Thoughts on the new template

[Gunmaster45]

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.

[MattyDienhoff]

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.

[Gunmaster45]

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

[MattyDienhoff]

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'.

[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.

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by MattyDienhoff

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.

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.

[Phoenixent]

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.

[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.

[Gunmaster45]

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.