Talk:Boilerplate:Areas

Please have a look at Durin's Way and see a side-effect of duplicating the list of landmarks from the area info-box onto the page itself. If I had not removed the <br clear="all"/> the result would have been even more grotesque ... the page would not have begun until the info-box finished, and then with a long list of landmarks ;)

I kindly suggest we use common sense from case to case, when the list within the page grows large and the other content easily fill the gap, then we skip the redundant lists. Only if the page is sparse as is (which area pages seldom are) we pad it with some redundancy ==> no changes to the boiler-plate but we might review areas from now and then. Objections? --Zimoon 17:55, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

"Horrid" offended too many people, so you use "grotesque" instead? :-P Sethladan 19:31, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

I kind of created the look myself, didn't I ;) --Zimoon 21:25, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Changes to this boilerplate

I have already done some minor changes to this boilerplate but I intend to do more changes. Soon. In particular removing not-needed text and sub-headers.

Right now there are sub-headers that fill no purpose unless there are a very long list of this or that. For example, the sub-headers under Locations that just make the ToC taller but add no value. "Locations" is well understood by anybody, and its contents is rarely more than a dozen entries. Instead, use bold "headers" under the main header. When exceptions occur, sure, but that is another story and sub-headers may be helpful.

Also, there is no need to repeat the area name everywhere. Neither to repeat "The following XXXs are found within the area" too often, at least not when it is very obvious what comes under the heading. And neither do I think there is any value in listing connections to anything but nearby areas, I think such lists are burdening the page rather than being helpful. Actually, often useful references are already included in the small description of the area. A question arises whether the links in such texts are required? Such as to creatures, settlements, etc.? Some links are repeated many times as well, they should never be.

That said, I strongly believe in three things related to communication techniques:

1. Editors should be pragmatic and use common sense, using a boilerplate as a help/guideline but adapt to reality when needed
2. Readers are intelligent adults, not in need of being spoon-fed
3. Irrelevant, repeated texts within lists of data hides valuable contents

I am open to discussions, as always. Cheers! — Zimoon 16:29, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Testing a Tweaked Display for the Yondershire

For the Yondershire I tried tweaking the display of the area. In particular, instead of a very tall list of settlements / landmarks / interiors using an invisible table of three columns without fixed widths. I think that one looks pretty nice. Also, for the creatures section, instead of a very tall list or hiding them under a collapsed table because of the tall list I used a {{div col|colwidth=13em|content=... construct. It will render the list in columns with the specified width using as much horizontal space as the browser window allows for.

That style is not according to the boilerplate so I post this note about that. If there are objections, let us talk about those. If I do not hear anything in some time I conclude the "pragmatism" is OK and we could perhaps add a note to the boilerplate. — Zimoon 17:57, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Reverting Boilerplate

I would like to revert the boilerplate back to this version: https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php?title=Boilerplate:Areas&oldid=1007986. Reasoning for this mostly I find the additional information changes unnecessary and the wording awkward. I also find most of the changes made unnecessary as no one else seemed to mind the layout and it was approved beforehand (when I originally updated and made changes to these boilerplate templates) as most people liked how it looked compared to before even that.

If there's something on the current version that you find you'd like to stay please let me know here. Let's discuss. I'll give it about a week if that's fair. Rogue (talk) 01:40, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply; I've been rather busy of late, so I haven't yet had a chance to look deeper into details on this.

Off the top of my head though, one thing that I think might be worth discussing is perhaps to keep the notion of "commented versus clean copy". Having additional comments, intended to help the user to better understand as well as use the Boilerplate(s), is a good idea (in general) I think! And more experienced users, who have used the Boilerplate several times before, can use the "Clean Copy" directly without needing the extra comments. On the face of it, that sounds like a win-win to me! :D

I could have sworn I had a version where I explained things and a clean copy version in my revisions I did back in.. oh 2018 -ish. But Agreed 1 version where we explain what and 1 clean copy is reasonable to me. Rogue (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

By contrast, one thing I really want to see gone (hopefully for good, to die horribly in a ball of fire! =P) is the whole concept of replacing actual, proper (sub-)headings (=== like these ===) with e.g. '''bold''' and/or big text, to make for a "shorter TOC"! That notion has been annoying me for a long time now, and is an awful idea. Because the headings are not just for cosmetic appearance; they are actually useful, and serve a purpose! They provide an 'anchor' that is used not only for TOC navigation, but are also quite useful e.g. for linking to a specific section of a page when trying to help someone else (for example in-game) find the information they're after, for instance. Also, they are a necessity for being able to use LST, which can be incredibly useful. So replacing those proper heading tags with some other formatting that looks the same but does not work the same, is generally a bad idea.

Those are the things that immediately spring to mind for me at the moment; I would need to look into more detail to see if I have any more feedback later. :)

Yes for the love of all that is good and just THIS!!!!! I was so abashed by the conversation to get rid of the headings/subheadings that my mind didn't know how to comprehend a reply that wasn't a simple NO. lol. But I love "to die horribly in a ball of fire!" so I'll just say Yes, I agree and subheading will remain a thing on location pages. The End. Rogue (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

However, I would like to propose the following:

• Could we perhaps create some kind of sandbox page, originating from your proposed page version, that we could all add/remove bits on as we are discussing it? I'm thinking that might make it easier to discuss and reach a consensus on specific parts/details, if there was something visual where people could see the result (as it evolves) of proposed changes. I don't know about others, but for me personally I'm finding it hard to get a good view of the difference(s) and what might be good to keep/modify/discard etc., from the straight-up 'diff' between the revisions. And I know there are people who are a lot more visually oriented than I am. I noticed that there haven't been any other comments here (yet), and it occurred to me that this could perhaps be a reason why (as in: it can be hard to comment or discuss without having a clear picture on which to give feedback), so people might be confused or reluctant to give their input. Thoughts? :)
• Whilst I fully agree that all these Boilerplates need to be revised, I'm thinking it might be problematic and/or more confusing to try and work on them – or even discuss them – all at the same time. If I may, I'd like to make the suggestion that we focus on these Boilerplates one at a time and do them in serial rather than in parallel? Out of the three Boilerplates that discussions have been opened on, I'm thinking we should do this one first; not only because it was the first one opened, but also because it seems to be the more 'urgent' of the three, given the recent history of changes made on the wiki, where people have used (or referenced) it. The Landmarks one should probably be next in line by order of importance, for much the same reason as this one, whereas the Regions one could likely wait until last, as that one is much more rarely used and would therefore have a lower priority in this regard. How does that sound? It might make it easier for people to handle, and encourage more of them to take part, which I think is a really good thing!

I know from past experience that people tend to not like to mess with other people's user subpages but I will see what I can do. As for working on 1 boilerplate changes at a time I suppose. My concern is keeping these current versions active for any amount of time instead of the other version but yes, we can update 1 at a time instead. I tend to think linearly when working on locations from Land->Region->Sub-region->Area->Settlement->Landmark/POIs->Interior->World Instances as a general order in my own head but We can work Areas first. I can think outside my box. LOL I hope. Rogue (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Just to note: it doesn't have to be someone's USER subpage; you can simply create a sandbox 'subpage' to the related page in question – like this for example – which can sometimes even be very advantageous (such as in the linked example; comparing a 'live' and 'test' version simultaneously). :D

--Stargazer (talk) 23:17, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

I went ahead and created the suggested sandbox page, that originates from the version you proposed above, which we can all now work on! :) --Stargazer (talk) 18:08, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

That's what I have for now, anyway. Probably more to come when I find more time (this week is insane IRL). Thoughts and comments are welcome! It would be good to have more people weigh in on this topic in general, I think, to get a proper discussion going etc. Especially given how important these parts of the wiki are!

--Stargazer (talk) 16:49, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Stargazer Check the sandbox page and it's discussion page. I copied the boilerplate from the original link I supplied in this conversation. I wish it hadn't taken me this long :P We can start there... and hopefully get something going for Region, and others as well... but I would like to move forward from "fixing" locations. It's been bothering me. Rogue (talk) 23:18, 26 March 2023 (UTC)