Template talk:Comicstory

In what way is this better than what we currently use? I don't understand the point at all. --Suki Brits 18:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

The current format just looks ugly and mismanaged to me. If it's only me that likes this, I won't cry over deletion. Interrobang 19:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see it in use. Oh, you have it here...

...that's not bad. All the contribuiter fields are plural, it's canted for covering stories, not issues (we do sometimes have articles for ulti-part stories folded into one article, can you think of a way to rephrase the 'issue number' so that say, 32-36 would make sense as a possible value? Also, '1991 Annual' needs to make sense as a value.

Also, we need a series field. I want this box to say 'Panni Armada Comic' on it somewhere, not just the publisher. If Dreamwave hadn't subtitled its G1 minis we'd have to do 'Dreamwave Generation 1 v2', as is we need to do Dreamwave's Generation 1: War and Peace. We need a series field because 'Dreamwave #5' is clearly inadequate. It should support that functionality.

If we're integrating that, might it make sense to integrate comicvav in some less verbose fashion? We have publisher, issue, how about previous and next as << and >>? (the only problem is that the logical place to put those controls is above the title, which is kinda obnoxious.) -Derik 19:28, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll iron out the details once the concept is accepted. No point working on something that nobody else cares for. Interrobang 19:42, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

The Caption field is pretty inadequate - it feels liek it's part of the list of information below, not connected with the image above. (A probablm people have always havd with infoboxes because we like the captions.)

I think you could unify then a bit more with background color and padding-bottom though, so that could work. -19:54, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeeeah. I don't think I'll be able to get around that. My lack of knowledge doesn't help much. Interrobang 20:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I... really don't like how this looks. I mean, the idea of a template for this info is alright, I guess, but... it just LOOKS ugly on the page. I'd rather keep the manually-typed-in stuff that at least looks alright. --M Sipher 20:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. Interrobang 21:06, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

What about this? or this? You could do that with a template- two separate visual elements declared through the template structure. (In this cae much easier through the template structure, because the breathing room between the two elements shown there has to be manually set to be slightly less than just two floated elements, or it looks funny.)

Things that are bad about this template: It pushes the vital statistics below the fold on small browser windows, and move them off to the side, essentially marginalizing things like the publication history, writers etc as the least important elements of the article.

Things that are good about this template: It pushes the vital statistics below the fold on small browser windows. Seriously- the vital statists aren't that vital. These articles are supposed to focus on the story, and that's mostly what people are going to use them to look up. Right now the vital statistics are on top (since they're like the story's metadata header) and are pushing the actual story synopsis and character info (the least important part of the story) down to a less prominent/important position.

If Interrobang is willing to keep working on the template without knowing if it'll be accepted or not, I'd like to see him do so. Unlike the character profilebox which seems stalled in development, this feels like it's actually iterating towards something that might end up useful/usable, and I'd like to see where it ends up. -Derik 21:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the first one. If we're going to have the image as a separate element, we might as well make it so completely. We probably won't need the title, since we already have the main title to tell the reader that. Comes down to either formatting the majority think looks better, I guess. Interrobang 21:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

G2 non-standard credits.

Should "Letterbots" and "Colorbot" be added to the list? - Starfield 14:03, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Extra Fields (Japanese, etc)

Should we set this up to inform the user about more of the extra fields, like Japanese or Romaji? I only know about them after seeing someone else's edit (though I could have examined the code of the next issue, but I wasn't thinking). --Loudstone 16:04, 21 April 2009 (EDT)

On the Japanese-form

Is it possible to tweak it to include "manga by"? Most manga don't really include letterers, and almost 90% of the time the artist is also the one handling the story duties, save the occasional collabs of artist and writer (like "Get Backers"). --Lonegamer78 21:59, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

Yeah, that makes more sense than including a bunch of credits for the same person. --abates 22:18, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

Huh. The "manga by" isn't showing up...? --Lonegamer78 22:29, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

It seems to be working OK for me. Where did you add it? --abates 22:42, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

I didn't. I only see "|manga=", no "|manga by=". And it's still showing the "letters/editors/inks" etc. *confused* --Lonegamer78 23:04, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

Ah, never mind. Just added it. NOW it's showing up. --Lonegamer78 23:05, 30 October 2012 (EDT)

Overcomplicated template

Can we please get rid of Mammalian Verisimilitude's changes to this template? Making it so only people who understand the esoteric workings of Template:Comicstory/seriesvariable can edit simple things like the title and categories is an awful idea. Mimi 16:18, 27 February 2013 (EST)

No comments? Mimi 09:59, 28 February 2013 (EST)

I think at the very least, there should be some documentation on seriesvariable to say "this is how you add a series" or "this is how you modify an existing series". If the person who created the template goes away, it ends up with other people having to work this stuff out. --abates 16:10, 3 March 2013 (EST)

Looking at it, the top ones are basically: |(code)=''[[(link to series page)]]''{{#if: {{{issueno|}}}| #{{{issueno}}}| {{{TPB|{{{type|}}}}}}}}{{#if: {{{chapters|}}}|issues:}}[[Category:(series name, minus The Transformers: or Transformers:) issues{{#if: {{{chapters|}}}|{{!}} *}}]]. The IDW ones are similar, but leech off the setup for the image templates like {{IDWG1interior{{#if:||{{{2}}}|}}}} and {{IDWAligned{{#if:||{{{2}}}|}}}} rather than including them directly, presumably to avoid entering them in more than one place.

And I suppose that's the intent behind the changes, to have a degree of consistency. Certainly, a couple of years ago, I noticed that different issues of the same series had differently-formatted titles in the infobox, and {{Episode{{#if:||{{{2}}}|}}}} has used codes for the G1 cartoon and a few others for much longer. But if you can't figure out how to add a series - there's absolutely no point to putting a one-shot - it would be easier just to use |seriesissue= and do it manually (an option which was never removed). Even if no more get added, there's certainly no value in reverting the extant ones. - SanityOrMadness 07:27, 4 March 2013 (EST)

It's still making it more difficult for the layperson to edit simple things in an article; I shouldn't have to dig into esoteric templates just to remove a redundant category. (And attaching categories to templates is screwing up with the alphabetic order this wiki always puts categories in.)

And what Abates said is pretty much what happened. Mammalian Verisimilitude pointlessly messed with templates and then disappeared last year. Mimi 04:56, 11 March 2013 (EDT)

This concern came up in the Discord server recently and after some review I wanted to present my thoughts on how to make this template easier to use for editors and a suggestion for a layout change to make it easier to digest the information for readers. I've done some analysis on the way we use the Comicstory template. I ran a program to look at every instance of the template being used, making note of what parameters each instance usses, and counting the total number of times each parameter is used. There's quite a few parameters and a fair number are only being used in a few instances. This seems to be because we want to show the credits exactly as they are listed. This has lead to a lot of code being added to the template and making it way more difficult to maintain. But our desire to maintain the original listings means we can't really get rid of any parameters. The one we can definitely ditch is the series parameter and the Comicstory/seriesvariable template. All that template accomplishes is some formatting of the title and automatically adds the correct category. The former can be done by just passing in the formatted title as a lot pagesalready do (see all of the Marvel runs) and the latter can just be another parameter to pass, if we want to keep that functionality at all. I can set up Teletraan-X to clean up the existing uses of the series parameter as there's 300 of them currently. We're stuck with the other parameters though.

Unless, abates is willing to install the Loops extension. With that, I could overhaul the template so that parameters could be added dynamically in markup instead of needing to edit the template.

For instance, this:

{{comicstory|seriesissue=[[The Transformers (Marvel comic)|''The Transformers'' (US)]] #31
|prev=The Cure!
|next=Used Autobots
|title="Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom"
|seriesissue2=[[The Transformers (Marvel comic)#Marvel UK|''The Transformers'' (UK)]] #128–129
|prev2=The Cure!
|next2=Worlds Apart!
|image=MarvelUS-31.jpg
|caption=This is awesome. You know it is.
|publisher=[[Marvel Comics]]
|date=April [[1987]]
|coverdate=August 1987
|writer=[[Bob Budiansky]]
|breakdowns=[[Don Perlin]]
|finishes=[[Jim Fern]]
|colorist=[[Nelson Yomtov|Nel Yomtov]]
|letterer=[[Rick Parker]]
|editor=[[Don Daley]]
|continuity=[[Marvel Comics continuity]]
}}

would become this:

{{comicstory|seriesissue=[[The Transformers (Marvel comic)|''The Transformers'' (US)]] #31
|prev=The Cure!
|next=Used Autobots
|title="Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom"
|seriesissue2=[[The Transformers (Marvel comic)#Marvel UK|''The Transformers'' (UK)]] #128–129
|prev2=The Cure!
|next2=Worlds Apart!
|image=MarvelUS-31.jpg
|caption=This is awesome. You know it is.
|publisher=[[Marvel Comics]]
|date=April [[1987]]
|coverdate=August 1987
|Writer:[[Bob Budiansky]]
|Breakdowns:[[Don Perlin]]
|Finishes:[[Jim Fern]]
|Colorist:[[Nelson Yomtov|Nel Yomtov]]
|Letterer:[[Rick Parker]]
|Editor:[[Don Daley]]
|continuity=[[Marvel Comics continuity]]
}}

and the template would loop through all the parameters of the format "Credit:Person" and insert them into the markup. This would be much easier to use because you'd never need to change the template, just the markup on the page where the template is used at. It also eliminates much of the hassle in keeping the documentation page up to date when parameters are added and trying to look through a list of 100+ items to see if the one you need exists already.

As I was looking at all this, I realized that our visual layout is a bit hard to parse. The publishing and continuity information is blended in with the actual credits and it's hard tell what's what at a glance. My suggestion would be to visually separate the credits into a separate section with its own header at the bottom like this: User:Tigerpaw28/Sandbox/Car_Wash_of_Doom.

Does any of this sound good to anyone else? --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 15:33, 30 June 2021 (EDT)

IMHO on the Loops extension option, having different parameters specified in different formats might be confusing, but I wonder if a way around it might be to have an infoboxcredits template so it would look like:

{{comicstory|seriesissue=[[The Transformers (Marvel comic)|''The Transformers'' (US)]] #31
|prev=The Cure!
|next=Used Autobots
|title="Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom"
|seriesissue2=[[The Transformers (Marvel comic)#Marvel UK|''The Transformers'' (UK)]] #128–129
|prev2=The Cure!
|next2=Worlds Apart!
|image=MarvelUS-31.jpg
|caption=This is awesome. You know it is.
|publisher=[[Marvel Comics]]
|date=April [[1987]]
|coverdate=August 1987
|credits={{infoboxcredits
|Writer:[[Bob Budiansky]]
|Breakdowns:[[Don Perlin]]
|Finishes:[[Jim Fern]]
|Colorist:[[Nelson Yomtov|Nel Yomtov]]
|Letterer:[[Rick Parker]]
|Editor:[[Don Daley]]}}
|continuity=[[Marvel Comics continuity]]
}}

That template could then potentially be used in other infobox templates where suitable. I'm down as a "yes" vote for visually separating the credits as well. That looks a lot better. --abates (talk) 21:05, 30 June 2021 (EDT)

I like that idea. Splitting the credits out both simplifies Comicstory and gives us a template we can reuse elsewhere. Excellent. --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 14:38, 1 July 2021 (EDT)