Reply To: JoCo Concert Stats 2008
Wow now we are talking about some hard coding, it was hard enough to do what I have done so far and that has unintentional features included (all non-song entries). Can I be the first (if not first then whatever number person I am) to say wow at the TMBW. They have things so it is a lot easier to run a bot like mine and it would work perfectly. It would be a lot easier to write. This is due to their formatting.
The main problem with writing any kind of bot to play with the setlists is that our setlists on the wiki are so full of crap. I don’t mean this in a bad way as it makes it informative and factual. But to try and find some sort of pattern that differentiates the song names from anything else on the page is quite hard. I used all internal links which is why we had other internal non-song links and wikipedia links. Also I used the number list to differentiate the set list from the rest of the show page. Unfortunately I could not think how to make it use the setlist section for that. This is why I went through re-formatting all the show pages. If we want to bot more complex things into the wiki then we are going to have to put tighter restrictions on the way things are and look. I think it is a great dream to have what you guys are saying but I am not sure how practical it is in the near future without sorting the formatting. Saying that it would be best if we set a strong formatting now. It only takes a few hours to go through all of the show pages as it is and re-format them. If we leave it the number of them will grow and it will become impractical to re-format it. I will go see how TMBW do what they do and tell you what it requires to be if I can.
ETA: OK I think I was a bit negative there. Do excuse that. If the example MitchO made is indeed what we are looking for I shall tell you what is necessary to do it. In the shows page we need at the top (to stick with style in the bulleted list):
– City
– Date (in the format required for table)
Then the setlist and encore markers must be consistent throughout to the character (the same spaces and such). I have done a fair amount to making this latter one a reality though I fear I was not diligent enough when I reformatted all the show pages and made decisions as I was going through meaning some style decisions were only implemented nearer the end. Furthermore it would be best if all songs on the setlist (by which I mean each numbered point) contained internal links to the songs pages in question and there to be no non-song internal links featured. We must also decide upon a format for cover songs such that they are distinguishable from the rest of the page. I would say add html comments either side but I fear that would be too complex.
If all the above is achieved I can envisage a way a bot could create the concerts page.