User:Lady Aleena/sandbox

Hello. I was shown the new infobox categorization scheme on Starter and was horrified by what I saw. It makes me glad I am not creating a new wiki right now. I would not want to clean up the start wiki's mess right at the start.

The Starter mess
The following categories are on WantedCategories on Starter.


 * Category:Templates/Infobox‏‎ (8 members)
 * Category:Quests‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Locations‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Items‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Events‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Episodes‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Characters‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Books‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Albums‏‎ (2 members)
 * Category:Templates/Quote‏‎ (1 member)
 * Category:Templates/Navbox‏‎ (1 member)
 * Category:Policy‏‎ (1 member)


 * Questions
 * 1) Why are category sub-pages being used to categorize anything?
 * 2) Why are infoboxen being categorized by their topic, especially without the suffix " templates"? I would not put the template into a category like Books, but Infobox Book would categorize articles that use it into books. Infobox book would be linked in the category description only, and categorized in Infobox templates.
 * 3) Why are those categories uncreated? They are all listed on Special:WantedCategories.
 * 4) Why is policy still showing up? It was deleted, and there aren't any pages in it.

Possible replacement scheme
I put together a template categorization scheme that is much more descriptive but can possibly be filled by choosing a template type. Each category should have at least one template in it as an example of what templates use the category. Also these categories should be created so new founders do not start off with wanted categories. (There should be nothing in any wanted list when a wiki is first started so no wanted pages, categories, templates, or files.)


 * Category:Infobox templates
 * Category:Quote templates
 * Category:Notice templates
 * Category:Infoicon templates
 * Category:Scrollbox templates
 * Category:File templates
 * Category:Image templates
 * Category:Video templates
 * Category:Audio templates
 * Category:Gallery templates
 * Category:Data templates
 * Category:Design templates
 * Category:Navigation templates
 * Category:Context-link templates
 * Category:Navbox templates
 * Category:Non-article templates
 * Category:Unclassified templates

Infobxen on Starter
And now back to infoboxen, the ones included in Starter are not general enough for most wikis. I do not know how many wikis out there would use a template as specific as Infobox quest. I know that most wikis would probably benefit if there were an Infobox person that they could use to base their people based templates. For example, a sports wiki would probably want an Infobox athlete, and a health wiki might have an Infobox doctor. Almost all wikis might benefit from an Infobox company, since most content based wikis would have articles on companies behind the topic. An auto wiki might use Infobox company to build Infobox automaker, and a toys based wiki might build Infobox toymaker.

The Infobox location does not take real world locations into account? What would most wikis do with the  parameter? What about a location's demographics? Who is the leader of the location, and what is the leader's title? I live in a small town that has a burgess instead of a mayor.

It might be a good idea to take Infobox quest out completely, or somehow only put on wikis that might realistically have quests. How does Infobox quest help auto, education, finance, or politics wikis?

Infoboxen in general
And talking about all these infoboxen made me realize they are not named for easy use of the pipe trick. Instead of just typing "Yes there is a ", users would have to type "Yes there is a  ". Infobox names might need a serious rethink. Sure seeing the word infobox lined up in the category is pretty, but it is not semantic.

In closing
Please fix Starter's infoboxen (and all templates') categorization and maybe rethink what infoboxen are included with a new wiki.

Note: You may wonder why I use infoboxen as the plural for infobox. It is something I brought over from Wikipedia where the plural of userbox is userboxen, so infoboxen and navboxen follow naturally for me. 8)

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Image tag testing

 * See these templates on my sandbox on Tommy Westphall Universe wiki. I rewrote them there to be consistent with my wiki's color scheme. Most are also now divs instead of tables.

Navbox testing

 * Navbox


 * Navbox draft


 * Navbox


 * Navbox draft


 * Navbox


 * Navbox draft

Thoughts
I wish some wikis had Talk pages instead of comment sections and message walls. It is frustrating to have no where but a comment to say "This list is (alphabetical|chronological)." That information belongs on a talk page not in an article comment. I am one who likes to keep all article content and style discussions out of the public eye, and that means talk pages instead of comments. It would be bad to see two or three people arguing in comments about the shade of blue a character is wearing. Is it dark blue, navy blue, or midnight blue? That is where a talk page is better than comment sections, in my opinion.

A failure of a message wall or comment section is I can not link to a specific heading in them. On my message wall here, I have a thread called "Merging all wikis in a continuity into one". If my message wall were a talk page, it would be easy to link to User talk:Lady Aleena. You might think that is a lot to type, it is. However, without looking, how would you remember its thread number is 1305096? I would not remember that number. Also, threads are not linked in the address bar by the user who created it. So the address bar does not have Lady Aleena anywhere, so you would have to look at the message body to see who wrote it.

Another problem with message walls and comment sections is the ability to remove messages. That is not the wiki way of doing things. You do not remove messages on talk pages, not even your own messages. You do not touch other editors' messages. You strike your own messsages out and tell the others why what you said no longer applies.

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