Template talk:Infobox character

From A Wheel of Time Wiki

[edit] colors

I want to standardize and automate this as much as possible with templates, but I need to get a clear picture of what factors decide the color, first. Shall we go strictly by nationality? Do we need different colors for different ajahs? For darkfriends? ... --Gherald 20:54, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Coloring by Ajah might be a good idea - what is the standard currently? SparrowsWing 20:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Well it's all pretty haphazard atm. Ajah colors in some places, hair and eye color in others, and nationality like red for Andor as well... --Gherald 07:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Something I've tried to do whenever editing a character box is to use the foreground colour of the character's name to indicate good or bad: black for darkfriends; white for, erm, 'lightfriends' =) Maybe that would work here too. Aristoc 13:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Black for darkfriends with no other more significant affiliation may be fine (perhaps forsaken would have their own color, etc). But there are way too many characters who are not darkfriends for white to be useful in general. Best we use that for the children (who may also have some yellow as a secondary) and the white ajah. --Gherald 17:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

How about a single colour scheme for all character infoboxes with a different scheme for nation infoboxes, etc? 'Unnecessary complications complicate unnecessarily.' --Jade-eyed Raven 09:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Simplicity good. --TheParanoidOne 22:12, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The color fields are optional. If you really want, you may omit or leave them blank to use the default colors when adding this template to new pages. But I would hope you don't object to someone like me coming in later and trying to make things look purty. While this "complication" of having different colors for different types of characters may not be necessary, I think it adds a nice touch. Be sure to glance around starwars: and see how good it looks... --Gherald 17:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying that colours are bad. I'm just saying that given the choice between having one colour and having a different colour per box, which is seemingly randomly selected, I'd go for the first. But I can't fit that into a three word paragraph. :) --TheParanoidOne 10:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

The Head evil dude, nae'blis, asked me to take a look and so here is my opinion: Hmmm. I checked and the "infobox character template" looks pretty good. Although you can improve it to change color according to the alliegence of the character. Light/Dark. And If Aes Sedai then which Ajah. I'm pretty sure I can incorporate those changes, (without any problems: I have experience). But I won't do so unless you allow me to of course. One more thing. I think the name would be better if it was Character Infobox and not the other way around. - Zero - Talk 13:58, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Any particular reason you want the template to have two names, rather than just {{character}}? -- nae'blis 15:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Not two names. Two words for THE name. It seems better. Its how I've done things so it makes more sense to me, being slightly descriptive. But character would be okay as well. - Zero - Talk 17:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd prefer to keep it at a single name, especially if we can make it (mostly) backwards compatible with the current template. Saves time in having to go back and fix old entries. -- nae'blis 18:21, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Good Point. What about the other changes I proposed. - Zero - Talk 18:29, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm already on record as wanting to remove the [source] link. If you've got a mechanism to make color-coding more consistent based on some other field, that'd be cool, but I'd want to see an example. And it should definitely still be customizable, if necessary... -- nae'blis 20:20, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

You want an example. You got it: see this. It'll be a simple matter of adapting. I can do it. Simple, yet time consuming though. Nothing happens at once. - Zero - Talk 06:20, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that's exactly what I thought you meant. Very cool, and it solved my nationality problem! -- nae'blis 16:50, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] implementation

So should I implement it? - Zero - Talk 17:56, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

We'd need to figure out what to trigger it on. Right now things are all over the place, as mentioned above.

Aes Sedai I think right now tend to have their bgcolor be their Ajah, not sure what determines their fgcolor, if anything standard.
Darkfriends should probably have their bgcolor switched to black, with the fgcolor being related to their nationality?
Asha'man could probably trigger to have their colors be white on black, but that makes them all look like Darkfriends.
Others could/should probably trigger on their nationality or their sigil, but those are probably best handled on an individual basis.

Thoughts? -- nae'blis 18:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Do grey for darkfriends. After all, shadows are grey. No real need for making everything automatic so don't need to program for sigils. Aes Sedai fg should be white for the flame of Tar Valon. Ashaman should be black for the color of the Symbol of Saidin, also known as the Dragon's Fang. Text must be colored opposite to ensure readability. in Aes Sedai and Ashaman cases. At least that's what I think. - Zero - Talk 19:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Why the new template?

I wouldn't think we're so complex yet that we can't just edit the existing template. I want to make sure I understand what your goal is here; is this a "drafting" space for eventually replacing Template:Character? Or is the extra word "infobox" somehow important to your goal? -- nae'blis 21:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm doing it here because it is generated with a new mechanism that substs smaller templates, and also because it may end up having a different syntax and I don't want to break all our character pages. --Gherald 21:17, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, cool. It's a little big, but overall somewhat more classy. I think Star Wars' model is a bit "slick" for us though. I don't see any advantage, personally, in being able to hide the userbox, and it's confusing as to what it does, at present. I also don't think there's any real merit in including a direct link under [[Source]], as most readers won't have any use for it. Put an HTML comment in instead, if this is designed to be substituted (which I hope it isn't)?

On the other hand, I have an itching desire now to create a Ned Baker stub... -- nae'blis 21:22, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think [hide] is at all confusing, and I find it handy when I want to focus on the article text at starwars

[source] is similar in concept to wikipedia:tnavbar used at for instance wikipedia:template:lotr. I suppose it isn't very useful for a template as complex as this one; not sure why starwars has it.

This template is certainly not for substing into articles; that would be a nightmare. The only use of substing is to create this template from the smaller meta templates. --Gherald 21:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion. Infoboxes are not meant to be collapsable. Nav Templates yes but not infoboxes. And the source link will have its advantages but it has a disadvantage as well. A Big One. What if an inexperienced user comes around and uses the link to get to the infobox and messes up the code. Seriously Big Trouble, Havoc, Chaos and whatnot will occur across the pages. - Zero - Talk 16:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Images

Is it possible for us to scan images from the guide for use on character pages? Or does anyone know of a bunch of fan-based images we could get permission to use? starwars seems to think copyrighted character images are ok under fair use; this template sure looks slick with a suitable image.... starwars:yoda for example --Gherald 21:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to use the Guide pictures anyway, for the most part they seem to have little to do with the actual description of the character (and even some of the flags are wildly off from the text right next to them!). Only thing that occurs to me is we could offer to host some popular fan art, if people agreed (but not necessarily what was being added to Wikipedia a few months ago). -- nae'blis 23:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eras

Is there any way us to quantify eras for wot? Would e.g. War of the Hundred Years be an era? --Gherald 21:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the narrowest we get is the calendar "eras": New Era, Free Years, Age of Legends, etc. RJ isn't real fond of giving specific dates, though of course certain cultures have specific names for various times... -- nae'blis 23:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)