Weapon Template Update

[FrostJaeger]

• Submission Type: Article Update
• Submission URL: Linky
• Original Article URL: Linky

• Faction: N/A
• FM Approved Yet: No, @Wes
• Faction requires art? Nope.

• Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? Nope.
• Contains Links to Unapproved Articles? Yep.
  
• Contains New Art? Nope.
• Previously Submitted? Nope.
• Changelog: Linky

Tis' nothing but a minor flesh wound just a little something I wrote up. It - in my humble opinion and with no offense meant towards @Arieg - has the following advantages...

• It (mostly) preserves the pre-existing formatting of the current template, thereby lessening the visual differences between newer articles and older articles.
• It does not drastically increase the complexity of weapon submissions, as virtually all of the newly-added fields are not mandatory - they're either "if applicable" or "optional".
• It does not drastically increase the background knowledge required to create weapon articles - as it doesn't require anything more then the current template already does - and even provides links to several helpful Wikipedia articles.
• It does not force content creators to include extraordinarily-oversized lists in their submissions.
• It does not attempt to impose more realism on weapons within the setting.

...over what Arieg submitted here; lastly, I am formally requesting that the checklist be used by whomever reviews this submission.

 

[Syaoran]

Also I've said this before, but -requiring- art for every faction for weapons isn't great. Cause all that does is make more of a wall to submit.

 

[raz]

Also I've said this before, but -requiring- art for every faction for weapons isn't great. Cause all that does is make more of a wall to submit.

I like the idea on the surface, because barriers theoretically force higher quality, but ultimately gotta agree with Mr. Syaoran here. And going even further, that "wall" he's talking about eventually becomes irrelevant at the point people start realizing they can get away with quickly self-made or otherwise low quality DIY art jobs (not trashing on our hobbyist creators, everything right now is great. Just speaking in eventualities).

Art requirements gotta be on a faction-by-faction basis like it is currently.

 

[Zack]

Clean AF.

Bullet pointed lists are terrible in a 'conveying information to new people' way. There is some amount of listing required though and I think the easiest way to do that listing is one simple line about the part and then having that line link to a sub-article.

Similarly, fluff-text can all be squished together under one heading since you don't really need 'about' and 'history' and 'description' when you can include all of that information in a fluff paragraph or two.

Taken together, we've now consolidated just about everything on the page. This makes the article short and readable. There are only a few 'stats' on the page so at a glance you should be able to pick out the important number values. Rather than having walls of text we should be aiming for a crisp baseball-card style articles. Ultimately it wouldn't be any less text, just that text is now broken up over several pages.

 

[Syaoran]

Clean AF.

Bullet pointed lists are terrible in a 'conveying information to new people' way. There is some amount of listing required though and I think the easiest way to do that listing is one simple line about the part and then having that line link to a sub-article.

Similarly, fluff-text can all be squished together under one heading since you don't really need 'about' and 'history' and 'description' when you can include all of that information in a fluff paragraph or two.

Taken together, we've now consolidated just about everything on the page. This makes the article short and readable. There are only a few 'stats' on the page so at a glance you should be able to pick out the important number values. Rather than having walls of text we should be aiming for a crisp baseball-card style articles. Ultimately it wouldn't be any less text, just that text is now broken up over several pages.

What you just explained doesn't solve any of the problems, it just dances around them. It also doesn't give a single reason as to how this is 'superior' to the current template other than "we've consolidated it", but consolidation is not -always- a good thing.

 

[FrostJaeger]

Clean AF.

Bullet pointed lists are terrible in a 'conveying information to new people' way.

In your opinion, @Zack; in mine, they're the perfect way for "...conveying information to new people..." due to their simplicity and neatness. If I were a newbie, I know I wouldn't want to waste time digging through a paragraph to find something that could have been easily found within a bullet list.

There is some amount of listing required though and I think the easiest way to do that listing is one simple line about the part and then having that line link to a sub-article.

As this section demonstrates, "...one simple line about the part..." isn't always sufficient, @Zack.

Similarly, fluff-text can all be squished together under one heading since you don't really need 'about' and 'history' and 'description' when you can include all of that information in a fluff paragraph or two.

Not everyone is content with writing a sentence or two for the "About", "Description", and "History" sections, @Zack.

Taken together, we've now consolidated just about everything on the page.

You've "...consolidated just about everything on the page..." @Zack, not the rest of us.

This makes the article short and readable.

Yes - but at the cost of removing vast amounts of potentially useful information.

There are only a few 'stats' on the page so at a glance you should be able to pick out the important number values.

The current template already allows for this, @Zack.

Rather than having walls of text we should be aiming for a crisp baseball-card style articles.

@Wes is the only one who has the authoity to decide what "we" should or should not be aiming for, @Zack.

Ultimately it wouldn't be any less text, just that text is now broken up over several pages.

That would only make it even more time-consuming to look up information, @Zack.

@Ametheliana, would you mind locking this thread in order to prevent @Zack from hijacking it any further, please? I'm fine with it being moved to the Rejected or Abandoned Submissions sub-forum.

 

[Arieg]

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=faction:valmet_colonial_pact:armaments:ml2a4_30mm_hrcpc

 

[Zack]

While I'm a fan of 'stat card on the side' I know that Wes isn't so I don't think that it is likely to be widely adopted.

Most of the time when I'm looking at an article I just need one or two pieces of important info like DR or range or somesuch. Being able to see and find this information quickly is a huge plus for me.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Rejected at submitter request.