Template talk:Infobox pirate/Archive2

From YPPedia

This discussion is continued from Talk:Hawkings, but has been a while in coming. I see a couple areas of discussion, so I made some subheadings. We can expand/contract these, but editing subsections should decrease edit conflicts. Please be sure to sign your comments using --~~~~, or the second-last button on the edit bar, above. --AtteSmythe 13:31, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

Purpose of Infobox_pirate (info to be included)

I really like the idea of displaying rank and crew information, but I'm concerned about multi-pirate pages, of which there are many. This works for the galleries, since the information is contained in the linked page. I don't think I'd like seeing several 'pirate-at-a-glance' boxes in a row, since 6 different 3-4 element boxes would be about a screenlength long. Thoughts? --AtteSmythe 15:23, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

I'm in favor of including generic pirate information as well such as rank, crew, flag and titles. My reason is that it standardizes info pages to look like other existing info pages such as crew and flag. There has been some concern about some of this type information changing often but in my mind SO list on crew pages changes pretty regularly and even if the information on pirate pages were forced to the text portion it would still be there and still be out of date just as quickly as if it appeared in the at-a-glance box on the side. seems to me that the page will be equally out of date either way.
Here is what I would like to see in the infobox
  • Ocean (To be consistent with Crew/Flag pages)
  • Name(To be consitent with Crew/Flag Pages)
  • Home Port
  • Crew
  • Crew Rank
  • Crew Title (Somewhat Optional)
  • Flag (Mostly in that it links to Flag title which is a good piece of information. (King, Queen, Prince, Lord, etc)
  • Flag Title
All of this information is easily accessable through the pirate information page in the game.--Kgarrett1969 07:09, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
All of this information is easily accessable through the pirate information page in the game. Then we ought to be linking to the in-game pirate info page instead of repeating it here, especially since this is all information that will change often. Additionally, pirates that have a slower rate of change on this information are more likely to play on several oceans simultaneously, thus making for a confusing melange of statistics..--Fiddler 07:38, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
Unfortunately, at last check, we're not permitted to link to the yoweb pages from the YPPedia. Otherwise, I'd wholeheartedly agree - it'd make the infobox_pirate maintenance a lot easier. --AtteSmythe 08:39, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
When the new pirate info pages go into effect, we're going to be allowed to link to them. Woo. --Guppymomma 08:47, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
That's fantastic, actually! It lets us build the infobox_pirate with the in-game information page in mind, and reduce the duplicate information to what's really, really pertinent. It also gives us a soft timeline - it'd be really sexy to have the new infobox rollout coincide with the new in-game pirate pages. Maybe it's not worth sitting on a finished redesign until then, though, if we even get it done on time. Rambling. Real point is in the first sentence. --AtteSmythe 08:51, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
Bumpykins as the new info page is out now. Is adding a link allowed? --Angelbeaver (talk) 09:58, 26 October 2006 (PDT)
Yes, it is - see the design ideas below in my and Fiddler's sandboxes for ideas on how to integrate these links into the template in lieu of the galleries section. --AtteSmythe 10:07, 26 October 2006 (PDT)
Is it just me or does anyone else feel overwhelmed looking at the giant swathes of text on this talk page? :) --Guppymomma 10:30, 26 October 2006 (PDT)
Not so much overwhelmed but some nice tidying would be great.--Angelbeaver (talk) 10:39, 26 October 2006 (PDT)
My attempts at organisation have failed! Woe! --AtteSmythe 10:46, 26 October 2006 (PDT)
Oh no, it's very organized, just not tidy. :P --Angelbeaver (talk) 13:33, 26 October 2006 (PDT)

The pirate infobox ought to be used for monummental, at-a-glance type information. A reader should be able to load up an article and, by quickly looking at the infobox, say to themselves "Oh, that's what he looks like" or "Oh, he won a familiar once. Look, he even designed one of the islands on Sage." The information included should be the type of thing that gets added once and then never (or rarely) changes. These are encylopedia articles, not homepages. Unfortunately, the latest additions to the infobox (pets and trinkets) have muddled this concept.--Fiddler 07:38, 26 September 2006 (PDT)

That's my fault, but I was trying to head off the sort of spotty customisation we've seen by providing a built-in alternative, and one that's not available on the yoweb page. Live and learn, I guess. --AtteSmythe 08:39, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
I still maintain that the Pirate Infobox should have the same look and feel that all the other infoboxes have and currently it does not. This one IMHO sticks out like a sore thumb when you compare it to the Crew and Flag info boxes. I would still like to see it look similar to all the other infoboxes on the Wiki. Header, generic information about the pirate, etc. Why not provide for multiple ocean crews like we do familiars. (ie Ocean1crew, Ocean2crew, Ocean1crewrank, etc?--Kgarrett1969 11:17, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
I still maintain that the Pirate Infobox should have the same look and feel that all the other infoboxes have and currently it does not. Why? Or more importantly, how? Please feel free to demonstrate some ideas, either here on the wiki or with images if you don't feel comfortable with tables and divs.--Fiddler 12:35, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
Here's something I said back in July on this very page: Trying to represent anywhere from one to seven oceans visually in the infobox is too much information: we have to rely on the reader to acually read the article at some point...--Fiddler 14:21, 26 September 2006 (PDT)

Design of Infobox_pirate

Wih the introduction of an in-game familiar listing, I'd like to propose limiting the number of familars displayed in the infobox to ten. This would still allow for multiple winners to showcase either the first ten, or their ten most memorable. I suggest having a lrage number at the bottom of the familiar box that then counts off any remaining familiars (Silverdawg's article would show ten familiars in the box and then a huge 33! at the bottom, almost like counting off Vegases in Shipwrightery.--Fiddler 18:04, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

I agree maybe even limit it to 8. This would also need to happen for trinkets, trophies and pets as well. I for one don't have a lot of familiars but I do have quite a trinket collection. --Kgarrett1969 07:11, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
I'm of the opinion that pets and trinkets in the infobox should be limited to exactly one. As for inside the article, I am exploring options that would allow for an infinitely large listing of pets and trinkets without taking up huge amounts of space on the page.--Fiddler 07:41, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
It's been several weeks no with no objections. Tomorow I'll start cutting down the infobox listing of familiars to ten. I also have a method in mind to continue listing all familiars visually on a page; expect a demonstration with Silverdawg's page tomorrow.--Fiddler 00:19, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Take a look at Silverdawg for an example of the show/hide box in use with the large number of familiars. It places a huge mess of code in the middle of the page, but unfortunately there's no way around that without making the table itself large and unwieldy.--Fiddler 13:02, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Looks pretty good, Fiddler! I wouldn't want to use it in all cases, but for that many familiars (or pretty much any object), it's a pretty tasteful addition. --AtteSmythe 13:44, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Thanks. Looking at your tentative design I see that it is now posible to call a template from within another template, so tomorrow I'll take a stab at templatizing this.--Fiddler 14:04, 18 October 2006 (PDT)

I have a tentative design for linking yoweb pages while showing crew and rank info. It can be built upon the existing gallery parameters as a default; this would replace the gallery element of the infobox. For one pirate on one ocean, the element is almost exactly the same size. It grows considerably longer with each ocean and new pirate name, however. You can see it in-place in my sandbox. --AtteSmythe 13:44, 18 October 2006 (PDT)

It's a good direction, but let me give another example. Edit your sandbox to use User:Fiddler/Sandbox/yoweb as the custom field. I'd really only want the last three links to be portrait links as there is nothing spectacular about the pirate. Also, the Randombeard pirate on Ice has a gallery, but a bug (?) prevents that gallery from being seen. I think it may be due to the fact that none of the portraits in the gallery are of that pirate.--Fiddler 14:04, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Aye. I'd considered that, but not long enough to figure out how it would work as drop-in replacement, yet. I've had trouble getting almost all of the galleries to load today - only one ocean was working for me, earlier. I guess my real goal with throwing an example out there is to figure out if there's any way to succinctly show crew, flag, and rank information across the oceans, because this was about as compact as I could figure. --AtteSmythe 14:22, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Since this is "at a glance" type information, do we really need to include the names of the crew/flag? Again, I don't think it's too much to expect that the reader will actually read the article or click the links for full details. Check out User:Fiddler/sandbox for a draft idea I started on. Small, compact, just a couple icons to show the roles on each ocean. Add a smll link to the stats page and it can fulfill the goals.--Fiddler 14:37, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Put the crew/flag/island names in the alt text of the image! Agreed on the stats link, too. Thanks for the mockup - I'll play with it tomorrow, hopefully. --AtteSmythe 14:56, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Whatever the most recent redesign was seems to have made the infoboxes look kind of wonky. Lots of white spaces and no borders. Any fix or is this an in-between version to the impending new one? --Muffynz 21:28, 14 November 2006 (PST)
I though I'd fixed all the whitespace; my bad. Can you point me at a few examples so I can see if I've fixed it? And I'm not sure what you mean by no borders.--Fiddler 21:33, 14 November 2006 (PST)

Implementation of Infobox_pirate

IMO, any redesign implementation has to fit the criteria that it requires zero edits to pages that already include the template. --AtteSmythe 13:34, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

Again I agree. I am happy to fix pages as I edit and clean up pages but it is definately better to make sure all pages are working now rather than having to go through a massive updating effort to clean them all up. --Kgarrett1969 07:12, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
Also agreed. I already did the 500+ articles that existed in late June and the number has only increased since then. However, there probably will be a handful of pages that will require individual attention (mostly those pages that have included Infobox_pirate inside of a table with other information, or included it in a non-standard place in the article.)--Fiddler 07:45, 26 September 2006 (PDT)
Fortunately, since the infobox_pirate is modular now, it should be easy to keep deprecated elements until such time as we get around to replacing them. I think I'd be willing to have some 'old-style' pages linger in the interim, if we come up with a new scheme (for example, a per-ocean rank, crew, flag, gallery link box, etc.) --AtteSmythe 08:42, 26 September 2006 (PDT)

Sorry, got a little lost with the jargon here, so, with respect to the rank of player etc, and the new formatting, is this going to change? will there be a "captain" logo etc? And will the stats and whatever eventually be able to be linked direct into the game? --Minimoses 00:00, 11 October 2006 (PDT)

The answer to your second question (in-game stats, etc) is apparently yes - when the new yoweb pages are rolled out, we'll be permitted to link them from the YPPedia. As for the first, I'd love to see some redesign, but no one has thrown out any ideas for the technical challenges facing the layout, or reasonable alternatives. Take a page like Narya (pirate) - 6 pirates with 4 names. How would the crew/flag/rank infobox look for that page? Would we limit it to one, like portraits, or each, like galleries? My personal implementation would be two rank icons (crew/flag), a separator, and a link to the yoweb page for each pirate, like the gallery. I just haven't had a chance to mock it up yet. --AtteSmythe 10:21, 11 October 2006 (PDT)
Actually, thinking about it further, with the yoweb linking, the gallery section becomes redundant, which gives us some extra vertical space. Perhaps a tiny infobox element for each ocean, listing pirate name, crew, crew/flag ranks, and a yoweb link? The background of the element could use the ocean background colors. --AtteSmythe 10:30, 11 October 2006 (PDT)
Yea, i like that idea, but i also like the fact i can show off my pets and trinkets, including the ones i have in trinket boxes etc. maybe if that information was there, but there was a tag that read "MainOcean= 1>6" where each numeric value represents a section of the infobox, therefore, only the main would be displayed. I dont have pirates on all oceans, i dont have time for 1, so im unsure if a person would play 2 mains? --Minimoses 11:12, 11 October 2006 (PDT)
I know quite a few people who play evenly over two or more pirates. I don't know how they do it, either. Regardless, I wouldn't want to drop the trinket/pet sections, since those are notably NOT on the yoweb pages. For those following along, I have a bit of an update on my Sandbox (source at yoweb), with which I'm not quite pleased, yet. It seems to have the worst of my and Fiddler's versions. :/ (And a rendering problem, to boot!) --AtteSmythe 13:28, 26 October 2006 (PDT)

Discussion of some of the finer points of the implementation of the new infobox_pirate yoweb section are taking place at User talk:AtteSmythe/Sandbox. --AtteSmythe 13:52, 10 November 2006 (PST)

Trophy Addition

Hi mateys, me again :P - Quick Thought - Now with the new release, people will be getting one of the trophies, or several trophies. Can we get this added to the Infobox before people start to create their own sections. See Drake I was thinking something like...

|trophies= yes/no

|incredibleCarp= yes/no

|incredibleSails = yes/no

|ultimateGuns= yes/no

Etc Etc Thoughts?? --Minimoses 00:15, 18 October 2006 (PDT)

I'm still in the middle of a software release that has been eating up all my time. I'd really like to spend a couple hours tossing out new Infobox pirate layouts, but I just haven't had the time to give. :/ My current thoughts, which are probably predictable: Assuming we're allowed to link to yoweb pages (as yet unsure), add one trophy element to the infobo, like the trinket and pet sections. I'd rather not have a separate parameter for each one, because a year from now, when there are 30 trophies, the template maintenance will be a bitch. (Same reason I want to cap the number of familiars on the form, actually) --AtteSmythe 09:22, 18 October 2006 (PDT)
Soooooo, since the discussion on the main talk page ended up in the restricting of trophy galleries on pirate pages, I was wondering if we were getting anywhere with just displaying 1 in the infobox like with pets and trinkets? If I recall, most everyone involved in the discussion was quite alright with just 1 being displayed. I'd take a crack at it but the template is protected so thus I can't. I'll help in whichever way I can if need be, just drop me a line, but it's something I would personally like to see happen and help work towards. --Muffynz 00:05, 13 January 2007 (PST)

Just wanted to bring up another idea now that we officially have the policy to not list trophies or more than a single portrait. I was thinking that with the advent of the template that allows us to link images, that it would be a nice tweak to the infobox to have next to Oceannamelink two little linked icons, one for the trophy page and one for the gallery page. That way it's more obvious to people that one can view both galleries easily and don't need to add a pile of individual stuff to their page. It should be a fairly uncomplcated thing in theory to add to that part of the template (she said without haven't actually looked at it). Naturally I haven't the time to look into doing this myself, but was hoping someone else would take up the torch. (I do have an excuse, my free bits of time project is to do the Hunter/Opal PDF map.) --Guppymomma 15:09, 23 January 2007 (PST)

If someone else can do a couple of icons (PNG format, transparent background, no bigger than 25px by 25px) I can whip this out no time.--Fiddler 15:59, 23 January 2007 (PST)
I think I can do that. I assume game images are allowed for something like this? --Muffynz 16:01, 23 January 2007 (PST)
These were the most obvious images I could think of. If there's anything else you might like, just holler. Both max at 25px and are a portrait and trophy.

Portrait link.png Trophy link.png

While I'm figuring out the linking issue, would you be able to fill these out these so they're both 25px by 25px even? Just center them and fill in the rest with transparent pixels. Thanks.--Fiddler 16:53, 23 January 2007 (PST)
Heee so cute. I've resized the canvas. --Guppymomma 17:33, 23 January 2007 (PST)
This may be more difficult than I thought. I'm getting these weird blue boxes on top of the images.--Fiddler 17:42, 23 January 2007 (PST)
Portrait link.png
Trophy link.png
What browser? I don't see blue (Firefox 2.0/PC and IE7/PC). --Guppymomma 18:14, 23 January 2007 (PST)
Me either. I see the pictures I uploaded and the links to Orsino's portrait and trophy galleries work fine. Also Firefox 2.0 and Verizon standard high speed browser. --Muffynz 18:36, 23 January 2007 (PST)
I got the blue boxes taken care of. Now I'm working on arrangement in the ocean boxes.--Fiddler 19:01, 23 January 2007 (PST)

And I'm finished. Someone please check over my work to make sure I have all the right ocean parameters in the right place.--Fiddler 19:21, 23 January 2007 (PST)

Looks good Fiddler. It adds a lot to the yoweb links there now. I still vote however for one trohpy in the pirate infobox like the one trinket and one pet. Just for the aesthetic effect on the page. --Muffynz 19:31, 23 January 2007 (PST)

Theoretically, I don't believe in bumping wiki discussions but for this one I'll make an exception. So now we have the pirate pages with no trophies, large masses of trinkets behind a show box, and no ships listing. Personally, I think the pages look much better. For mere aesthetic entertainment, I still want to ask for this infobox to be able to display a single trophy under the portrait, probably directly under where the pet and trinket are currently being displayed. Comments please? --Muffynz 09:17, 27 February 2007 (PST)

With the addition of the links to the pirate's trophy and portrait galleries I don't think we need for any more trophies on individual pirate pages. Pirates are already able to select the 6 trophies they want to show on their info page. I don't think we need to have them show the one trophy they are most proud of on their Yppedia page too. Unlike pets and trinkets, we can already see what trophies they have thanks to Fiddler's work. -- Cedarwings (t/c) 22:32, 11 March 2007 (PDT)
Yes, but I am big on aesthetics. Does it really detract from the article at all to have a single trophy below the pet and trinket one in the infobox? --Muffynz 23:43, 12 March 2007 (PDT)