Thoughts on the new template
 

As has been pointed out by some other members, the template gets kinda messy when adding Anime and Video games since there are no actors (unless we start adding Voice actors, which actually doesn't work because voice actors play multiple roles and it's just a pain).

I have a suggestion, but it's just a thought, but it's a revamp of the template so don't yell at me ;)

How about aligning ALL of the templates in a similar order? So that the Anime and VG sections don't look wonky when following the Movie and Television sections?

Moving from LEFT to RIGHT:

Start all sections with TITLE (movie title, television series title/Episode, anime movie Title/Episode, and VG Title/Mod)

Next section is Date (Date released, introduced) since now we're starting to list dates (which is a good sorting field for future use)

Next Section is CHARACTER (movie character, television character, Anime Character, VG character ... can be primary player, or team player, or opposing force or a named character if applicable)

Next section is ACTOR (Human actor for movie and television, N/A for Anime and N/A for VG)

Next section is NOTES (special gun finish or type or fictional gun or special usage notations, etc.)

This way, the blank sections aren't scattered all over the grid, making the page look messy. The sections of TITLE, DATE, CHARACTER will always have an entry and not be blank. The sections of ACTOR will always have an entry in Movies & Television. The Section with the least amount of info (in that specialized info is not applicable most of the time) will be at the tail end.

Thoughts anyone? I think we should consider this before we spend too much time updating the templates.

==Actor pages==
Also did anyone notice that the templates don't align to the left of the photos? This may change how we align photos (look at the Maria Bello Page). Historically the text could be to the immediate left of the 'right aligned' image. If they can't be on the same space, then it changes how we align photographs, in that we traditionally have aligned them to the right, unless it's a screenshot on a movie page, then it's aligned "none". What do people think of this? Just curious.

I would like it if it looked nicer, but so far it just seems really complex for something only slightly better looking. Most of the people on the site have been talking about how they aren't a big fan of it.

Example other than yours. I have not seen that on the talk page and it is miles better than what was on there, I can just see what wikipedia would look like if they did not improve their site. If you don't like come up with a better idea instead of whining about it. Man you just can not please people.

The template is aligned to the left of the photo. The problem was the multiple page breaks before the layout. Page breaks <BR> have their place but are not intended to misaligned the page unless you want it to look like crap. Check out the Maria Bello page now to see the difference.

Hey, come on guys, can't we disagree respectfully?

Right, but here's the thing...as it develops, it will start to seem simpler. It is important for organizational purposes. Remember that we'll be able to sort the movies a little more easily (title/date/whatever), and then on gun pages with lots of movies, or actors who have lots of gun movies, it won't seem so disorganized. Look at the Beretta 92F page, for instance...if a person wants to see if, say, "The Corruptor" (one of my pages) is already listed, he'd have to wade through the whole thing, because there's no order by date/title. By having tables with titles and dates in order, it'll be easier to achieve this organization. This is part of the reason that we see so many repeat entries for movies on gun pages (like how "The Rock" was listed TWICE on one actor's page for the same gun).

Aesthetics aren't the only issue here. The idea is to make something much more organized, and tables present at least a better opportunity for that.

Yeah, something else I forgot about. The standard "*" listing by definition is unwieldy when page breaks become necessary.

Although recently, I found a command which separates entries automatically without lots of "<BR>". I used "<br clear=all>" on the Norinco Type 84 section of the AK-47 page, and that works better, too.

But anyway, I think we really need to continue the move towards tables.

Oh, yeah, and that reminds me...are we sorting tables by title or date? I vote for the latter, but would like to hear what everyone else thinks.

I had a bad first impression making the Maria Bello page but you fixed it and it looks much better now. Jcordel and Anonymous had messaged me about how they weren't particular fans of it, so I may have exaggerated "Most people on the site", my bad. I didn't mean to "whine", the format looks nice. It's being exacted and it looks better than when it was first introduced. I apoligize if I upset you on the matter. Come on Steve, aren't we friends? :)

We are always friends it's just we sometimes don't agree but it's cool.:) I think that it's will take some getting use to in this format. I figure that is what I can do to help those who have a difficult time with it.

Don't worry John besides you have enough to deal with living in New York.:D

Forgive me for still being confused, but is there any agreed-upon standard yet? If not, once such a standard is developed we need to make a properly functioning wiki template (For example). That's a much more organized way of doing it because simply applying the same kind of tables to every article individually will eventually snowball into a huge inconsistency problem, because if the standard is ever changed every article will need to be reworked individually. If a wiki template is used, whenever it's modified the changes will automatically take affect on every article it appears on.

If you know how wiki templates work already, disregard that, just sayin'. Anyway, I'm eager to know because I'd like to help apply the new standard to articles, because it'll be a big job.

If you guys check out the SIG-Sauer P220 pistol series page, you'll see my prefered version of the template. I haven't had time to finish the page yet, but doesn't what I have there look good. I also don't have them in reverse-chronological order, but I had planned to put it in that order.

I think we really need to agree on a template, so we don't have a million different styles on each page. Personally I really like the box-column format, and changing the other formats to it is as easy as changing a few letters in the text.

Yeah, looking at that now. I have a question: The video game sections have the columns "Mods" and "Passwords", what do they mean, exactly? I agree with MPM's suggestion that the template be standardized and used for all types of media.

If the gun has mods, what are they, and if the gun is only unlocked by a password, what is it.

By 'mods', I assume you mean differences from the weapon's real-life equivalent? As for 'password', having been a gamer for well over a decade, I can't think of a single example of a game in which a firearm is unlocked by a password, exactly. Even if a weapon's use in a game is restricted in some way (such as only being unlocked after a certain level is reached), that's not really relevant to this wiki, it's more like strategy guide material, so I don't see the point. Either way, both of those could be combined into 'Notes'.

I believe mods are how the gun can be changed in the game, not how it is based on real life.

As for passwords, some of the guns in MGS4 are unlocked only through password, and if the person doesn't know how to find them in the game, they won't be able to see it. So it may be game guide, but it helps users find guns that are IDed.

I like the suggestion, and we already have a ridiculous number of inconsistency problems with this site. I personally don't know how Wiki templates work, or how they could be applied to all of our existing pages. Can you tell me more? I would love to be able to standardize everything much more readily, and make so that all of our pages didn't have different formats depending on who makes what.

I agree on setting a standard on these as everyone has their own idea on how to set up the page. I don't think that we can have one standard layout and shoe horn Film, Television, Anime, and Video Games into it. The main categories on this site would be film and television and there are several variables that members want in those. I believe that we are very close to having a standard layouts for those specific categories but they still need fine tuning. Like the Television category do we need episode info or not. On the video games you can change or eliminate mods and passwords replacing them with notes but they need to finish up as the same size overall for looks. I am open to suggestions on any of these but the clocks is running as pages are set up everyday.

A template is essentially a bunch of code that's stored in the template namespace (i.e. Template:GunTable) and can be linked to from anywhere to replicate it. These can range from simple notices and labels (like those "This article needs sources" kind of notices you sometimes see at the top of Wikipedia articles), to more complicated tables and infoboxes that can be used to neatly format information. Such templates go a long way to simplifying things because once you've got one coded, you just link to it and fill in the fields, and it puts all the formatting there automatically, It's a bit hard to imagine, so I'll find a tangible example.

This is one of the templates on the Half-Life Wiki over at Wikia. It's a 'weapon infobox' and its purpose is to fit certain statistics about the game's weapons into a neat box aligned to the right side of each weapon page.

This is the infobox's template page, with information on how it's to be used, and an example of an empty one on the right side. All of the coding is on this page as well, but it's behind the scenes and can only be seen if you edit the page. To place the infobox on any page, you just link to it using the syntax shown in the center. Each = sign signifies a field that you can fill in with information that will then appear in the infobox.
http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/1...poninfobox.jpg

So place this text in an article...
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/233...oninfobox3.jpg

And you get this.
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/2...oninfobox2.jpg

Since all of the coding is stored in the template, not on each page, if you want to change the template in some way you just edit it, and those changes will instantly take effect on every page that links to its code. Makes it a lot easier to make sitewide changes.

So back to IMFDB, once we decide on a standard table design, if we can figure out how to code that into a template and then link to said template from every article, it would not only be standardized but a lot more user friendly and easy to edit. The only problem is, while I know how they work, I'm no good at coding templates, so we may need to get assistance with this from somewhere. Wikia's help forum might be a good place to start.

Okay. Mods can be covered in notes, and passwords is way too obscure to deserve its own section, because except for your example, I can't think of any other game in which weapons are unlocked that way. At any rate, if they are, that can be mentioned in the actual article on the game, can't it?

I agree that standardizing the boxes is most important, and I see no compelling reason to use the distinct sections mentioned above for video game sections. Notes will do the same job.

I just thought I should point out, on the box format version of the template I prefer, it looks much better if all the categories are filled out (adding unknown or none to those spots), because no box is made when the section is left empty, which looks bad. Look at "Jeffrey Dean Morgan"'s page for an example.