Template talk:The Great River

Thought on the New Look

Another new invention and look. And my thoughts.
I am not sure I support this initiative, having the area names in bold to the left. First it was not clear that it was area names, I mean that I did not intuitively understood them as area names. Next, it gives a quite rough look, since each section is centered the area names in bold jumps here and there, just messy in my opinion. Finally I think we are going over the edge of being over-explicit and grabbing focus more than asked to. I understand some of the arguments but weighing other arguments into the mix I am not convinced this new invention is the best way forward.

When I begun with locations I also tried my own way a bit but was soon convinced that there is more power in a coherent and unified style than many home-brewed fashions. Before inventing new styles, why not discuss any concerns at the boilerplate talk-pages?
Zimoon 18:14, 2 April 2012 (EDT)

Compare with Template:Dunland and Template:Enedwaith which have the same number or a few more landmarks.

The trend in recent regions has been to have very distinct divisions (Turbine's term) within a region, each division having a quest folder, deeds for quests, exploration. It may be that the wiki needs to adapt as the game grows. I think the ideas for this page comes from Template:Deeds-infobox, which evolved from a sidebar to a footer navigation box over the years.

I'm of two minds about this template. I am not sure if stripping out the division labels will result in a more useful navigation box than finding some other more visually appealing way of presenting the current version. Perhaps a table format that lines up the division names would look better. RingTailCat (talk) 18:42, 2 April 2012 (EDT)

Here's a feeble stab at using a table: Catbox-9 RingTailCat (talk) 21:46, 2 April 2012 (EDT)

@RTC: Both Dunland and Enedwaith navigation boxes look just as I those in The Shire or Ered Luin, not as this one for The Great River, so I fail to see what I should compare with, and how. I am OK with adapting to game and to make this Wiki even the better, and I gathered the intention but think it was not implemented as nicely. Something that is not intuitively understood must be remade until it is intuitive. I walk over to your sandbox and pay with yet another example that also removes the doubling of area names I see, double size ≠ double good.

Zimoon 02:26, 3 April 2012 (EDT)

The problem with the navigation boxes for Dunland and Enedwaith, in particular as I'm not looking at the others, is the fact that you can't FIND places, AND they are NOT logically organized. The distinctions between "Settlements" and "Landmarks" for example, is particularly confusing. Coupled with the fact that the entries are in alphabetical order means that you frequently cannot find some place because it is really a different name. As for doubling of the area names -- get rid of the Area line completely, it IS redundant. And, personally, I HATE the fact that everything is "centered" it really makes reading things difficult. Ok, so I created another version over at the Catbox-9. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:35, 3 April 2012 (EDT)

I can either see @Magill's comment as "alphabetical order does not make sense" or that there is some other substantial problem lurking under the surface. Do you really mean that the page-names does not exist in the world? Or what is the problem? And I am asking honestly since we all know my strongest toon still has some levels to do before closing in on those areas. Hence, describe the problem to somebody not having been there, please.

The distinction between settlement and landmark is really simple, a settlement usually has a blue icon at the in-game map (but Tom Bombadil's House is an oddball), or we chose to see them as settlements because they provide services, not just quest givers and/or a stable-master. No services no settlement, simple.

At the example I provided I indeed removed the area line for an area column, still informative. And yes, using such a column model asks for left-aligning, I 100% agree.

My whole objection was that everything looked very messy and not at all that informative as I am convinced the intention once was. Thus, it had been better to take this conversation beforehand, with big smiles, and not now when I sense some defensiveness (unless I am too tired just now).

Neither do I defend the work of some editors before me when I am facing great, solid arguments. Now I think next step is to discuss how NextGeneration of the navigation template should look like. Or if we should just provide a boilerplate so that we easier can handle possible oddities that the current template cannot well, if at all. See Buckland for example, not too nice IMHO, the template does not nicely support nav-boxes for areas. And we do not really need templates for this, there are just 19 regions and there are just so many areas that are using their own. Etc.

But, please, discuss/suggest first, invent afterwards. :)

Zimoon 14:58, 3 April 2012 (EDT)

Blue Icon for Settlement? Hmm... It no longer exists as a note option on Rhovanion maps -- and I notice that the Bree-Land map has only two - Adaso's Camp and Tom Bombadil's House.... none for Bree or Arachet or ...

Most of The Great River areas do not yet have pages. And to make matters worse, a lot of "places" in Dunland have Pages, but no content. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 15:57, 3 April 2012 (EDT)

Totally not related (I don't think). One other comment I would make... It seems to me that since ROI, the number of individuals adding content to the Wiki has decreased dramatically. I suppose, much like the way that the participation in-game radically changed when SWTOR (or whatever it's name was) came out. We are just now seeing "some" return of old folks to LOTRO, but surprisingly, very few in the new areas, even Dunland is empty. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 16:01, 3 April 2012 (EDT)

Sorry if I'm speaking out of turn here; I just happened to stumble across this discussion and thought I'd put in my two cents. Regarding the initial discussion about the Area/Settlement/Landmark template, I've been frustrated by the format of those tables in the past as well. Actually, just this past weekend, I was trying to find an orc-camp in Angmar that I had remembered was in Eastern Malenhad, or at least in one of the eastern regions. I couldn't recall the name, and because there's no list of which landmarks are in which areas, I ended up having to open like 10 tabs at a time to check every link in the landmarks list. So I agree that this is a problem that ought to be remedied. I took a look at RTC's sandbox, and the Settlements portion of the table seems to be a bit awkward to include, though I like Magill's on the right track with making the major quest hubs bold. Eliminating the top Settlements bar goes a long way toward cleaning up the table. The easiest solution in my mind though would be to just have 3 columns. I made a couple changes to one of Zimoon's tables to put together an example. See My Example. Uzekh (talk) 17:58, 3 April 2012 (EDT)