Thoughts on the new template

[MattyDienhoff]

Originally Posted by MT2008

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.

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.


So place this text in an article...


And you get this.


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.

Originally Posted by Gunmaster45

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.

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.