User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-3030984-20130109133452/@comment-188432-20130109153354

This was indeed the coding implication of having added consistent dab terms to all story titles. However, I never got back to it because there were so many other holes in the dike.

We already had such a template in the past, but it was deleted (and then brought back with the intentionally-discouraging title {{DW/Archive 1}}) because the #ifexist bug produced a lot of false redlinks in Special:WantedPages.

This template would actually work fine now — though it no longer needs its #ifexist statements — and has worked out some problems your description didn't anticipate. For instance:

• it handles up to 10 references, so you could type ({{DW/Archive 1|Castrovalva|The Talons of Weng-Chiang|42|Tooth and Claw}}) and it'd produce (TV: Castrovalva, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, 42, Tooth and Claw).
• it eschews the use of parentheses, since that must be entered manually by the editor, else you'd end up with a lot of parentheses.

The only reason I haven't brought this one back yet is because I want it to be for every media, and to accept any story title. We also had a similar template for each of the media, but I want only one template. I think it should be dead simple for the end user, though it will be much more complicated for the coder.

The big obstacle is in trying to figure out how to convey the medium (distinguishing between The Gift (comic story), The Gift (ST short story) or The Gift (TV story)) as well as how to handle the exceptions where medium isn't enough, such as Twilight of the Gods (MA novel) and Twilight of the Gods (BNA novel).