Forum:Set page redesign

The current format for set pages was introduced nearly six years ago. A couple of changes have been made since then, mainly the inclusion of links to list, gallery and ratio pages and the ambiguity of whether or not to include lists on the set page as well as the list pages or not. Six years later, I think it might be time for an update.

One of the big faults with the old format is that it uses HTML tables to layout the page. Using tables for anything other than tabular data is generally bad practice. You can see Tableless web design if you want to find out why. Theoretically, we could use CSS instead of tables to get the set pages to appear visually the same as they are now, but I think it's still time to move away from the old format.

I've set up an example of what it could look like.
 * Suggested version
 * Current version

It uses an infobox and sections. I think it's less crammed this way. It should also be easier to edit and update pages, if we make a proper set infobox.

The lists were a problem. When we just gave links to the lists pages, a lot of people didn't see the links or know what they were for. Some people were in favour of posting the lists on the main set page as well as the separate pages, while others weren't. Also if people weren't seeing the lists links, they probably weren't seeing the gallery or ratio ones either. I think the lists links are more obvious in this setup. I think the links are more obvious in this format. The lists pages are also transcluded, onto the main page inside a set of tabs for each language, so you can view them without leaving the page and we don't have to do duplicate work. I'd considered a set of tabs for each gallery too, but I thought it might drastically slow down the page load on some computers and make the page very long if one has JavaScript disabled.

So yeah, it's just a suggestion, so if you like it, hate it, have a question or have a suggestion please comment. -- Deltaneos (talk) 21:39, July 10, 2012 (UTC)

Galleries
I like it! ^_^ Nice and clean and a little more wiki style. A thought, could we implement in the List section some thing like this:

We could use this to display the galleries for the set in a more graphical way. Look234 (talk • contribs) 22:01, July 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * Looks very good. Maybe a separate Galleries section, instead of putting it in the Lists section? And maybe the language should be mentioned in each caption too, since it won't be obvious to everyone from just the name and hover text won't always be an option. Obviously, we can also get rid of the Cover gallery section with this. -- Deltaneos (talk) 22:49, July 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * That sounds good, we can do that with no trouble. And we can keep the Cover gallery section, maybe rename it, but it can be used for other images specifically related to the set like booster boxes, logos, posters, etc. Look234 (talk • contribs) 22:57, July 10, 2012 (UTC)

Lists
That looks awesome! Definitely far better than my attempt to templateify the current layout, and seeing the way you've presented the set info page links has shown me the best way I've been able to come up with yet for laying out a linking template to be used on the various lists themselves. For the lists, though, I think we need some way to clearly show where someone can go to edit them (at least until such time as we've got the lists automatically generated). 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 22:06, July 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * A "v d e" inside each tab maybe? -- Deltaneos (talk) 22:49, July 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * Something like that, yes. I'm not sure how best to present it. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 03:25, July 11, 2012 (UTC)

We should also include a space to include the spoiler list before the main card list is created. -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 06:24, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think this would be a good opportunity to encourage people to start using the card list as the spoiler list for new sets. Once the entire contents of the set are known, someone can come in and convert the list into a proper spoiler table. This prevents having two copies of the list to maintain (even if said duplicated maintenance is only temporary), eliminates the issue of whether to have the list on pages for older sets (though that particular viewpoint is severely weakened by transcluding the spoiler list onto the set page), and most importantly, keeps the set content history (for a single region/language) all together on a single page. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 06:51, July 11, 2012 (UTC)
 * so the card list would be created first like the current spoilerlist without the table, and updated when the list is complete. that would be good too. -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 07:07, July 11, 2012 (UTC)

Semantics
Should we still be using the swmf template? -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 09:17, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * Once we've made a proper infobox template, that will be included automatically. You just add for example  to the infobox and it will have the same effect as adding a new cell with   -- Deltaneos (talk) 09:32, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * Just a note that we should be standardizing template parameter names as we go; the name parameters should be structured as  per Infobox archetype (unless you're actually wanting to use a different format). We can get the other parameter names figured out once we start working on the template, Delt. 「 ディノ 奴  千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 09:36, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * 'Certainly in favour of standardising parameter names across templates. I hadn't noticed the archetype infobox had been using the language IDs, rather than names. Both formats work fine for me. If you think the IDs are better, I'm okay with that. There are two latest generation templates that'll need to be updated; Infobox tournament and Infobox game (event). But, I'm straying a bit off topic now. -- Deltaneos (talk) 10:01, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe we should create an MOS project page for these template parameters, so we can keep track of what names we should be using and have a place to discuss changes/new additions. -- Deltaneos (talk) 13:04, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * Here's one to get us started. Maybe not the best laid out, but can be updated. -- Deltaneos (talk) 17:03, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * I've added quite a bit to it; it should now cover almost all of the common parameter naming situations. Any thoughts? 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 21:27, July 18, 2012 (UTC)

Since the properties on set pages aren't used in many queries at the moment, I suppose now would be a good to rename them if necessary. The main changes, I think we should make are, change plural names to singular names, change the first letter of common nouns to lowercase and make a bit more generic. e.g.  →   and the "English name" property could be used for anything, not just sets. Other properties can be used to make sure you only get sets in your the results of a query. (Dinoguy also suggested the idea of using the general property names a while back.) -- Deltaneos (talk) 19:48, July 14, 2012 (UTC)


 * This would also be a good time to introduce a property to help with distinguishing stuff in queries on generic properties, something else I've been considering for a while. I'm thinking of a name something like "Page type", but maybe someone else can come up with a better one. The property value would just be the type of page in question, stuff like "Set", "Character", "Archetype", "Card", etc. If necessary, a given page could also have more than one value for this parameter, though I can't think of any use cases for that off-hand. -- as 72.251.167.197 (talk) 22:25, July 14, 2012 (UTC)


 * It's a lot more convenient than trying to find unique identifiers for each particular type of page. "Page type" sounds a lot like a set of categories with no subcategories. Without writing a tl;dr of the disadvantages and trivial differences between each method, I think the property might be better. The name "page type" sounds fine to me. Other names that come to mind are "article type", "(article/page) subject" and "(article/page) topic". An example of page that could possible have two would be "Dark Scorpion"; "archetype" and "character group". -- Deltaneos (talk) 00:02, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd definitely be interested in reading that tl;dr (lol irony), if you feel like writing it up on a user page or something. =D
 * The important thing to remember about this property is that it would be added automatically by templates (probably almost entirely by infoboxes, ignoring CardTable2's weighty contribution), so any page needing two values for it would thus probably need two infoboxes. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 05:35, July 15, 2012 (UTC)

Separating sets
must we use the english booster as the main image? how should we decide to use the japan or english version? what about older sets like LOB? -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 13:10, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * We always using English Image - since this is English site. If that set has releasing and there are no English Image, then we have to using Japan, or whichever current activate (such as Spanish, which was allowed when I asked other user year(s) ago) to cover that. But if it's English - we must using that. -- i  F  r  e  d  C  a  t  13:23, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * What about some of the older set where the ocg and tcg cards are completely different? just use the most current (which is english) too? -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 13:47, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * Those pages, I've felt for a long time, need split (and the dichotomy I've always noticed is Japanese versus everything else, not OCG versus TCG, but that doesn't mean I've been particularly paying attention). The Japanese Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon, for instance, is a 61-card reprint set, whereas the other region versions of it (including Korean and Asian-English) are 100-plus-card (126 for non-Japanese OCG and most of the English/North American TCG, 103 for most of Europe) boosters, incorporating the Japanese LOB and Phantom God. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 17:33, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. I think we should class the Japanese Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon as a separate set than the other languages. Same with many of the early sets like that. That's why I didn't choose Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon, which is usually the first set to come to my mind, as the set to use in the examples. -- Deltaneos (talk) 19:31, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * I disagreed, sorry - why bother making a "class" if we already have gallery that cover the shit? No seriously! -- i  F  r  e  d  C  a  t  22:26, July 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you're getting at, Fred; we're not talking about adding or making any sort of "class", we're talking about splitting the LOB article into one article for the Japanese reprint set and another article for the non-Japanese booster set, since these are really two different sets. This would simplify our coverage of LOB, and it wouldn't require any of the ratio, gallery, or list pages to be renamed. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 03:30, July 12, 2012 (UTC)
 * Then shouldn't the structure deck be split too (at least those with different names)? they were always separate if the names were different, until gates of the underworld, where they are now together again. -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 05:44, July 12, 2012 (UTC)


 * I thought they already were. e.g. Structure Deck 13: Revival of the Great Dragon and Structure Deck: Rise of the Dragon Lords. Although things got messy with Structure Deck 16: Lord of the Magicians and Structure Deck: Spellcaster's Command, since the Asian-English version used the OCG contents and the TCG name. -- Deltaneos (talk) 13:07, July 12, 2012 (UTC)


 * After devil's gate they are back to one. -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 13:34, July 12, 2012 (UTC)


 * If we are to split such sets, what page names would we use? For the Japanese Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon, it's either "Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon (Japanese)" or "Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon (OCG-JP)", I guess. For the other one, "Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon (TCG, OCG-AE and OCG-KR)" is a bit much and I don't think it's fair to give it the undisambiguated page name because it's hard to disambiguate it. "Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon (international)" might work. -- Deltaneos (talk) 00:59, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think it'd be that much trouble to disambiguate it - in the LOB case, should do just fine. I don't think we get nearly enough visitors who would be more familiar with the Japanese versions of these sets to justify giving both pages of each set a disambiguating tag in the name.
 * "(OCG-JP)" would be consistent with what we do elsewhere on the wiki, but I'm more partial to "(Japanese)" myself simply because it is (should be ^^ ) easier to remember and type. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 05:32, July 15, 2012 (UTC)
 * We can put them into subpages. example on legend of blue eyes page, we can just write "for the japanese set, see [Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon/OCG]" or something like that. -Lpoi (talk • contribs) 07:37, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not a big fan of using subpages for mainspace pages. A wiki really needs to have one strict hierarchy of pages to make a consistent use of subpages. In this case, the OCG (Japanese rather) set is not a subtopic of the other set. To me that seems a bit like using "George Bush" and "George Bush/senior" as page names.
 * I don't think there's any difficulty in naming the article for the Japanese set or including a notice to help the user find it. It's what page name we'd give the other set I'm wondering about. Would it be "Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon", "Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon (international)" or something else? -- Deltaneos (talk) 13:14, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm advocating for just "Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon", without "(international)" or any other disambiguating tag. As I wrote above, that'll be the set the vast majority of readers would actually be looking for, and if they're not, a simple hatnote should be enough to get them sorted out. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 21:30, July 18, 2012 (UTC)

Other

 * Wow, that's fantastic. Great job, Delta.--YamiWheeler (talk • contribs) 22:27, July 10, 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. -- Deltaneos (talk) 21:17, July 14, 2012 (UTC)

I've made a start to an infobox template, Template:Infobox set. -- Deltaneos (talk) 21:16, July 14, 2012 (UTC)


 * Looks good so far; I'll see if I don't have time tomorrow to make some tweaks. One thing I immediately noted is that you're using a separate row for each bit of information (most prominent in regards to the Japanese name pieces), whereas I designed Infobox archetype to have multiple bits of information in each row; we should decide ASAP which style we want to use (or if we want to come up with a mix, or something else entirely). We also need to do the same for the overall styling; Infobox archetype is pretty plain mostly because I'm not terribly good at visual styling, so we'll probably go with what you've done here and in the other two newer infoboxes. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 05:43, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * It originally had the (unsplit) Japanese characters and rõmaji in the same cell. That's also what's done in the other two, but I thought it looked messy when one or both of them started to run over more than one line. The extra labels in brackets afterwards would create even more line breaks.
 * The visual styling for Infobox tournament and Infobox game (event) was pretty much the same as the navboxes. Simple and straightforward works for me, as boring as that sounds. I probably would have done the same with Infobox set, but I thought if I at least kept the colour scheme from the old layout, it would have some legacy rather than be abandoned entirely. Headings having yellow text and a maroon background seems to have the main colour scheme for the entire site at one point. See the Main Page and Decklist for examples. I think those colours work for some topics, but the soft blue works almost everywhere. -- Deltaneos (talk) 13:01, July 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * That makes sense. I didn't even consider wrapping, though it's definitely one issue I considered more generally back when I was working on Infobox archetype.
 * I'd be fine with a bit more color myself, though I also quite like the visual breakup provided by the &lt;hr/>s in Infobox archetype (of course, since I'm the one who came up with that visual effect there, my statement should be taken with a grain of salt... ;) ). Maybe we should look into ways to mix the two some?
 * I've definitely noticed that color scheme over the years. I think it actually works pretty well for YGO, though the current yellow text on a red background seen in some places around here isn't as usability/accessibility-friendly as it needs to be. I have wondered, though, what the story behind this scheme is; for instance, did it influence the colors used in the logo, or vice versa, or did they just happen to end up at the same place separately? Who originally suggested/implemented an example of the scheme here? Etc. 「 ディノ 奴 千？！ 」? · ☎ Dinoguy1000 21:38, July 18, 2012 (UTC)