Thread:LadyAlys/@comment-665695-20150815074727/@comment-25085701-20150815184628

Adding my two centavos from the perspective of a long-term Wiki editor here and a career tech writer, and (most importantly) not an admin.

Grunni: I see what you're asking here -- I believe you're taking the long-term view, where it is easier to collapse the main categories: Template / items into subsections for display purposes. This will probably make sense in the long run, because each season we add a new set of gear.

As to why we've been doing it this way so far: short answer is 'because that was the example we had to work from.'

Originally, when I started on the Wiki a little over a year ago, there were only three sets of gear - the basic set, the Winter 2014 set, and the Spring 2014 set. We've added five new sets (Summer, Fall 2014, Winter, Spring, and Summer 2015)  since then, and I was responsible for adding three of those sets and Janetmango the other two.

When I added the first set (Summer 2014), I didn't really understand how templates worked, nor that you could nest them; so I just used the previous season as a template (no pun intended) to create the new one via copy/edit/create, and thus the new sets became flat/top level templates as well. It lent itself to consistency because when Janet picked up the next two after me, all she had to do was do what I did.

Most of the wiki editors don't dig down under the hood that far; so they won't see the benefits of nesting the templates down the extra level.

In the tech writing industry, as soon as you have more than a certain amount of indexed entries starting with the same word, you do tend to nest under the main heading. Generally the rule of thumb is 'more than 3' -- so Warrior, Healer, Rogue, Mage would definitely qualify at this point. But the others probably wouldn't, so if you look at the Templates in nested mode, would it hide the second level, or display anyway? As I see it on the Special page right now, it would wind up being listed as Warrior/Sunfish Warrior instead of Warrior Sunfish Warrior as it is today, which is probably why you were talking about adding extra plugins for subpages.

Each armor and weapon template set has 4 pointers to it; the Grand Gala page, the class page, the Equipment page, and a fourth page I can'f find on an easy search. As Lady Alys says, the other translated Wikis would have to be changed to be consistent, a total of 8 equipment sets x 2 categories (weapon/armor)  x 4 classes x 4 references = = 256 changes per wiki, for a benefit that's invisible unless we add the plugins.

While I recognize it's the 'it's because we've always done it this way' excuse in action here, and I also recognize that you're personally volunteering to make the changes, it's also about teaching people to do it the same way -- I just discovered that Janet didn't follow the same naming scheme I did.

Long story short: my vote is 'don't overcomplicate things unless we are willing to enforce a structured rule on creating templates across the board', which would have to have the buyin of the other power users at the very least. I'm personably amenable to it, since I see the wisdom in the long run, but I'm also the guy in my writing team that gets told 'you make things too complex' all the time. :)

Taldin (talk) 18:46, August 15, 2015 (UTC)