Forum:Infobox: Previous and Next variables

Changes in a nutshell: the variables and, as well as all other variants of these, have been changed to  and. If you find any persistant instances of the old variable names, please let me know. Also, if you want to get rid of the navigation part of the infobox, because you're dealing with a completely standalone story, enter  into your infobox.

Navigation across multiple series is coming soon. It is already possible to order stories both by release and by production order, through the use of and  16:10: Thu 15 Mar 2012 Update: Infobox Story now contains the variables, , , , , and. Although I'm still tweaking the way these variables display in the infobox, multiple navigation points are now possible. 16:20: Fri 16 Mar 2012

Tybort's questions to CzechOut

 * Note from Tybort: I asked these questions in a numbered list and CzechOut responded thusly. I've edited the arrangement slightly to make them easier to read (also I don't know how to start a numbered list from 2). -- Tybort (talk page) 02:17, March 12, 2012 (UTC)

I notice a couple of stories have a previously and next produced in the navbox. How do double-banked episodes fit into that? Tybort (talk page) 00:45, March 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * Double-banked episodes aren't actually completely double-banked. In every case, one of them always enters production first.  For instance, the first shot for Blink was 7 November 2006.  It's just the main part of the shoot that happens around the latter part of the month, when Human Nature was also in production. I'm not aware of a case where two episodes started production on exactly the same date. If I don't get around to adding in all this production order myself, just trust Shannon Sullivan's site.  He's researched this stuff quite thoroughly and has things production ordered as correctly as possible, based on the evidence available.  I've independently checked him versus the Virgin Handbook series, and some DWM products.  While I have very occasionally found errors in some of his facts, I've never seen an error on any production ordering. 01:59: Sat 10 Mar 2012

Dreamland shouldn't really have anything to do with The Waters of Mars and The End of Time's "previous and next" navigation, right? Tybort (talk page) 00:45, March 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * I would say that Dreamland is not a part of the production before/next chain, but it is a part of the broadcast chain. I personally would consider the previous/next chain to go WOM, Dreamland, EOT. But I'm open to persuasion, if you've got a compelling argument. 01:59: Sat 10 Mar 2012

Tangerineduel's tech note to CzechOut
Also I'd like to say thank you for not replacing the 'Previous'/'Next' with just arrows, it is something I know I've mentioned in the past, but it's a real pet hate of mine. Navigating MemoryAlpha is a pain because of their arrows / mouse over info (and MemAlpha is practically un-navigatable on a mobile browser because of them).
 * As for the arrows, yeah I read ya loud and clear there. I'm still considering taking the literal right and left arrow symbols away and replacing them with a background image.  I'd point out that Wikia's messing around heavily with its mobile skin.  At the current time, tables doesn't displaying at all in mobile, so a literal link to the episodes definitely seems well advised.  At some point I've got to tackle customisation of our mobile skin, if it's even possible.  20:45: Sun 11 Mar 2012

Known flaw in initial bot run
A number of audio stories have their and  variables filled with deliberately italicised story names. This sounds like something I would've done a few years ago, but I don't specifically remember doing it. In any case, these pages are not currently displaying prev/next properly. They will require a second bot run to strip the single quotes. So if you see a prev/next line in audio stories that looks like:
 * 'Spare Parts (audio story)'

know that it is going to be cleaned up soon.

If you see this kind of thing in any other type of story, please add a comment below. Note that the condition to report is a previous/next line where the brackets themselves are italicised, but the story name isn't. 19:03: Mon 12 Mar 2012
 * What about stories with multiple "Previous" or "Next" items, like Survival, which came before Doctor Who (1996) and Dimensions in Time, and is usually listed that way... is there a way to include both, or should we got with one or the other? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 23:20, March 12, 2012 (UTC)


 * If you take a look at Template:Infobox Story it looks like CzechOut's thought of that with "Made previous" and "Made next" fields.
 * But specifically with regard to Dimensions in Time we've got that one NC tagged so we don't count it in the regular line up of TV stories. So it shouldn't be in the infobox either way. The information's probably suited better for the body of the article. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:21, March 13, 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually there is a new way to do this coming. Gimme a few days.  There are going to be multiple series and prev/next nav variables.  For the moment, just put this editing point on simmer.  For the moment, I'm worried about getting the basic navigational flow working, and that requires changing a TON of variables, given that we had no standardised variable for "previous" and "next".  20:41: Wed 14 Mar 2012

Annuals
The initial problem reported here has now been corrected. Annual navigation should be flowing correctly. Things that are comic stories are now linked in navigation as comic stories, not short stories. Course, you can't see this just yet, because the comic navbox isn't fully online, but the cleanup seems to have gone without a hitch. There still might be confusion over The Time Thief, though, since it's both a comic story and a short story and they're both annual stories. Seriously, writers of the 1970s, have some freakin' creativity. Thanks to Americanwhofan for pointing this out on CzechOut's talk page. I realise that the bot doesn't seem to have corrected Infobox Comic to Infobox Story, but it still needs pointing out: Doctor Who annuals feature a mix of comic AND short stories, which both fall under the Doctor Who annual range. As a result, the short stories lead to non-existent short stories when they should be comics and vice versa. (Example) -- Tybort (talk page) 18:24, March 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, comics are the most complicated thing. I've deliberately pushed them to the end of the rotation in the hopes that I would accrue more variables from other infoboxes that also applied to comics.  Still, I've obsoleted 15 infoboxes in 3 days, which ain't a bad rate.  18:41: Tue 13 Mar 2012
 * I suppose this is a good time to bring up what to do with Brief Encounter inside DWYs and DWM again. I've looked at your comments back in November about navigation and I'm not 100% I follow. Could you explain again more clearly? -- Tybort (talk page) 19:11, March 13, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure from the description what range the novella Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space is. It apparently has a similar format to the old annuals, and most links use the DWAN prefix. Going by the Doctor Who Reference Guide's release dates, should that slot between The Fishmen of Kandalinga and The Cloud Exiles?

Also, should the navigation lead unbroken from the final World Distributors story to the 2006 Annual, to The Official Annuals? -- Tybort (talk page) 20:08, March 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * Continue to ask these questions, of course, but remember, the only range in which infobox editing is open for business are the TV stories. Plenty of work to be done there for the time being.  These niggly little points will be dealt with once the heavy lifting is done.


 * That said, here are some quick answers:
 * A BE in a DWY is still a BE. There will come a time (sooner rather than later) where multiple lines of navigation are introduced, but for the time being we'll be going with BE navigation.  The navigation is relative to whatever is in the  variable. But even when multiple series navigation is introduced, the primary navigation of a BE in a DWY is BE. So it should be in previous/next story, not previous story2/next story2.  (And those won't be the names of the secondary and tertiary range variables, so don't pre-introduce them to infoboxes, please.  Remember, we're not editing those infoboxes for a week.)
 * DW/Invsion from Space isn't actually part of any line. It's commonly called an annual just because it's published by World. But it's a thing unto itself. I'll examine it in greater detail later.
 * I could swear I've answered the question about World --> Panini -- > BBC Books navigation before. What did I say before? There's an answer to that somewhere around here.  20:25: Tue 13 Mar 2012
 * Yeah, you did answer it. Oops. Guess I need to look more carefully. -- Tybort (talk page) 20:53, March 13, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what the index order is for the DWAN stories after Health & Safety is. I've tried Googling to find an index order of Doctor Who The Official Annual 2011 and 2012, but it's difficult to find the right search term. On the DWRG, I can't seem to find a reference to Blind Fury, and they don't seem to have updated information for the 2012 annual. Seems the only way to do this is to actually buy the annuals on my budget. -- Tybort (talk page) 00:23, March 14, 2012 (UTC)

Original message by Americanwhofan
The bot made a mistake during this run, on Myth Maker (comic story), changing The Planet That Wept to The Planet That Wept (comic story), the article is at The Planet That Wept (short story). It may have done this on other annuals, which have short stories and comics in the same book.Americanwhofan talk to me 18:07, March 13, 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are a number of bot mistakes with regards to annuals, because prev/next is done in category:Annuals without regard to the medium of the story. Don't worry.  There's a secondary "cleanup" run that's coming for annuals.  I deemed it easier to fix it later with a run that only applied to category:Annuals and its subcategories than to try to insulate annual stories from the initial run. But thanks for keeping your eyes peeled!  18:35: Tue 13 Mar 2012

Magazine
For Infobox Magazine and  have now been de-activated. The template will calculate the prev/next issue, as long as the issue follows the nomenclature proscribed at T:MAGS. For those magazines that cannot follow the naming convention of + — like COMIC — there are now the variables of and, which allow you to put in a more free-form response that overrides the automatic calculation.

I point this out because I know some users work from offline versions of the template and as they put in new magazines they should be using the newest version of the template. 18:41: Tue 13 Mar 2012

Video games
Are both the dab term and the navigation for video games in the middle of being sorted out? Because I notice the "prev" and "next" for the various Adventure Games, the (video game) dab is visible unlike other navigations. -- Tybort (talk page) 12:57, March 15, 2012 (UTC)
 * In a nutshell, yep.


 * But ya propbably want more than that. There are two parts to your question. The dab term elimination is handled through dab away.  Making it so that a dab term is eliminated in a navbox is simply a matter of adding that dab term to the list.  I've just added about 10 more terms today, including (video game).  You'll see it now works.  The thing that's gonna be tricky is all the one-off dab terms, where we've had two stories in the same media but had to go to a prefix to further disambiguate it, like (NA novel) or (BBV audio story).  If you run across any of these one-off things, lemme know.  The code to dab away reads really simply, so it's easy to figure out what's missing.  Actually, screw it, I'll just make that template editable for a while so that you can introduce the changes yourself.


 * As for the navigation bit, I assume there you were talking about the fact that most video games don't need navigation, because they're standalone. So they sit there with a label for a section that will never come.  This has indeed been fixed today as described at the documentation for Infobox Story.16:01: Thu 15 Mar 2012


 * Sorry for any confusion, I meant the actual titles of the games on top of, say TARDIS (video game) appearing inside the "prev" and "next" variables as opposed to simply TARDIS. I didn't even consider nav = 0 when I said that. -- Tybort (talk page) 16:15, March 15, 2012 (UTC)

Novelisations and the first EDA
Going by Shada only having previously and next made variables, I gather that the eventual novelisation page wouldn't place anywhere, either? Or is it because it's a BBC Books novelisation as opposed to Target? (Speaking of, would that and Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film loosely count as a loose BBC novelisations "series"?)

And speaking of speaking of, The Novel of the Film and The Eight Doctors have completely wrong navigation, having references to the New Adventures and Eighth Doctor Adventures for the former and the NAs and The Novel of the Film for the latter. -- Tybort (talk page) 01:57, March 16, 2012 (UTC)

Previous variable
I've been working on the Short Trips anthologies and the stories in them, and have come across a problem. For every first story of an anthology, there obviously isn't a previous story, but the infobox puts the following story into the "previous" section and leaves the "next" section empty. For example, Model Train Set is the first story in the anthology Short Trips, but in the infobox it claims the next story, Old Flames, is the previous story and there is no next story. Is this fixable? Shambala108 ☎  21:51, August 30, 2012 (UTC)


 * It is. As stated on Infobox Story's documentation, if there is no previous or next story in a series, you must actually set the prev/next variable to the word . When written like that, it isn't autolinked. -- Tybort (talk page) 22:05, August 30, 2012 (UTC)
 * Though what Tybort says is true, you're woking under a misapprehension of how navigation is supposed to work, Shambala. The series variable should be set to Short Trips (series) — not to an individual volume within that series.  That being the case, almost every story has a  and a . Since Short Trips is a numbered series, the "previous" of the first story in a volume is the last story of the previous volume, and the next of the last story in the volume is the first of the next volume.  In other words, only one story will have  — the first story of the first volume.  And only one story will have  — the last story of the last volume.  People should be able to navigate from volume to volume by following the prev/next chain.    03:52: Fri 31 Aug 2012


 * Ok I want to make sure I understand you before I do anything. First off, I didn't put any information in the infoboxes, I just want to correct the mistakes that someone else put there. I understand your point about the last story of one volume being followed by the first story of the next volume, and when I'm finished with what I'm currently doing, I'll go back and take care of that. But I don't quite get the point about the series variable. Does that mean that each story's infobox should not include its anthology name under "release details" but should have the Short Trips name instead? Thanks! Shambala108 ☎  04:21, August 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't mean that. As explained at, the  variable should be used for, well, the name of the anthology.  The series name (for Short Trips) is, um, Short Trips (series).  For an example of a properly-filled Short Trips infobox, please see The Bushranger's Story (short story).  A mistake some people seem to be making is that they're using  when they actually mean .  The  variable is for the precise opposite case of Short Trips.  It's for when the short story is not a part of an anthology, as when there's a DWM short story.     15:00: Fri 31 Aug 2012
 * OK then I don't know what you mean when you say I am working under a misapprehension. I never used any or  variables, I just wanted to fix something that someone else did. I know now how to fix it and will get to it when I'm done with my current "project". Thanks! Shambala108  ☎  17:53, August 31, 2012 (UTC)
 * You said,
 * "For every first story of an anthology, there obviously isn't a previous story..."
 * That's a misapprehension, because there is a pervious story for every story — save for the very first story in the very first volume of a series of anthologies, like the Short Trips series.


 * That's a different thing from the and  issue, which I never said you were using improperly.  I said switching anthology for publication was "a mistake some people seem to be making", in the hopes of alerting you to another problem you could fix at the same time you were correcting the prev/next issue.     15:57: Sat 01 Sep 2012


 * Ok I get it now...communicating over the internet can be so difficult sometimes. Like I said, I'll fix the "previous" and "next" stories when I'm done going through all the anthologies, which I am almost done with. Thanks again! Shambala108 ☎  18:52, September 1, 2012 (UTC)