Difference between revisions of "Creating a Competition"

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Revision as of 13:20, 28 December 2007

A lot of people want to create new competitions, but have difficulty figuring out how to organize them. Within the community, we have a need for one place players can go to find a competition in which they'd like to participate, but there is a persistent need for organizers to use whatever method to organize they prefer, or to discover new methods to organize. Here on this wiki, we have the page for players to go to find competitions, and it's open for everyone to participate. We also provide a way for people to organize their competitions, if they'd like. You can use this wiki to organize, sign up players, give news and results, etc. You don't have to, but you are strongly encouraged to include your competition on the Competition Hub page so that players will know about it.

Including your Competition on the Competition Hub

To put your competition on the Competition Hub page and get it placed on the calendar, there are four simple steps.

  1. Create a blurb page for your competition.
  2. Use a simple transclusion to include your blurb page on the Competition Hub page.
  3. Create a long page that gives information about the competition.
  4. Put your informational page in 2 categories of a certain format to get it put on the calendar.

Information on each of these steps is in the next 3 sections.

Create a Blurb Page

This is the most important part. :) To do this, put your pointer in the url bar of your browser, delete the current page title from the url, and put the title for the page you want to create. Then hit "Go", and you will be taken to a page that says "This page hasn't been written yet". Edit that page and put your competition in it. The only requirement for this page is that it be short, and organized. You should use a table, you should use a table formatted like the others that are there. Those aren't requirements, though. Organize it how you want, but look at the ones people have already made for guidance.

Transclude it on the Competition Hub page

This is the easy part. Go to the Competition Hub, click the Edit tab, and put something that looks like this right after the others (at the time of writing, Kings of the Grid is the bottom-most competition listed):

<pre> {{:Your Competition Blurb Page}} </pre>

That's all there is to it!

Create an informational page

While this page isn't technically required, it is required to be put on the calender. It's also very useful to put basic information about the competition on a longer, more general-purpose page that users can read about. It's also a good place to put news about the competition, such as posting who the winners are! This page should transclude your blurb page to start itself. Your blurb page should also contain a link to this page. If you intend to do all of your player signups and related organization somewhere else, then this longer page should state clearly and explicitly that players cannot sign up here, and it should provide a link to the appropriate place to do so.

This page should also be put in one of two categories, unless you have specific reasons to do otherwise. It should be in the category Competitions if it is a general competition. If it is specifically a tournament, put it in the Tournaments category. Some competitions, like the Ladle, have their own category which is a subcategory of Tournaments. If you intend to make more than one page for your competition, you should follow suit and create your own category for your competition, and put the category's page in either Competitions or Tournaments, whichever is appropriate. Do it like this:

  • [[Category:Competitions]]
  • [[Category:Tournaments]]

Put it on the Calendar!

If you haven't noticed by now, there's a very nice calendar on the Competition Hub page that shows at a glance the upcoming events. It's intended primarily for competitions, and whenever you schedule an event, you should mark it there. There are several ways to approach this. If you need every event marked on the calendar to have special information about the event, you'll need to create new pages for each event. If you just want to put your Competition Summary page on the calendar, then that's all you need to do. As an example, the Ladle is a monthly competition, and each Ladle is numbered, with a new page created for each event. Each of these new pages are included on the calendar separately. However, the Ladle could include just one page on the calendar for each occurrence, if the organizers preferred.

To put your page on the calendar, edit the page you wish to mark on the calendar like so:

<pre> [[Category:Events]] [[Category:2007/11/20]] </pre>

The first line marks the page as an event and allows the calendar to see it. The second line, in YEAR/MONTH/DAY format, contains the actual day the event will occur.

Please note that you need to create a longer informational page to include your event on the calendar, you cannot use your blurb page. This is sadly a technical limitation, if you use your blurb page, then the Competition Hub itself will be placed on the calendar, and this is useless cruft. So if you want to be on the calendar, please make a page describing the event to be included on the calendar. It doesn't have to be very long, in fact it's more useful if it's a short page with at most one heading and a paragraph.