Template talk:ZipityTest

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Three suggestions

I have three suggestions for possibly improving the template. The first would be renaming TMSPages to OtherResources, Links, or something similar. Someone who doesn't know much about our templates could look at |OtherResources= and know that they should put links to other resources there, and if we did decide to go with "OtherResources," that would be consistent with the naming scheme in the Q&A templates, which would make it easier to remember.

I tend to think that choice of names for parameters to templates is something that is worth obsessing about to almost a "Steve Jobs" level. Like good design in other areas, well chosen template and parameter names can be the difference between someone "just getting it" and being too overwhelmed to give editing a try. It's important enough that I wrote out my thoughts in greater detail on the following page:

TMSWiki:Designing_templates

The second idea is that rather than having a TMSBooks parameter, we might want the middle parameter (in between SuccessStories and OtherResources/Links/WhateverOtherTermWeChoose) to be a little bit more flexible, such as "OtherInformation." I have some ideas about that, but it might be better to discuss them over the phone, so perhaps Zipity and I can have a phone convo to discuss them.

The third idea is that if OtherInformation/WhateverOtherTermWeChoose is blank, we might want to omit the box entirely. (Again, trying to reach the Steve Jobs ideal--how many references to Steve Jobs have we all heard in the last month or so?) There is a command (called a "Parser Function") called #if that should make this possible:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunctions#.23if

The following code would check whether {{{OtherInformation}}} was blank. If it wasn't blank, it would insert AWholeMessOfWikiText, whereas it would insert nothing (i.e. the stuff after the second vertical bar character, |): 

{{#if:{{{OtherInformation}}}
| AWholeMessOfWikiText
|
}}

Hope you like the ideas.... Forest 20:23, 11 December 2011 (EST)

Symptom pages that break the mold

Most symptom and diagnosis pages fit a very simple mold: they have a two paragraph introduction, urging the reader to get medical advice, then they have either 2 or three sections:

  • a section about the symptom in TMS Books (roughly half have this)
  • a section of success stories
  • a section on other resources

However, some pages break this mold. Our overarching goal is to make our symptom pages as rich as possible, so if there is good content, we want to include it. The following list gathers these pages, so that we can figure out how to organize this template to best include all information that is both relevant and useful to our readers.

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