent. Just curious, in this situation, what would YOU have done?

[Silveras]

Weogarth, if you added a new tag of "area", I think that is among the most lightweight of changes. If you copied the Geographic Region category to a new one named "Area", that would be more likely to have conflicts. Because that is not clear, I would read Laura's post as a general advisory (in keeping with other advisories about the new protections) in case you made the more extensive change.

[weogarth]

Originally Posted by Silveras

Weogarth, if you added a new tag of "area", I think that is among the most lightweight of changes. If you copied the Geographic Region category to a new one named "Area", that would be more likely to have conflicts. Because that is not clear, I would read Laura's post as a general advisory (in keeping with other advisories about the new protections) in case you made the more extensive change.

Thanks Silveras. I did get the feel that I didn't do anything substantial that would really mess up acquired content although it might possibly interfere with something if I shared my own content.

I only asked the question of Laura just to see if she had a different avenue that nobody had come up with yet and to learn from it.

Gary

[Joe]

Our current "best practice" thoughts are to use multiple levels of nesting of the various region types (geographical, celestial, urban, etc) to model complex structures in each. To differentiate the regions themselves by size/scope/extent, use a tag. You'll notice that there's no built-in tag domain that's clearly for this purpose for each of them. I'm working on that now!

On the content sharing front, consider the following:

Let's say you're making some fantasy setting content, and you use Geographical Region for large things like continents, but use your own custom Area category for more local regions. Let's say Silveras, also creating fantasy content, uses our "best practice" model.

Now, I am a user who likes both of your work! I want to import content from both of you to use in my realm. However, I now have a problem. Your content is structured differently. Some of my geography is organized one way, some of it another. This makes my life difficult when searching, filtering, etc. I now have to either choose to fix your content, convert over all my current content to your method, or live with the discrepancy. None of those options is very good.

You can also image how this problem compounds itself if you consider more sources. What if I want to import content from 10 or 20 different sources, each with their own idea on how to structure geography? And if each added not just one custom category but several. That'd be a mess.

We've got some ideas on how to minimize the impact of this, but it's going to be far easier the stronger the standard is and the more people that follow it. We'll be establishing some content standards in the near future for those who want to make sure that others integrating their content have a smooth experience.

[weogarth]

Joe. Making sense? C'mon now.

Seriously, thanks for the input. Are you compiling these best practices somewhere? Taking suggestions for it somewhere?