9 replies to this topic

[FlyingRagnar]

I think some discussion of the various article types would be a good place to start the new year. Let's start with the enemy articles. Please give your input!

First off, I created this page for displaying the current color schemes for various templates. Enemies are currently an orange color.
http://www.dragon-qu...Template_colors

Now then...enemy articles...

1) Should the enemy template align left or right on the page?
Personally, I think left. Putting them on the right leads to lots of awkward white space.

2) What should the design strategy be for enemy templates on large enemy articles?
I attempted to address this a while back by making the enemy template show/hide. Most people that visit the slime article probably don't want to see all the stats for a slime in every game. It is more common to allow them to choose which they would like to see, plus it keeps the page shorter. However, this leads to many, many orange header bars all the way down the page. Anybody have a better idea?

Final Fantasy wiki for example, decided to split enemy pages by their game. Their 'slime' article is a disambig page which shows the links to each slime page for a specific game. However, Dragon Quest tends to have more repetition than FF and having 27 slime articles seems like major overkill. There simply isn't enough data to write about slimes in Dragon Quest II to merit their having an individual page.

3) As for the enemy template(s), my plan is to have one "default" enemy template which contains the basic information about an enemy from any game. Then, we can have more specific enemy templates on a per game basis. Otherwise it is simply crazy to try and cram all the data into one template. It makes sense to have more specialization for the things like recruiting monsters, weaknesses, etc.

[FlyingRagnar]

I have found a good possible solution to question 2. The tabber extension allows you display parts of an article in tabs. I have updated the slime article to use this new design strategy.

[PantheonSasuke]

I think those tabs work amazingly, yo. Keeps things organized and in view without going nuts with various headers. And making a separate article for each monster's appearance definitely doesn't seem like such a good idea to me. The differences between games and lack of details in some titles just doesn't merit there being individual pages, and this tab option definitely solves the issue some might've had with articles being to lengthy... vertically

I usually had the templates aligned right because it just seemed more comfortable to have it closer to the the emptier looking side to even things out (since the left has the main navigation bit). This does put a lot of white in the center, though, which you described previously (the center, that is) as being the 'money area' of a page, so it might be best to stick with keeping them aligned left.

And I guess the main enemy template would be like the one immediately in the upper right corner of an article, yeah? Usually showing an image of the monster, its different names throughout time, and its first appearance? Because I kinda like how that template's shaped up. Works for me if it follows that fashion.

[King Zenith]

I definitely like the tabs. Very easy to navigate that way.

[FlyingRagnar]

Ok, I think enemy articles are now on the right track. Everyone should be using the Enemy and Monster Infobox templates ONLY on enemy articles. There now exists plenty of enemy articles that can be used as an example.

Edited by FlyingRagnar, 04 February 2011 - 10:06 PM.

[cartman414]

I once got a wizard hat from a liquid metal slime as a drop in DW2 for the GBC.

[FlyingRagnar]

So the topic I'd like to address is the "recruit" articles. I've noticed that Melios has been creating a separate recruit article for enemies which are recruitable. I don't think I really support this as it creates a number of issues. These articles are separate from the main article, so any redirects or links would have to be consistently updated to ensure they are not broken in both places. This seems a little too tedious to me. I think this content should simply go in the enemy article, especially now that the enemy info can be greatly condensed using the tabs.

[PantheonSasuke]

I thought the recruit articles were okay, yo. I mean, they seemed like a good idea given what was done with Psaro's article when it seemed a bit excessive to keep both his monster data and character data in the same article. Plus, the recruit articles could probably be made more expansive if seeming too small is presently an issue, since some recruitable monsters are recurring (though there isn't a big list of titles in the main series where this sort of recruiting occurs; I can only think of V, VI, and VIII, really).

But given the tabs, putting the recruitment info in the main articles seems perfectly fine, too. I don't imagine having separate articles would cause that much a hassle with redirect pages, but I'm not opposed to putting the recruit info in the main articles as well.

I should probably choose a side, here

[FlyingRagnar]

Ok, but even if that is the case, wouldn't it make more sense to just put them in a subpage? Like Slime/recruit? Then at least the pages are connected no matter what and a redirect would also redirect the subpages.

[Melios]

Ok, but even if that is the case, wouldn't it make more sense to just put them in a subpage? Like Slime/recruit? Then at least the pages are connected no matter what and a redirect would also redirect the subpages.

That's how I originally set them up, but I went with (recruit) to make it consistent with the DQ7 monster class pages, which have (class) in name.