Template talk:Rank box

I have a few concerns with the implementation of this template. 1)For background, please see the discussions at Template_talk:Infobox_pirate#Redesign. 2)The rank and title boxes run counter to the "set it and forget it" philosophy behind the main infobox itself. 3)The rank box currently uses the Midnight background color which can be confusing if a pirate is on several oceans, including Midnight, but Midnight is not the main ocean. 3a)The rank and title boxes only deal with one ocean whereas a pirate may exist on several oceans.--Fiddler 18:42, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

Going backwards, there is nothing at all preventing it from being used more than once on one page. Then, answering all the other questions, I don't see the background color as a problem... And finally, many people already used this on their pirate pages, I just got sick of seeing all that raw code in the infobox and decided to finally make a template. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 20:03, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

OK, providing better answers now. 1) Irrelevant - this is only 2 of those dozens of pieces of information. It doesn't take up much space. 2) So what? Crew infoboxes... Flag infoboxes... are all designed for relatively frequent changes. 3) Actually, it's not the same color anyway (even though if it were I think it would be irrelevant). 3a) no reason it can't be used multiple times on the same page, however if an alt is important enough to warrant using the rank box, I think they should warrant their own page. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 20:24, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

Some editors already have placed rank boxes (and crew titles and navy titles and...) into the custom field of their pages. Should these be removed? I guess that's a slightly separate issue. If the background colors of the boxes are to match the oceans, then they'd have to be integrated into the infobox more directly.--Faulkston 20:49, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

Ranks can change quickly and often. As an example: Until two days ago, I was a SO in Hell Hath No Fury. Yesterday, I moved to Unknown Pleasures as an officer initially, and was promoted to fleet officer during the night. Keeping that up to date could have a lot of changes (which is why I have not yet edited my pirate or user pages to indicate the change...cause who knows how long I'll remain at this rank). The automatically-linked info pages also already have this information, as has been stated. --Thunderbird 20:52, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

If I had my druthers yes, I'd remove these boxes from the infoboxes. I'd much rather this information were incorporated into the body of the article.--Fiddler 21:02, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

Sometimes the current rank is mentioned in a paragraph and later also in a list of current and past ranks. The information can either get out of date or out of sync. -- Faulkston 21:04, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

Faulkston has a very good point, in fact the whole reason for this - this is one place that can be easily updated and seen quickly. However, I am curious as to what you think about the last example I put up. However, if you think crew ranks can change quickly, shouldn't the whole senior officers thing be removed from the crew infobox? And all trinkets from pirate pages? Just a few little points. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 21:13, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

Crew infoboxes have a last updated date. Adding a last updated date to the pirate infobox would need to be done for every ocean that has rank information and that would make for an unpleasant visual look & decrease the easy to navigate aspect of an infobox. --Guppymomma 22:04, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

I think the design of the box is huge and bloated and breaks the visual consistency of the rest of the yoweb links. Regarding your other examples a)the crew infobox has an "updated" date precisely so that people can make a judgment on the current validity of the information. b)The trinket (and pet) part of the pirate infobox doesn't become wrong if somebody changes the trinket they're displaying or the pet they're walking.

If nobody ever updates a pirate article again, it won't matter if that pirate has since acquired a new trinket or has started walking a different pet. It will, however, look monumentally foolish for the infobox to declare that pirate a captain if they have since moved on to be a pirate in another crew.

Incidentally, I am not a big fan of the trinket or pet listings in articles, but I tolerate them because there is no in-game ability to display large collections, especially across oceans or characters. There already is the ability to see a pirate's rank and title in-game, and we already link the infobox to that ever-updated page.--Fiddler 21:38, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

OK, so you've basically said you don't like anything that goes on the pirate infobox. Think about that a bit, and have a good day/night. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 21:41, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

I like the yoweb links - they link to always up-to-date information from the in-game pages. I like the familars won because that never changes no matter what happens to those familiars later on. I like the Island designer tag because that's pretty big and the islands don't go away. The pet and trinket displays are alright because, no matter what happens in game, they can't exactly be invalidated.--Fiddler 22:14, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

One more thing - if you dislike this so very much, why have you never said anything to the dozens of people who used it themselves on their own? Does making a template for it somehow make it different? Or is it just the admins really, really want to lose my continuing contributions to the wiki? Continue to have a good day/night. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 21:44, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

We're having a discussion of personal opinions and when it comes to a wiki, editors need to go with the general consensus even if they don't agree with the outcome because it doesn't match their personal opinion. This holds true for normal editors and administrators as well. A number of admins disagreed with the every pirate may have an article policy, but they all enforce that policy because it was passed. I'd advise trying to keep to the guidelines of the Game Design forum, debate the ideas and don't make it personal. And yes, a template does make it different because people consider the templates to be part of the model of what content should be in various articles. They are considered an "official" device and touted in the example pages for the various article types. --Guppymomma 22:04, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

I'll echo Guppy's comment in that yes, making this a template does make it different. I never went around removing these boxes because it was an initiative of the editor to make it himself. I don't want to encourage making these boxes but neither do I want to discourage people from editing the wiki.--Fiddler 22:14, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

As said many times in many places, the more items squeezed into the infobox, the less usable it gets. Perhaps the infobox is slightly misnamed (leading to misuse?) given that one function is to provide a standard format for linking to information about a pirate, rather than dumping all the information to the reader at once. At first I thought the rank box was kind of nifty but now that I've thought over it more, I realized that the crew and flag names are missing! That's not a request to have them added though as doing so would start to take up more screen space than a single sentence in the article text. It really does go beyond the point of absurdity when the infobox starts sporting expanding sections to hold long lists of pets and trinkets... -- Faulkston 22:28, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

When I first saw this template I was glad to see a way to get rid of the mindnumbing coding that I have sifted through on a couple of occasions to either fix or update. The Rank box template is easy to edit. That being said, I also didn't understand why it wasn't implemented straight into the Infobox pirate template. After reading through the comments here, I agree that it is a little bulky and continues to eat up more space, but I would rather see this then the custom coding people have been using more and more recently. I also had a look at User:AtteSmythe/Sandbox and like the work that he had done to include the rank icons into the ocean names listed. Maybe I need to re-read the talk page there again, but I don't understand why it was never implemented.

All of that said, if we are going to allow people to have the rank boxes appear on their pirate pages, I would rather them use the rank box template, but if we can implement it into the Infobox pirate template directly I would be happier. It could just be an option that didn't have to be used. -- Cedarwings ^(t/c) 00:24, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

Color me confused. You're using the talk page of a template I made to replace all sorts of custom coding people used to say that the Infobox pirate template is broken? *wanders off to bed mumbling, confused* -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 00:28, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

OK now I've slept on it, I have a few ideas. If it were to be implemented directly into the Pirate infobox, it makes sense for it to remain a separate template anyway - the way the gallery linking works with all that copy-pasted text I find absolutely ridiculous and makes it nearly impossible to make any editions to. As such, I will start working on a purely template-based version of it in my user space. Once I'm done with that, it should be easier to see how this could be added into it directly, and what revisions need to be made.

Finally, Fiddler, if you don't like the way I did this, perhaps you could come up with a visible example of how you would prefer it looked? Thanks. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 09:45, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

Like this, perhaps? User:Fiddler/Sandbox/yoweb Again, please look over the discussion at User talk:AtteSmythe/Sandbox. --Fiddler 09:50, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

Or perhaps like this? I also performed some major cleanup on the implementation of the Infobox pirate. It would, however, save a significant amount of coding on the implementation of the icons if there were a completely blank image file at Image:Icon_.png. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 10:32, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

Fiddler's popups on mouse hover over the icons are very neat and address the point I made about only having rank information but not which crew / flag said rank is in. -- Faulkston 13:02, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

I agree, however I felt that would be adding far too many parameters for something relatively simple. If you feel like it, however, feel free to edit the version on my user space. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 13:12, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

Image:Pirates-Rank box.jpg

Orsino

Viridian

.

.

Ice

.

.

Midnight

.

.

Cobalt

.

.

Hunter

.

.

Sage

.

.

Opal

.

.

Venerable

OM doll

Current Rank

Pirate

Current Rank
Senior Officer
Flag Title

Prince

Current Rank

Captain

Current Rank

Pirate

Current Rank

Senior Officer

Current Rank

Pirate

Current Rank

Pirate

A better solution than a new box would be to implement the icon per ocean idea discussed in the link I gave above - further discussion can also be found at User talk:AtteSmythe/Sandbox. Though again, I would rather encourage people to write proper articles than to include rapidly changing information in the infobox. The link directly to the yoweb info page was included for its ability to be always up to date.--Fiddler 20:29, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

When people come to any article, they want important information available at a quick glance. As I said, if a person has multiple important alts that people could reasonably be concerned with, they should have their own articles. Ergo there should only be one rank box per article, for the main pirate. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 20:54, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

I'm Orsino on all oceans and I play heavily on two, formerly three, of them. Which ocean's ranks should be used in the box?--Fiddler 20:57, 7 April 2007 (PDT)

To edit your example:

<Removed because my changes have inadvertently broken this, and to save space>

My two cents: just put the damn rank/title icons next to the ocean gallery names, just left of the trophy and portrait icons. I think I saw this done somewhere in here (maybe a sandbox?) and it looked quite nice. --Arminius 09:54, 8 April 2007 (PDT)

Yes, Fiddler provided the link above. In any case, I'll get to work on something now, just to make everyone happy. -- Thefirstdude ^(t/c) 10:17, 8 April 2007 (PDT)