User blog:Adnoam/Restructuring Qualities and their categories

I've made a few updates to the way Qualities are recorded in the wiki. This is still a work in progress, so I'd like to explain my direction and get some feedback before committing to the next steps, which will involve lots of changes.

The current situation
Currently, if you look at a page which uses some quality (e.g. A campaign of intimidation), you'll see two links called "A Neddy Man":
 * 1) At the "Unlocked with" line at the top, this link is to A Neddy Man - the quality (or item!) required. This is also the link used when gaining/losing said item/quality.
 * 2) At the bottom of the page, among all page categorizes, there's a link to Category:A Neddy Man.

Basically, the wiki is structured such that a category page called "foo" is the page which lists all uses of the quality "foo".

Often, to try and avoid reader confusion, we put the quality's description, image, guides, etc. directly in the Category page (see Category:A Neddy Man), and make the "regular" page a redirect to it (see A Neddy Man).

The issue
The current structure is confusing enough for wiki editors, and is prone to errors - sometimes a new quality is created in a "regular" page, sometimes in a Category page, sometimes both. The redirect isn't always created properly, etc.

Also, this is not what Category pages are supposed to be in a wiki. Categories are supposed to be a way to list together some common pages. Not to contain themselves all the info from those pages.

We already have separate Categories for quality gains and loss (e.g. Category:A Neddy Man Gain). Practically, the quality's category actually behaves as a Category:A Neddy Man Uses page, but we've never named them so.

Goal
I'd like to change things so that Category pages are (as intended) just used to aggregate together similar pages. I'm not set on renaming them (i.e. to "... Uses") to avoid a massive overhaul and breaking lots of links.

For ease of the reader, it would be helpful if the regular quality page would include the list of pages needing the quality (i.e. the pages categorized under it). This should be similar to what is done for items (e.g. Piece of Rostygold).

To avoid filling out the Category:Qualities with hundreds/thousands of new category pages, all such Categories should just belong to Category:Quality Usages (which is a sub-category of Category:Qualities).

What I've already done
I've improved the Quality template a bit. It's more versatile now in what it displays (e.g. whether to link to the Gain/Loss categories), so it can be used as the baseline template for other quality types with their own templates (e.g. Stories.

Also, if the quality is used in a Category page (as is often the case today), it will refer to this fact (i.e. tell the reader that pages in this category are those requiring said quality).

If the quality is used in a non-Category page, then:
 * If a corresponding category page exists, it will display a collapsible list of pages categorized under it (e.g. A Confession of Violence from the Presbyterate Adventuress
 * If a corresponding category page does not exist (yet), it will indicate this, and add the page to a new maintenance category called Category:Qualities without Category (e.g. Scorched by the Sun).

Suggested next steps
If this all sounds reasonable and desired, then the next steps would be:
 * 1) Go over pages in Category:Qualities without Category, create a category page for them, which will itself be empty and belong to Category:Quality Usages.
 * 2) Go over all Quality pages which are a Category page (e.g. here for Quality, here for Stories). For each, move the content into the "normal" quality page (instead of the redirect that's likely there), and leave the category page empty, save for including it in Category:Quality Usages.
 * 3) Go over all (most) sub-categories which are left in Category:Qualities which are for specific individual qualities. For each, do the same.
 * 4) Improve the Quality template a bit such that if a corresponding category page exists, yet is empty, don't display an empty collapsible list (just tell the reader there's nothing using the requirement yet).
 * 5) Move quality type-specific templates (e.g. Stories) to use Quality under the hood.
 * 6) Longer term: all or most quality type-specific templates could be removed, with just the usage of Quality remaining.