MarioWiki:Proposals/Archive/30

Navigation Templates
SUPPORT 13-0
 * ''Draft: User:Walkazo/Essays

This proposal is aiming to do for navigation templates, what this proposal did for categories. As seen in the draft, this will expand and update Navigation Templates, and while this will not overhaul the system like the categories proposal, there are a few changes, which I'll briefly go over here.

First of all, the policy includes a big chart of colours that should be used for all game- and series-based templates; I also have examples of recoloured templates further down my page. (There was already a proposal about this, but that user didn't create an actual code, so no actual changes could/should have come as a result of its passing.) Non-series-based templates (i.e. stuff like or ) can be given unique colours that pertain to their subject matter, rather than using the same colours as their parent series.

Secondly, the order in which templates should be placed on articles is outlined in the policy: namely, any random templates (i.e. species-based templates) should come first, followed by all the game/series-based templates, which should go in pure chronological order. So, unlike History sections, which clump series together, different games would simply be arranged according to the year they came out, with no regard for when the rest of the series' installations were released. Instead, the templates' colour-coding can be used to pick out all the members of a given series.

Finally, the policy outlines what types of templates can be made. Basically, there are three types of templates, each with slightly different content structure and criteria:
 * Game-specific templates will ideally contain everything about a game, like or, whereas separate templates about certain specific aspects of a game should hereon in be avoided. However, if a subject is very numerous, such as minigames, levels or RPG items, it can keep its own separate template, since merging it might make the main template too bulky. For example,  (bonus challenges) should be folded into , but  can stay separate. Both the main template and the separate level/whatever template should go on the level articles, but obviously, the level template wouldn't need to go on non-level pages (except the game's page itself, which should have all the relevant game-specific templates).
 * Series-wide templates should almost always be templates that list the games in a series, rather than templates for subjects that are found all throughout a series. These should only be made for things like that have lots of overlap or parallels between games best served by back-to-back comparisons, or things like, where a centralized list of far-reaching subjects is likely to be organizationally useful in a manner similar to species templates (see next entry), but limited to a single series and organized by game. In most cases, however, game-specific templates are a better way to organize things than templates like  or , both of which will be scrapped should this policy pass.
 * Everything else are species templates, which groups things based on what they are, rather than where they come from. Most of these templates will be species-based, like or, but important items like , and even a few miscellaneous subjects like  or  are given this sort of template too. The only stipulation is that they all have to be decently important, numerous and/or complicated: really minor and small, or overly large, vaguely defined groups of species (i.e. anything smaller than , or things like Category:Fish) don't need templates, and items and miscellanea are under even stricter scrutiny, so users will have to think long and hard before making templates like these.

The policy also has a big section on how to set up templates (i.e. what headers to use, how to arrange the lists of links, etc.), but that's a lot of nitty-gritty details, and it's mostly explaining what we already do, so I won't go over that here. If you have any questions about details on the draft or aspects that I could only briefly touch upon in the proposal, definitely post them in the comments, but overall, I hope this and the draft are enough to convince you that this will be a vast improvement to the small, outdated policy we have today.

Proposer: Deadline: March 30, 2012, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) - Per my proposal.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) - Per proposal.
 * 5) This is a great idea. Per Proposal.
 * 6) Per proposal.
 * 7) - Per all.
 * 8) - Per proposal.
 * 9) Per proposal. Little bit complicated, but good idea.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) Per all
 * 12) Per proposal.
 * 13) Per proposal. We badly need this.

Comments
I know you're trying to be clear, but can you please clarify further/sum it up what the changes are? I can't really comprehend what's going to happen, it seems too complex.
 * I don't understand this proposal either. All I know is that it is supposed to improve organization or something in templates. The rest, I had trouble comprehending.
 * The first section (of this proposal) covers the various template colors that are to be used (the color depends on the template). The second section determines template priority (so at the bottom of an article, you'd have species templates, followed by game/series templates (in order of release date by game)). The third section details what information goes into each template. The rest is about making templates in general.
 * Ah, thanks for clearing that up
 * No problem.

Mario4Ever's summary was bang on. And to clarify, this proposal isn't so much about making a few specific changes, but rather, getting a bigger, better policy approved. A lot of the drafted update to Navigation Templates is just explaining unwritten conventions that are already more-or-less followed, but from this point onwards, there will be something concrete to refer back to. It's also regulating a few things that are inconsistent now, or at the very least, making recommendations based on the various ways users are already setting up their templates. There are too many details to list, but there are a few notable features that I can further boil down if you guys do want the specific changes: The template classification and the terminology is also new (under the old system, there's four template types, whereas there's three types in the draft), but that's more of an internal change: it's important from a policy standpoint, but only the above list will really be affecting the wiki at large. A couple of the finer details (which I didn't talk about in the proposal to save space) that will also affect folks are: And that's all I can recall for now; I can't simplify the proposal any more than that without getting rid of the details, but like I said at the beginning of this post, when it comes to an in-the-nutshell description, M4E's post already has it covered. -
 * New colour-coding system (different series get different colours; random stuff gets personalized colours).
 * New order on templates (random stuff first, followed by games in chronological order).
 * Templates about subjects across a series (i.e. ) are now discouraged.
 * Everything about a game should be in one template, rather than multiple smaller ones, which used to be done periodically. The exception to this is when there's a really big subject like SMG galaxies, which can be left separate just to keep the templates from getting unmanageably large.
 * In the cases where there is a separate template for an aspect of a game, both that template and the main template would go on the page (i.e. a SMG galaxy would have both and, but an SMG enemy would only get ), whereas currently, the main template is often omitted.
 * Templates must be 100% wide (most of them already are, but there are a couple that run afoul of this, however a lot of them are already in trouble with the fourth bullet point).
 * If a page has 10 or more templates, they should be collapsed using ; the original threshold is 7. As always, the templates themselves should all be collapsible.
 * Templates should not have categories in them (this is already on the categories policy, but this emphasizes it).
 * Nav templates are for mainspace only (same as the current policy), with galleries and game subpages (/beta, /staff, etc.) getting their own special templates.
 * Really minor or vaguely defined subjects shouldn't get templates (i.e. yes to and, no to  or  , same as always.

Would Template:GPteams be merged to Template:PM2 as a result of this proposal?

I have a question about the templates: would it be a good idea if we add pictures to some templates? Or do all of them have to be a solid color?


 * Reversinator: No, GPteams is large and complex enough to remain separate: it's a good idea to sort the teams, but it would take up too much room and draw too much focus to a relatively minor aspect of the game to do so in the main PM2 template. LeftyGreenMario: Solid colour; templates don't need flashy pictures, and most won't get them anyway, which will just make things inconsistent and draw extra attention to a few select templates, wrecking the uniformity of the colour-coded blocks. However, I do think the image-background currently used on would be a neat addition to, seeing as that template is unique, and appears on a special group of articles (which are all about images).  and other templates like  or  might also work with that image setup, but with different background colours (i.e. dark blue from the water levels, and black for castles/underground; after that we'd have to get creative), or possibly different games' sprites, although that would be a lot more complex to make and set up. I didn't include that idea in the policy draft right off the bat, since I'm still mulling over the details, and seeing as it's a very specialized idea, I'd rather get specific approval for it with a subsequent Proposal. -
 * Also, it would be nice to see what the templates will look like when it's finished. Considering the support in this proposal, maybe you can work on the future templates as soon as possible. That way, I can have a better understanding what the result will be. Also, it is possible to make templates always expanded when only a few of them are present, like in the minigame articles?
 * The future templates are currently here
 * Hm, my CSS makes all those templates the same color. :P
 * You can see how it looks like when you log out.
 * Odd - I copied all the actual template codes directly and then swapped the colours, nothing more: no idea why there'd be a problem seeing them. (Also, this is actually a more direct link to the test templates.) Anyway, I don't know if there's any way to make templates automatically expanded on short pages, but I wouldn't recommend it anyway: it'd be inconsistent with long pages, pushing the [show] button isn't exactly arduous, and personally, I think it looks better when they're automatically collapsed anyway - it makes the pages less bottom-heavy. -