FFXIclopedia:Software Limitations

The software that forms the structure of FFXIclopedia is powered by MediaWiki - which has certain limitations that occasionally get in the way of editing. Here are a few examples of specific limitations that are commonly encountered when editing in the FFXIclopedia. Additional limitations may be added as they are encountered.

Naming Limitations
When naming articles or uploaded files, there are certain characters that cannot be used in the name. These characters have specific purposes within MediaWiki. For example, the "/" informs the software that a subpage is being made. When naming articles and images, please refrain from using the following characters:
 * & (substitute "and")
 * / (substitute "and" or "or")
 * + (substitute "Plus")
 * % (substitute "Percent")

MediaWiki software requires that each article have a unique name. Thus, certain items or abilities which share a name must be distinguished. For example, the Dragoon job ability Angon shares its name with the item used with that ability, the thrown item which we have identified as Angon (Throwing). The template Disambig2 should be used at the top of these pages in order to provide a link to the article sharing the same name.

Move Function
The move function is a command usable by Administrators and Jr. Administrators that allows them to rename pages. Users can nominate articles to be moved by placing the move template in an article, and specifying the reason for the move on the article's talk page. This is the only way a page should be moved. Users should not copy and paste information from one page into another new article, as the contribution history of the old page is lost in this transfer. Articles moved in this way will be deleted. The move function allows us to move the entire content to the new article, and retain the contribution history.

However, certain types of moves are not possible.
 * The move function cannot move into or out of the Category namespace. Thus, categories cannot be renamed, nor can an existing article be converted into a category via the move function. In these cases, serious and careful consideration is required before Administrators approve such moves, as the contribution history can be easily lost.
 * Images cannot be moved. In order to rename an image it must be uploaded again with the proper name. In this instance the Image-Delete tag should be applied to the old image with a note directing the Administrators to the new image.

File Extensions

 * To upload an image, the .png, .jpg or .gif extensions should be used. The software considers "Item.jpg" and "Item.JPG" as separate file names, so care must be taken to avoid uploading duplicative images.
 * The software is not currently configured to accept .ogg extensions, and thus music files cannot be uploaded into the FFXIclopedia.

Images
Images are considered their own articles within the software. This means that each image has its own page showing statistics of when it was loaded, by whom, file size, etc. The image itself is not, however, automatically linked to any article. Moreover, clicking on an image will bring you to this image statistic page, and not another substantive article. For example, Eggplant is of course the article about the Eggplant item. Clicking on the image of the item will bring the user to the Image:Eggplant.jpg page showing the statistics for that image. The Click-Inline template can be used in order to transform an image into a link which will direct the user to a new article, but this should be used sparingly.

External Images
Images hosted on external sites cannot be displayed in FFXIclopedia.

This decision was reached for three main reasons. First, FFXIclopedia has no control over the stability of external websites, and therefore has no control over the availability of the image. When an external website goes down, the image on FFXIclopedia goes down. Second, external images could be changed to something that violates the FFXIclopedia:Image Policy without a record appearing in our logs, i.e. without notice to the FFXIclopedia community. Third, images from external websites may be subject to copyright protections. FFXIclopedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and we want to be able to act upon them as quickly as possible to remedy any such issues.

For these reasons, we require that images be hosted on our website, where a record of the image is maintained by the software and allows the administrators and the community to monitor any changes.