MediaWiki talk:Community Portal/Archive29

[[{{#sub:MediaWiki_talk:Community_Portal/Archive29|0|-0}}|«]]	Community Portal / Archive29   e	[[{{#sub:MediaWiki_talk:Community_Portal/Archive29|0|-0}}|»]]
from~January 2009 to~February 2009 notes:

We need a new franchise nav template

Back in 2007 I complained about the franchise nav fucking up the layout of the Transformers (2007) article once we added the image of the teaser poster. Nearly 2 years later, we still done haven't anything about this, and it's continued to fuck up other franchise pages (if they have an image from the show or something to serve as the main image), the latest victim being the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen article. Can we please work on a new nav template, or hell, some kind of info box like we've done for comic and episode articles, so the layout of these franchise articles aren't so haphazard? :( --FFN 07:24, 9 January 2009 (EST)

I agree. I think it should be a vertical bar at the top of the page, like the disambigs are, presenting the franchise links horizontally rather than vertically (as the current one does) for minimal vertical footprint.

Do you have any examples of what you think franchise navigation should look like? Places it's done well on other sites? Layout bits that serve a similar function? Completely unrelated... stuff... that you just like the 'look' of? (Because if we're redesignign the franchise navs, that pink hideousness has to go. Steve-o threw them up in that color when we were first designing them witht he expectation that the design would change, and it never did. Ugh.)

I-I... I just had a brain... thing... for a new version of the messagebox template! Better, cleaner, more versatile code-- we could keep the overhang everyone seems to like... Okay, I might not remember this, so the keyword is "relative > absolute.wrapper." Yay! -Derik 16:38, 9 January 2009 (EST)

I like your idea of a horizontally-placed franchise bar at the top, but I also think the pages for the movie itself (being media, should have the episode/issue infobox we've been using for television episodes and comic books for conformity. The info box also allows us to stick the credits of all the high-ranked crew (director, writers, producers ect) without them being shuffled off to the middle of the page like we did on the TF 2007 article. --FFN 00:47, 10 January 2009 (EST)

The two layouts can be contradictory. This is not a problem. -Derik 03:19, 10 January 2009 (EST)

OOps, I meant horizontally placed franchise bar. --FFN 06:58, 10 January 2009 (EST)

...And I meant to write "complimentary," so it's all good. (Horizontal nav + vertical info box = an "L" rotated 180 degrees.) -Derik 20:58, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I've moved the navigation on Transformers (2007) to the top of the article instead of the bottom. The pink is too bold, IMO- but we still need a signifier color. We use tan for Episode boxes and blue for comic mini-series, so if you can pick a shade that's not one of those, it'd be appreciated.

Colors, spacing, rounded borders-- even the bullet shape that appears between items-- are all negotiable. (It was originally a dash, in the old template.) Scout gave me a CSS work file whose contents are loaded by everyone (but only editable for me since it's on my server) so you don't have to do anything special to make the changes visible. (If you wanted any other CSS changes, ask now!)

Just as a reminder- you don't have to think minimalist about these kinds of design. This was my last proposed revision to the messagebox template. That level of customization is completely possible. (Though not always desirable in a template which will be ignored much of the time.) -Derik 00:06, 13 January 2009 (EST)

Couldn't we put it in the bottom? I find pages with templates of that sort right at the very top to be ugly. It's obnoxious to a reader who just wants to read the article, not have related articles shoved in their face right away. Save it for the last thing they read, just like how rational encyclopedias put a "see also" at the bottom. —Interrobang 00:33, 13 January 2009 (EST)

We could, maybe, after everyone has had a chance to weigh in. This is an iterative design process of making changes, gauging responses, and making changes. We're using the Transformers (2007) page to test this because it's nto currently being worked on, and most people's opinions are too vague to know what they think without actually seeing it in use. -Derik 17:47, 13 January 2009 (EST)

Silver? I mean, the Movie logos do have that grey/silver thing going on.

Other than that, looks fine to me... I'm neutral on the top/bottom placement question, although most wikis do put that sort of thing at the bottom. Maybe bump up the font size of the title a bit and add a little padding whitespace? And how are you handling the list items? Floats or display:inlines? Was thinking it might look better to center the items, but I don't know if that would be feasible. --Jeysie 00:38, 13 January 2009 (EST)

This is silvery + top placement. "Transformers (2007)" Responses from the community? -Derik 17:47, 13 January 2009 (EST)

Noice, I dig. Still curious if there's any way to center the lists, though. If they're display:inlined, I think a "text-align:center" on the UL would do it? (If they're floated, then that's a different matter.)

As for the top placement, still neutral. I think the main problem is that it looks funny visually when sitting under a message box. --Jeysie 18:00, 13 January 2009 (EST)

I like it. I disagree completely with Interrobang. I want it up front and center of the article for ease of use for our readers. Burying it on the bottom of our articles is silly, because you'd hardly ever see them, especially on articles as long as Transformers (2007). --FFN 08:13, 14 January 2009 (EST)

I kinda understand Interrobang's reasoning... but while putting these kinds of nav boxes at the bottom often makes sense for Wikipedia... wikipedia also has a single long article on all of Transformers Armada. If you're at an article about TF Armada-- what you want is in that article somewhere. We divide things further than wikipedia. You can land on an Armada page--, and then have to go 'sideways' from cartoon to comic. On Wikipedia there is only down.

(I should apologize to !?, I was terribly snarky and passive agressive when he moved "Generation One (cartoon)" to The Transformers (cartoon), but I've recently come around on the idea and think it's not only a good idea, but possibly a great idea that's gonna make our entire overall page structure make more sense.) -Derik 09:26, 14 January 2009 (EST)

I know a significant chunk of the users here area really ideologically opposed the visual footprint of the disambig at the top of the article-- whether long and thin or short and squat, it takes up too much space and pushes the main content down-- particularly on the Film pages.

So naturally, I'm responding by quadrupling that footprint. ;)

I think there's some merit to it though, I'd like to hear some initial responses... basically the idea is that most of the franchise sub-pages (comics, for example) are really visually bare. Just an endless expanse of text. I'm proposing that our franchise nav be mated with a big-ass franchise logo... so that when you land on a franchise page yoo $%^&*( know where you are without squinting to read all the text. It's a lot more visually inviting, and Re: FFN and others' chronic complaint that the nav pushed down the movie poster (which it did,) I think the logo reads as content, and the nav then becomes an mere accent to that content-- reducing impression that the "good stuff" has been pushed down.

I'd been looking for a way to fit the franchise logos in anyway-- I think they belong on pages like these, but I could never find a treatment that didn't make them tiny and pathetic.

Anyway... responses? -Derik 12:53, 14 January 2009 (EST)

No one responded. I love you guys.

Well I went ahead and did it anyway. You can see the result here.

I think this addresses some of Kil's concerns re: the franchise nav pushing down the page content by marrying it with the franchise logo, which is, itself, content. (As well as just trying to minimize the overall visual footprint.) The game page has a different nav on top because it's somewhat unique... (4 games that are all sorta "reflections" of 1 game.) I'm nto sure how to handle that... but this seems like a good solution for most franchises.

Can I get some responses this time? -Derik 17:34, 1 February 2009 (EST)

I like it... it takes up about as much space as the old one, but is classier-looking.

Only suggestion: is it possible to do it with divs instead of a table, so that the content can sit underneath the logo and next to the navbox properly? The extra whitespace from the content being pushed underneath looks odd. --Jeysie 17:43, 1 February 2009 (EST)

I'm not sure I follow your question. Tell you what... resize your window while viewing the template, then come back and rephrase the question. -Derik 17:45, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Ignore that, i just figured out what you meant. The nav box had vertical margins set, creating unnecessary whitespace even when the window was very small. I've removed them.

Not exactly... basically, this is what it was looking like, when I thought it looking more like this would be visually tidier. I didn't mind the whitespace. (And I think left-aligning the list might look a little better...) --Jeysie 18:04, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Not without a tradeoff... right now the logo resizes the window, and that's dependent on the eay tables behave rather than div's. You're suggesting basically "floating" the franchise nav like a thumbnail... but that wss the exact behavior that some users objected to-- they didn't want the franchise nav pushing down the movie poster, which they felt should be aligned with the content... the franchise nav is, to their reasoning, more like a disambig-- it's above-and-serperate from the main article content, and should not intrude upon it. (I don't particularly agree, but I see where they're coming from.)

Also, try shift-reloading- you've still got the old CSS styles cached. -Derik 18:17, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Setting a width on the image div would still resize the window. And... the movie nav already pushes down the poster regardless, as you can see in those pics... I simply thought that tucking the text up under the logo instead of all of that whitespace might look better.

And I do have the new version, I just thought that the old version showed the "problem" better (though the new version helps it somewhat, at the cost of it all looking kinda squished together). --Jeysie 18:34, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Setting a width on the image would also make this a fixed-width layout. The nav-module itself is 200+ pixels, if you set the logo at 500px (which seems standard-to-small for how we size franchise logos,), bearing in mind that the toolbox bar on the left of the wiki pages is already 200px... you're now committing to a page that only displays right if the user has their browser sizes to be 1000 or more pixels wide. If it's smaller- the logo would start to squish the nav-module unattractively, or just force it (and the article content) down.

In either case the navigation module would be pushing the thumbnail out of line with the main article content, which was the primary objection users had with just using the old-style navigation boxes.

(I'm not sure about the dynamically-resizing banner images myself... but their purpose was/is allow for a large image without having to worry about them pushing content down.)-Derik 18:49, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Well, you said "right now the logo resizes the window, and that's dependent on the way tables behave rather than divs", so, if it already resizes the browser window, then this is already a fixed-width layout. *is confused*

And... I guess it's a matter of... having the franchise banner be one whole that pushes everything under it would be fine if it actually looked like one whole. Right now it just looks like the logo is a normal top-of-the-page logo and the text wants to tuck up right under it, except it doesn't. (This'll likely be less of an issue for those franchise logos that have as much height as they do width, but for the Movie logo it looks strange to me. *shrug*) --Jeysie 19:06, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Incorrect! The template width varies with the side of the page- which itself varies as you resize your browser! -Derik 19:43, 1 February 2009 (EST)

So... you mean that the logo resizes with the window? 'Cause that would make more sense... But in any case, I didn't know, because... my browser pretty much has one size. (I have a 1024x768 monitor.) --Jeysie 21:50, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Yes. Try scooching your browser partially offsceen and enlarging the window, you'll see the log change size. (Well, or just make it smaller, ditto.) -Derik 00:06, 2 February 2009 (EST)

Clarifying- users previous objections centered on a desire to see the first line of the article proper and the poster thumbnail adhere to the same vertical rule, with none of the disambigs/messageboxes/navigation above that impacting their layout relative ot one another. -Derik 18:52, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Sorry about not responding man. I thought the issue had been dealt with when you did the big bar across the screen. I like this new version even better. --FFN 18:23, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Meh. -Derik 18:49, 1 February 2009 (EST)

So, Derik broke the site.

Or at the least, something regarding his javascript comments is now contained in a pink box to the left. With spelling mistakes.--Rosicrucian^Talk 10:25, 14 January 2009 (EST)

So it's gone now, and Derik is just fucking with me.--Rosicrucian^Talk 11:15, 14 January 2009 (EST)

No, now I am just fucking with you. -Derik 11:16, 14 January 2009 (EST)

Blink tags? Really, Derik? That's just gauche.--Rosicrucian^Talk 11:19, 14 January 2009 (EST)

Let's see how long you can look at it without developing an eye twitch. -Derik 11:22, 14 January 2009 (EST)

There's a button we're supposed to press if you go mad from power, isn't there?--Rosicrucian^Talk 11:23, 14 January 2009 (EST)

Not even Captain Planet can save you now. -Derik 11:43, 14 January 2009 (EST)

Extension Suggestion

I'd like to restate my suggestion of this extension that lets you choose to preload code when creating pages, as I think it would come in handy for helping to standardize various types of pages.Anyone who wants to try it out can play around with it on my wiki via the "Select boilerplate" section. You can reload a new set of text just by choosing a new option and hitting "Load" again, without having to delete the existing loaded test first. (Just that I request you make my life easier by not actually saving the page after you're done playing, since the extension by default only works when first creating a page.) --Jeysie 14:32, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Resolving policy questions

For all the mouth-foam and butthurt and santorum that came out of the disambig-parenthetical debate, I think the overall progression shows how best to deal with policy questions: A point of contention is raised, a debate ensues, an alternative proposal emerges, a sandbox is created to test it out, the implications of the alternative become clearer, and it stands or falls on its own merits. In this case, the sandbox bore out some of the criticisms raised against the idea, and the established rule became stronger. Next time someone questions the system, we have something to point them to besides a policy statement. And who knows - maybe there still IS a better idea that nobody's thought of yet, but if someone wants to try, they can see a pretty thorough dissection of why we do things the way we do and how at least one alternative didn't pan out. In fact, I'm wondering if we ought to include links to this and other debates in the relevant policy statements, to try to deter people from repeating old arguments. - Jackpot 15:05, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Probably not a bad idea. (Though if we're going to link to this particular Sandbox indefinitely, I propose it gets moved to be attached to something more permanent like a subpage of the Help:Disambiguation page.) --Jeysie 15:28, 16 January 2009 (EST)

TFU.info links and Tech Spec graphs

There was a discussion not long ago over here about whether we should dump the new Tech-Spec-graph-under-toy-pics idea that we've been trying. It started to spill over into whether we should include quotes and functions and so on, and I want to heartily endorse Siph's idea of dropping all such verbatim-info presentation and just including a link to TFU.info at the end of every toy write-up instead. Our current policy of only linking to one TFU page per character gives that particular toy (with its bio and specs) primacy. Yes, TFU does provide links to other toys of the same character, but those don't always agree with how we divide the characters up. Plus this idea gives the TFU links more sense of purpose than being a perpetual afterthought. Anyone agree/disagree? - Jackpot 15:43, 16 January 2009 (EST)

It's also way more layout friendly. --M Sipher 17:43, 16 January 2009 (EST)

I agree on all counts. -- Repowers 18:03, 16 January 2009 (EST)

I triple-agree, because it means it forces us to track down (or at least attempt to) a link to tech-specs for every toy that has one.

What would this kinds of link look like in practice? God a test page?-Derik 18:56, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Here's a more-or-less random clump I grabbed from Starscream (G1)/toys:

---

You can tell he's evil because he's spiky.

• Starscream (Classic Pretender, 1989)
  • Accessories:

Starscream was released as a Classic Pretender with a human shell of a badly dressed man. The inner robot is a simplified version of the original toy transforming into an almost Superdeformed F-15 fighter. His arms, legs and rear wing assemblies are all cast in blue plastic, with the latter also serving as dual laser weapons in robot mode.

For more information, see Classic Pretender / Legends Starscream on TFU.info.

• Starscream (Legends, 1989)
  • Accessories:

The inner robot of Pretender Starscream was also sold separately as a K-Mart Exclusive "Legends" figure, and was released with Legends Bumblebee, Jazz, and Grimlock in a Japanese giftset the same year.

For more information, see Classic Pretender / Legends Starscream on TFU.info.

He loved the gray helmet so much, he used it again.

• Starscream (Action Master, 1990)
  • Accessories:

Action Master Starscream is a non-transforming action figure based loosely on his cartoon appearance but using a colour scheme derived from the Pretender toy. His main accessory is the Turbo Jet, a small personal attack craft that Starscream can set astride like a motorcycle. The Turbo Jet rolls on three small wheels, and can transform into a gun emplacement. This mold was redecoed as Action Master Thundercracker.

For more information, see Action Master Starscream on TFU.info.

Wait a minute. Since when do ghosts have painted metal chests?

• Ghost Starscream (2001)
  • Japanese ID number: D-22
  • Accessories: 2 fists (left & right), 2 missile launchers, 2 null rays, 2 cluster bombs, 2 wings (left & right), 2 tail fins (left & right), 2 tail wings (left & right), landing gear

Ghost Starscream was an E-Hobby Exclusive release of the 2001 Starscream reissue, cast almost entirely in translucent plastics, except for those parts made of die-cast metal.

For more information, see Ghost Starscream on TFU.info.

---

I figure the links should name their specific toys so the reader can tell that each one is different (and the naked URLs are hideous, so I hope and assume that that option's right out). I think the italics separate the statement nicely from the actual write-up. But beyond that, I don't see the need for any fancier treatment. Edit: I admit "For more information, see" might be a bit verbose for something we're going to see repeated EVERYWHERE, but I didn't want it to be completely without context. "See also" could work too.

- Jackpot 20:21, 16 January 2009 (EST)

We're getting there. We might want to indent and bullet-point the external links. For example...

---

Wait a minute. Since when do ghosts have painted metal chests?

• Ghost Starscream (2001)
• Japanese ID number: D-22
• Accessories: 2 fists (left & right), 2 missile launchers, 2 null rays

Ghost Starscream is an E-Hobby Exclusive release of the 2001 Starscream reissue, cast almost entirely in translucent plastics, except for those parts made of die-cast metal. He has lots of nifty spring-loaded gimmicks... in imaginationland.

This mold was also used by a metric buttload of Seekers.

• Ghost Starscream information at TFU.info.

• Ghost Starscream gallery at Seibertron.com

---

And... good gods, are thew Starscream images on that page that far down and that tiny? Time for a cleanup job, methinks. --M Sipher 21:31, 16 January 2009 (EST)

I'm not sure about the word "gallery," since it doesn't convey "bio and Tech Specs and everything" to me. Plus our pictures are usually better, so why would you even want to see the "gallery" over there? I can't think of a better alternative off the top of my head, though, besides the generic "information". - Jackpot 21:37, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Tweakage, plus adapting in case of multiple external links. Simply for example purposes, I shortened the items list and upsized the image more towards a "common" entry type than the actual Ghostscream entry will be. Thoughts? --M Sipher 22:03, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Ah, the bullet does make more sense if there's the potential for multiple links. I can't think of any changes to make, so thumbs-up. - Jackpot 22:24, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Say what you will about Seibertron, their photo galleries are nice indeed. --M Sipher 22:28, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Nice, I like it. ;D --TX55^TALK 06:47, 17 January 2009 (EST)

So have we definitely, positively decided to dump this techspec business or what? Because right now articles that did have tech specs have had the tech specs removed by people who were against them, but loads of other articles still have the tech specs. --FFN 13:25, 26 January 2009 (EST)

Simply because we haven't gotten around to them yet. --M Sipher 14:26, 26 January 2009 (EST)

What about characters who don't have toys to link to? I know Soundblaster and Elita One have tech specs (off their DST bust packaging) but those wouldn't be on tfu.info.--MrBlud 15:10, 26 January 2009 (EST)

Uh, Soundblaster DOES have a toy. As for Elita One, that can be told in a paragraph in the writeup. If anything, that will fill what will surely be blank space created by the existence of the bust photo. --M Sipher 15:19, 26 January 2009 (EST)