Composite Works

Sometimes a work can seem to belong to two or more different categories, and it can be had to know just how to treat it. In fact the present editor still doesn't know how to treat such a work, and several approaches are extant in the wiki at this time.

It seems that there are several different ways that a work may fall under this heading.

• Blended works—These are works that are truly of a dual nature, along the lines of HârnMaster Religion having both HârnWorld setting content and HârnMaster game content.
• Composite works—These are works comprising several articles, some falling under one heading and some under another. Adventures with hold articles come to mind, like Keep on the Borderlands, or, indeed, many out-of-print kingdom modules and Encyclopedia Harnica issues. The latter are more like the following.
• Magazines—Though some articles do have separate credits for sections within them—Arathel Castle comes to mind—magazines are that way by their very nature.
• Super series—These are works that ostensibly seem to belong in one place but are linked to other works that seem to belong elsewhere and so need a different, neutral place to actually go. For example, the Greatclans of Hârn series has been placed in Hârnic Lore, though each constituent of it could be placed in its respective kingdom.
• Work bundles—Some downloads have several distinct documents which may fall under different categories. These are the easiest to deal with, as each work can be treated separately. For instance, the large download collecting the writings of The Venerable James has been split invisibly, though the Lýthia links all go to the same download page.

As mentioned above, there are a few different ways in which the present editor has attempted to deal with this. All have consequences for the wiki design that have to be taken into account. Here is what is known thus far.

• Simply link one page in two places—The most straightforward, the downside of this is in the right sidebars. One may be clicking down the items in one namespace and suddenly be transported to another with a different sidebar. That can be jarring to one's browsing experience.
• Create multiple pages—Create a different page for the work in multiple namespaces. This can be work to maintain, though the include plugin plugin helps and the inclusions: namespace has been created as neutral ground. The downside to this approach is double counting by the Backlinks plugin in the credits pages and by the Tag plugin in its own pages and in lists created with it. The latter can be dealt with in forming the list, and perhaps the resulting pages can be explicitly written to address this. I have not yet experimented with doing so, and the pages that appear are those auto-generated by the plugin.
• Create stub pages—This has been done for magazine articles. No tags or credits are included, so those lists aren't affected, and a button links to the full page. Icons are included since nothing counts them. The downside here is skimpy pages.

So no universal solution has been found yet, and perhaps each kind of work should be treated differently. Any better answers are welcome.