Template talk:Region Navigation Box

Proposal for new version

The discussion of a new version of this template started at Template talk:The Great River and continued, with examples, at User:RingTailCat/Sandbox-9. The latest example (with my modifications) looks like:

Locations in The Great River

Areas Settlements Landmarks Thinglad Haldirith Foul-maw's Den • His-urdan • The Old Burrows • Ungund Eorlsmead Stangard Abandoned Farm • Eorlsmead Tower Limlight Gorge Limlight Gatehouse The Fallen Watchtower • Limlight Falls • Limlight Glade • The Old Sawmill • The Pothole • The Prospector's Shack Wailing Hills The Cuthstan Aster Hill • Frithstan's Camp • Mor-hai Settlement • Nink-hai Camp • Secluded Clearing • Venom-bite Cave Parth Celebrant Idmar's Camp Field of Celebrant • The Murderous Pit • Ost Celebrant Rushgore Aculf's Camp Atburg • The Clutch-ground • The Creeping Mud • Tik Botokh • Wyrmdenn Brown Lands Etheburg The Desolation of the Gardens • Helstor • Lashkarg • The Stone-hole

I added some non-official landmarks to illustrate how this might be done. I'm also suggesting that any place with one or more services (e.g., stable-master, healer, provisioner, or supplier NPCs, mailbox, muserting horn, milestone) could be considered a settlement.

The new template could look something like this:

{{Region Navigation Box
|collapse    = no
|header      = REGION-NAME
|area1       = AREA-NAME-1
|settlement1 = SETTLEMENT-NAMES-1
|landmark1   = LANDMARK-NAMES-1
|area2       = AREA-NAME-2
|settlement2 = SETTLEMENT-NAMES-2
|landmark2   = LANDMARK-NAMES-2
|area3       = AREA-NAME-3
|settlement3 = SETTLEMENT-NAMES-3
|landmark3   = LANDMARK-NAMES-3
...
}}

RingTailCat (talk) 04:15, 4 April 2012 (EDT)

Thanks a bunch, RTC.

Template versus boilerplate:
We have just so many regions (currently 19) and then a dozen areas, etc., which are using this template. All of the latter have historically always faced the drawbacks of the rigid format of a template. While I favour template over wild-grown inventions for any pages of a certain type with more than a few dozen pages I sometimes turn pragmatic. This is such a case, because I have until now seen a number of oddballs, not overly many but enough to disturb my fixed order of thoughts.

My suggestion is to rather just provide a boilerplate, much alike the examples we made up in the pre-discussions. Somewhat more labour to create but way more flexible when it comes to the oddballs. We must keep an eye at the frequent inventors of course (no pun intended in any direction, mind you, we have seen more than a few, including myself).

Your idea is intuitive for the inexperienced editor though, but considering the number of times s/he needs to edit these things... nah, adding support for some corner-cases will probably take way more time than it's worth.

Definition of settlement:
I would rephrase it a little bit. In general I agree with your definition but increase the threshold just a notch: "... any place with two or more notable services (e.g., stable-master, healer, provisioner, or supplier NPCs, mailbox, muserting horn, milestone) could be considered a settlement; the minimum is one vendor who does sell/buy/repair plus any other service."

The reason is that there are quite a few landmarks with just one stable-master/quest-giver: Saeradan's Cabin (though now there is also a Master of Crafting Guilds there, hardly a notable service though), Candaith's Encampment (quest-giver, stable-master, camp site fire, but no services except the travelling). At the map these are ordinary landmarks, some are judgement calls, and we have the opposite with blue-icons for non-settlements per our definition.

The argument for making landmarks stand out in the navigation box as "settlements" is to tell "these have services of some kind". However, doing that also for locations almost without services will soon be considered a cry-wolf information by many; disappointed when finding out that the service-level was not really what was expected. Personally I'd expect a vendor to empty my pockets, anything above that is great. Remember that in-game these facts are easily understood by fiddling with the icon-filters, there is no need to go to out dear Wiki to find out; that subtracts from the value of setting the threshold too low.

Layout:
I am undecided whether the sub-header (Areas, Settlements, Landmarks) should be centered or left-aligned. But I am certain it shouldn't be right-aligned :P

-- Zimoon 04:51, 4 April 2012 (EDT)

Settlements: I tend to agree that a settlement has more that one or two services. Perhaps something along the lines of one each of venders, non-vendor services, quest givers. So Saeradan's cabin with the stable-master and a vendor is out, but Idmar's camp, with 2 vendors, mustering horn and 2 quest givers is in. The numerous camps with camp-site-fire, mustering horn and quest giver(s) would be out (due to no vendor). It certainly is a judgment call. Often, in my imagination, I picture a location as having other scenery NPCs, something like Adso's camp, which has enough scenery NPCs to really bring it to life. Other places simply look artificial: there only to make the game work, but not really part of any story.

The template could be coded to be backward compatible. When you use parameters like settlements, areas, landmarks, it looks like the existing nav box. When you use the new parameters it looks like what we are experimenting with here. I'm not sure if we would want to keep backward compatibility, but it would certainly ease the transition from old form template to new. It would be interesting to see how some of the low level regions look using the new scheme.

My argument for a template rather than boiler plate is that the division of content and presentation is kept clear. You fill the template with content. The template attaches style and class information to the bits it generates, so the skins can control the visual presentation. The template enforces consistent generation of styles and classes, as well as hiding those gory details from the content editor.

Our examples tended to be written in html because (among other reasons) mixing templates and tables can be a bit difficult. When everything is handled inside the template, a lot of those difficulties go away.

RingTailCat (talk) 06:13, 4 April 2012 (EDT)

Fair enough. Since I have not fiddled much with template coding I leave that decision to others. I guess my coding skills in C, Java, Perl, Python, to mention a few does not help :P

Let me list the problems I have seen then, unless we will make this REGION-only. And have other templates handle areas and sub-areas. I indeed like templates that can do their job well, certainly the skinny bit, why not change the blueish colour to sweet-green when the summer comes and some warmly-glowing red when autumn is here? Very non-aggressive though :)

I have seen problems when myself and others have tried to recycle the template for areas and sub-areas. The best way would be to provide another template for that, one where we really think through the culprits.

I have not yet seen a problem with any region, not what I can recall. Except Bree-land when I split it to west and east Bree-land. (You need to look at a landmark at either side of Bree and compare the nav-boxes.) This is also the largest region I have seen is Bree-land: 22. However, some of these have their own nav-boxes so they do not need a line of their own. How to deal with that issue nicely? Either way, the more areas the taller the nav-box, we do not have tall nav-boxes today because landmarks shrink together nicely, but that is indeed less informative.

If more issues come to mind I will be back here again. Zimoon 13:49, 4 April 2012 (EDT)

new versions

---

The problem as I see it will be "how many settlements?" Lets see what happens if we convert the Shire and Dunland into this format.

Oh, and by the way, if you look at Category:Region Navigation Templates there are probably more "AREA" templates than Regions!!!

Retrofitting turns out to be much more difficult than it seems, (especially as the Shire Map doesn't even come close to matching its navigation template) -- At any rate, these are incomplete versions of what the revised navigation templates would look like. It is clear that Turbine has been "simplifying" their maps as things have progressed -- The Great River is a far more linear map than others, but that might just reflect "Urban" vs. "Rural"

Locations in the Shire

Areas Settlements Landmarks Bindbole Wood Overhill Overhill Yards • Bridgefields Budgeford • Scary Bridgefields Wall • Puddifoot's Fields • The Quarry • The Delving Fields Little Delving • Michel Delving The Bird and Baby Inn • Dora Brownlock's Farm • South Fields • Wolf Den • Green Hill Country Stock Abandoned Elf-camp • Brandywine Bridge • Old Odo's Leaf-farm • The Yale-height Greenfields Brockenborings xxx • The Hill None Appledores • Bag End • The Party Tree • Hobbiton-Bywater Bywater • Hobbiton Bywater Bridge • The Grange • Bridgefields Brockenborings • Scary xxx • Rushock Bog Needlehole Troll's Knoll • The Rushock Gate • Shire Homesteads None xxx • Tookland Tuckborough Bear Dens] • Longo Burrow's Farm • The Great Willow • The Marish Bamfurlong Bucklebury Ferry •

Locations in Dunland

Areas Settlements Landmarks Bonevales Echad Naeglanc Bone Quarry • Plas-maru • Carreglyn Barnavon Barnavon Mine • Hen Turrau • Munfaeril's Shrine • Naur-maudhûl • Dunbog Lhan Rhos Cors Avanc • Lhun Avanc • Pristine Glade • Gravenwood Rohirrim Scout-camp Slade of Shadows • Tree of Tribute • Pren Gwydh Galtrev Bloodtusk's Den • Dire Hollow • Dragon-clan Settlement • Fanged Lair • Galtrev Lumber-camp • Howling Caverns Starkmoor Avardin Cartrev Andras • Culling Pit • Hound's Rest • Wulf's Cleft Overlook Tâl Methedras Tûr Morva xxx • Trum Dreng Lhan Tarren Herd-lands • Watch-tower • White Hand Outpost

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 15:25, 4 April 2012 (EDT)

We may probably need some clean-up of the categorization of templates. (Actually I noticed the other day in how bad shape Templates are, some are in utilities, some in wiki-global or what it was named, etc. No structure whatsoeever.) Actually, to be honest, what you refer to is not really templates but instances of one template used for several regions/areas/etc. But they are there to avoid having to add the name-space prefix, a weak reason IMHO. I see no reason why not having a certain area-instance within either the region or the area category it pertains to. I mean, how often do we search for it? But now this suddenly became tech gibberish. You did a great job with the Map-categories, perhaps ..wink-wink..

The examples you have above illustrate how the nav-box will inevitably grow taller the more areas. But I can assure you, there are few areas with a problematic number of settlements. Except for the starter regions most areas have less than 1 on average, or perhaps just around 1. To me the Shire seems just OK, tall yes, but no column has grown fat. None of the above is worse than the region that this discussion all started with. Tall nav-boxes is not really a problem, they are bottommost, and the above is in my eyes really intuitive.

The above looks great. Some polishing maybe, but that is all. And creating another template type for areas. Do that first and take the bull by the nose and convert areas (and other "abusers") to the new template. Then upgrade this one. Right?

PS: Leave cells empty rather than xxx or None, they will be auto-linkified, and create failing-link messages.

-- Zimoon 17:53, 4 April 2012 (EDT)

Good work refining this template. Clearly, this won't exactly be a quick fix, but it's a fix that will help a lot of people to be sure. One quick thing that I thought of after I posted that example table: I had changed the header to "Locations of [Region]", because listing the subheadings in the header seemed redundant. I didn't want to go back and change it immediately after I posted it, but I don't think that heading is necessarily as accurate as it could be or as particularly clean-looking as it could be. I was thinking that just the region name itself would probably suffice for the purpose of this template. Another alternative that would reflect the in-game map more accurately would be "Points of Interest in [Region]". For a visual, I took the liberty of copying the Dunland template above with the two different modifications.

Dunland

Areas Settlements Landmarks Bonevales Echad Naeglanc Bone Quarry • Plas-maru • Carreglyn Barnavon Barnavon Mine • Hen Turrau • Munfaeril's Shrine • Naur-maudhûl • Dunbog Lhan Rhos Cors Avanc • Lhun Avanc • Pristine Glade • Gravenwood Rohirrim Scout-camp Slade of Shadows • Tree of Tribute • Pren Gwydh Galtrev Bloodtusk's Den • Dire Hollow • Dragon-clan Settlement • Fanged Lair • Galtrev Lumber-camp • Howling Caverns Starkmoor Avardin Cartrev Andras • Culling Pit • Hound's Rest • Wulf's Cleft Overlook Tâl Methedras Tûr Morva xxx • Trum Dreng Lhan Tarren Herd-lands • Watch-tower • White Hand Outpost

Points of Interest in Dunland

Areas Settlements Landmarks Bonevales Echad Naeglanc Bone Quarry • Plas-maru • Carreglyn Barnavon Barnavon Mine • Hen Turrau • Munfaeril's Shrine • Naur-maudhûl • Dunbog Lhan Rhos Cors Avanc • Lhun Avanc • Pristine Glade • Gravenwood Rohirrim Scout-camp Slade of Shadows • Tree of Tribute • Pren Gwydh Galtrev Bloodtusk's Den • Dire Hollow • Dragon-clan Settlement • Fanged Lair • Galtrev Lumber-camp • Howling Caverns Starkmoor Avardin Cartrev Andras • Culling Pit • Hound's Rest • Wulf's Cleft Overlook Tâl Methedras Tûr Morva xxx • Trum Dreng Lhan Tarren Herd-lands • Watch-tower • White Hand Outpost

Personally, I think the first one looks really clean. Anyway, just something I wanted to throw out there and see what you thought about it.

And something I just noticed: is there a reason that the last two rows in each table don't alternate shading colors? ---Uzekh (talk) 20:18, 4 April 2012 (EDT) Uzekh (talk) 20:18, 4 April 2012 (EDT)

I think just the region name is sufficient. If not, then the reader probably has some other problems ;)

Usually I have always used the term point-of-interest about named locations in the world, However, since Lotro comes with a super-heavy backpack of lore, places and persons from Tolkien's work, I have become very cautious about that term. I use it mainly for locations that really are mentioned in any of his or his son's work. However, we have the other way around, a location is really interesting and it is not an official landmark. Magill found one I think, an eagles ere somewhere. (Hence I have upgraded the landmark template recently, but the icon is free to replace with something fancier.)

What I wanted to say is that poi in the header is not something I support. A rock in an area where nothing is mentioned nor implied in Tolkien's book is not really interesting, but obviously Turbine thinks it is a landmark :P

Now about style. Since the landmark rows won't be filled all of the time I wonder if we should either try to push it leftwards? Or have all headers left-aligned? The latter is not HTML-standard for headers but...

Also playing a bit with colours, more like the common info-boxes we are using at many pages. And reducing padding a notch.

Dunland

Areas     Settlements     Landmarks Bonevales Echad Naeglanc Bone Quarry • Plas-maru Carreglyn Barnavon Barnavon Mine • Hen Turrau • Munfaeril's Shrine • Naur-maudhûl Dunbog Lhan Rhos Cors Avanc • Lhun Avanc • Pristine Glade Gravenwood Rohirrim Scout-camp Slade of Shadows • Tree of Tribute Pren Gwydh Galtrev Bloodtusk's Den • Dire Hollow • Dragon-clan Settlement • Fanged Lair • Galtrev Lumber-camp • Howling Caverns Starkmoor Avardin Cartrev Andras • Culling Pit • Hound's Rest • Wulf's Cleft Overlook Tâl Methedras Tûr Morva Trum Dreng Lhan Tarren Herd-lands • Watch-tower • White Hand Outpost

-- Zimoon 06:52, 5 April 2012 (EDT)

A couple of quick comments --

1- the Shire and Dunland examples I did were NOT complete... (for one thing I didn't know where a lot of places in the Shire went), the "xxx were simply places I didn't bother to look-up.

2- The "colors" were a result of "copy and paste" not intent. (While I write HTML, it DOES take a LOT of effort (i.e. time) compared to simply plugging stuff into a template to get things right. :)

3- Just the name makes as much sense as "Points of Interest." The POI reference is somewhat misleading as it is an In-game Term used inconsistently by Turbine. The Great River (which started this discussion) was the first Map by Turbine which consistently used POI to equal "location in an explorer deed" -- was that intentional or simply dumb luck? Lack of POI flags was a much-bugged issue during the Enedwaith beta, where most of them were missing completely, and during the first pass on Dunland where the Maps were REALLY screwed up until the release (and if you consider the "Dunlending" map, still are!)

4- I don't know squat about templates, and nested templates and whatever else that implies. For one thing it is virtually impossible to FIND the bloody things!

All of that part of the WIKI is hidden. You can't do a simple "ls" of "~/templates" and find the all of whatever is there. Or at least I don't know the magic incantation necessary to expose it.

I suppose I could make up a page like <categorytree depth=100>Lord of the Rings Online</categorytree> and see what shows up... :)

One might, rightly or wrongly believe that <categorytree depth=100>LotRO-Wiki</categorytree> is the correct place to start. (that output really is scary.) I simply have no real idea what some things really mean, or what was "thought" initially. Is there a page somewhere which describes each category under Category:templates, for example? Ghads... looking at LotRO-Wiki is quite interesting. Sigh, this looks like going back to one of my original projects -- "documentation issues."

- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk) at 2012-04-05T11:57:16.

The documentation at Media Wiki (see site link on lower right on every page) can help. A quick run down though: every page is identified by its namespace and article name. Templates, by default, live in namespace Template. When you reference a page using {{page-name}} it looks in namespace Template, i.e., it looks for a page called Template:page-name. That's why we put in the colon at the front of ordinary pages that we transclude: it forces the page lookup to use the (Main) namespace instead of the Template namespace.

To see all templates, go to Special:PrefixIndex, pick "Template" from the drop down , and click "Go". RingTailCat (talk) 14:54, 5 April 2012 (EDT)

Dungeons & Interiors

Currently I'm updating the Nav page for Enedwaith... there are a couple of Dungeons and Interiors, added them now as landmark, but I was thinking about adding those two to this template too, what do you think? -- Tiberivs 10:58, 21 February 2011 (EST)

I myself would prefer them as normal landmarks, for I think it is less clear if there are loads of categories there. Less is stronger I say, and if you click the name you see what it is anyway. Also, this has been done for all regions so far, I do not see reason to change it. --Ravanel 13:42, 21 February 2011 (EST)

What Counts as Instance?

I cannot see that we have defined what should go into the "instances" parameter. The "instances" link of the nav-box links to Instances which gives a quite broad explanation of what an instance could be, almost anything that is indoors.

Personally I have added World Instances and nothing else. I believe nav-list should list repeatable instances. Private one-time instances (quests) are uninteresting. Public dungeons are seldom interesting unless they are large or special in some other sense, which they rarely are. If we agree I can add that limit in the documentation of the "instances" parameter, right? — Zimoon 14:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Since nobody objected I have added the word "friendly" before "Interiors". And also replaced [[Instance]]s with [[Regional Instances]], which reads about World Instances and Raids, meaning repeatable and large.