Cities Wikia:Subsidiary pages

Introduction
A subsidiary page is a kind of subpage made with a colon.

In its first couple of years this Wikia has made much use of things loosely called subpages but with colons where the standard subpages have slashes.

Advantages of the colon style
One advantage is shorter page names. "Porirua:History" takes less space and typing than "History of Porirua". Three keystrokes fewer.

Another advantage comes with the use of piped links. For example, in the main Porirua page we can write "the city's  Porirua:history  is fascinating", with "history" (which the software inserts after the pipe) looking like a normal prose word but being a direct link to the correct "subpage" (not to an article titled "History") and easier to code than if we had to write something like "the city's  history is fascinating". That advantage disappears with sub-subpages, because the pipe software chops off only up to the first colon, so when we get a page "Porirua:History:Pioneers" we would get a link "history:pioneers" appearing in the text if not careful; it would work but read as bad prose.

Categories add linkages
We have, however, a good category structure, whereby Porirua:History is in its city category as well as its subject-matter category. One day it may also be in a "Coastal cities" and/or a "University cities" category. We may yet have a pioneers category, where the yet-to-be-created page Porirua:History:Pioneers can go additionally. For such sub-subsidiary pages maybe the use of categories is a fully satisfactory alternative.

How to create subsidiary pages
See Cities Wiki:Subsidiary page creation.

How to improve subsidiary pages
See Cities Wiki:Subsidiary page improvement.