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San d'Orian Ring
Edit
Where should the San d'Orian Ring. It needs to be on a template, and it can't be on the Accessories template because it's not recurring. We either put it on the template, or delete it and create List of Final Fantasy XI Accessories. FFXI is too big to cover here, which is why there's the FFXIcyclopedia. (or whatever). We should just create the List of pages, and fiend genus pages, add to existing parent pages, create the major characters and then be off with it.
Oh yeah, there are all the spells too. ILHI 14:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
- The only reason the FFXIclopedia is so big is because there are two or three pages for everything. "This is present day, this is past, this is battle version, etc." We can include everything the right way and it won't be too much. I've been removing the "see etw. (Shadowreign)" links and the like. Tell me if I miss any. //masterConjurer (Talk)_ 03:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
- List of Final Fantasy XI Enemies says there will be loads to cover. ILHI 03:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
- All of the games have a lot of enemies. Just because there's some proportion more doesn't make it out of the ordinary. It's something for the to-do list is all. On that subject, I think we're far enough in on FFXI to get specific on that list. //masterConjurer (Talk)_ 03:37, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
- List of Final Fantasy XI Enemies says there will be loads to cover. ILHI 03:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Absolute VirtueEdit
Pandemonium Warden is on the template; shouldn't Absolute Immortality be? -- Sorceror Nobody 
12:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Handling the increasingly huge number of characters. Edit
Spira's organization of FFXI characters on this template is really nice. I'm a bit concerned that it will be confusing for users, however. Characters move between different areas of the game and readers may not be able to intuitively determine where the link they want is located on the template. Perih Vashai, for example, is much more relevant in WotG than in the unexpanded game but as the chieftainess of the Windurst Mithra somebody might expect her to be with the Windurst NPCs. It's not a huge problem, but it's something to consider.
The greater issue is that the NPC section is fairly gargantuan and will inevitably grow larger. We could argue about which characters deserve a link but in any case Square will keep adding to the game and we'll eventually want to include a new generation of VIPs. There are a lot of characters, there will be more characters, and we haven't even mentioned a few of the old ones yet!
I therefore propose that we introduce tabbing to the character portion of the FFXI template. With alphabetized tabs we can easily break the NPCs into neat little groups that are easy to browse. Here's a demonstration:
The downside to this approach is that a user with scripting deactivated will still receive a monstrous (albeit orderly) table. For everyone else this simplifies things considerably. We need not fear an edit war over where or whether a character is placed in the template. Characters with interchangeable names like Papsque Muchavette/Shamonde could be linked under both, as in the demo above, if somebody felt it was important. A user that knows the first letter of a character's name will find the rest very quickly.
I think a tabbed template would be pretty neat. How about you? BlueGoobbue • 23:04, November 3, 2010 (UTC)
- This is awesome. I like it, good job. --ShirubaKurono
23:08, November 3, 2010 (UTC)
- The tabs do work quite well, and the above example is pretty tidy. However, it's not really great for the consistent design of navigation templates, ne? To be honest, do we even need most of these characters? We aren't FFXIcyclopedia. It's just a thought, and I'm not even being sarcastic-anti-MMO about it, for a change. Genuine suggestion -- Sorceror Nobody 23:19, November 3, 2010 (UTC)
- I think we've been fairly reasonable with regard to the inclusion of meaningful characters. There are a few we could slice but there are many more which we haven't bothered to mention. Maybe we simply don't have enough interested editors to celebrate the hundreds of almost irrelevant characters but I like to think that we are making conscious decisions in this regard.
- The tabs do work quite well, and the above example is pretty tidy. However, it's not really great for the consistent design of navigation templates, ne? To be honest, do we even need most of these characters? We aren't FFXIcyclopedia. It's just a thought, and I'm not even being sarcastic-anti-MMO about it, for a change. Genuine suggestion -- Sorceror Nobody
- The difference between us and the dedicated FFXI wiki should lie in the story. They have a huge amount of work to do just categorizing the game's bones. It's a great resource for players but for non-players it may create the impression that FFXI is all mechanics with no heart. We can challenge that perception. The goal is not to mention every vendor or tell you which ??? to click on in the Horutoto Ruins but to present the narrative to an audience that will never experience the game in person.
- There's a lot of story in FFXI, though. There's the original plot, the plots for each of the three nations, the plots for each of the four boxed expansions, the additional three nation plots in the most recent expansion, the twenty plots for each job's mid-level armor quest—all this stuff and more overlaps while introducing its own actors. A conservative approach to inclusion is still going to generate a big list.
- So we've got all these dudes and there will be more dudes. It may take forever to actually write their stories but hopefully a curious user or two might ruffle through them in decades to come! We just need a nice way for them to navigate this horde. I agree that tabs fail from a consistency standpoint but it also might establish precedent for future games with a ridiculous number of interesting characters. All that really matters to me is that the stories get out there. If readers can't navigate between them easily we've simply done them a mild disservice. Even so, the convenience of the casual Internet viewer should weigh in our calculations.
- TBH, List of Final Fantasy XI Characters for organisation, there isn't really a need for the tab system. They can be alphabetical without it. 80.42.240.46 23:33, November 3, 2010 (UTC)
The tab thing is nice.. but I'm wondering if its necessary. With such a system in place it makes it easier to stuff in more characters and although it IS alphabetically arranged neatly and such, readers new to FFXI won't be able to make heads or tails of it, kinda like the huge jumble of characters in the template before I sorted it. Maybe players unfamiliar with XI will still be confused, but those who've played will get how the order falls in place, and I think that way, the template helps.
As much as it'd be great to cover more characters or more stories, that isn't quite feasible considering FFXI is far bigger than pretty much every other FF around in terms of NPCs and character stories. That said, a lot of them only are only functional and don't have story purpose but a lot of them are peripheral story characters too...
In trying to build a decent XI section here, I think working towards a strong lore-based database is more sensible, as opposed to fleshing out the games mechanics, which XIclopedia already does. Focusing on the main stories would help to cut down on some of the characters that we'd need to have here. Its quite clear that some very important characters have yet to make it to the wiki, whilst some redundant ones have.. but if we don't adopt the tab thing, I'd say we attempt to simplify the number of characters based on importance. Also this allows readers unfamiliar with XI to understand the story more easily. It IS complex as is, but if you casually reading and have to sift through all the minor characters that have stories you can't make heads or tails of alone, it does put you off.
That said, there really aren't that many main characters. Each mission storyline has a set of like 6-12 main characters, and so I think we should just put those in there. The rest are like extras. In the case of stories with huge casts like CoP, its may get a little more tricky deciding who is a main character and who isn't (but in the case of CoP just note who shows up in Apocalypse Nigh, its kinda obvious).
for characters that are recurring, I think it makes sense to sort them in the first story that they're majorly involved in. for eg. Perih Vashai contributes nothing to Windurst story even though she's present, so the only place where she has a major story role is WotG Windy. And for those that also appear in AF stories, following mission story > AF story priority should work fairly well.
I kinda also think the WotG section could be split further, considering WotG encompasses 4 story arcs as well. Guess I might work on that tmr.
The list page is kinda helpful too, but it does need a bit of sorting. I think throwing all less important characters there would be wise, so that the info is all there but it doesn't clutter up the template more than it already is. I'd say characters important to lore or quests but not the main mission story (ie Missions, or quests that require missions/are required by missions to progress) should be filed there.--Spira 08:06, November 4, 2010 (UTC)
- Oh, and I'd like to add, FFXI character creation is based on missions... I think we decided just one was enough. All characters must be covered however, on the List of Final Fantasy XI Characters page. See FFIX's for how this can work. In an ideal world, each will have a short description. 80.42.246.57 16:51, November 4, 2010 (UTC)
- So a FFXI character is article-worthy if it appears in one mission? That's a nice bright line. As far as tabs go it seems we have two for them and three against. This hulking template can be much improved by some layer of collapsibility, though. It's not about alphabetizing the links so much as reducing the bulk of the display without sacrificing connectivity. BlueGoobbue • 01:11, November 5, 2010 (UTC)
- The tabs look good to me. Jimcloud 01:14, November 5, 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks for the support (and tying it up!) Perhaps there are only six of us with an interest in navigating FFXI articles. I've been using the current template extensively over the last few days and I find my concerns renewed. Even knowing where each character is filed and agreeing with the sorting method I find navigating to be somewhat awkward.
- The tabs look good to me. Jimcloud 01:14, November 5, 2010 (UTC)
- So a FFXI character is article-worthy if it appears in one mission? That's a nice bright line. As far as tabs go it seems we have two for them and three against. This hulking template can be much improved by some layer of collapsibility, though. It's not about alphabetizing the links so much as reducing the bulk of the display without sacrificing connectivity. BlueGoobbue • 01:11, November 5, 2010 (UTC)
- I did some experiments with other text-hiding structures but none work quite so well as the above demo. Regular table collapsing fails because the parent table mindlessly reveals every child element when it is opened. Changing tabs to names rather than letters makes the tab row much too large. If we had an alternative mechanism for a tab column it might be helpful to have the categories going down the left side of the box and the links on the right. That would be an even more radical departure from convention than the above proposal, however. There is also the option to create a distinct navigation template for each FFXI retail release but that seems a little extreme.
In light of the lack of enthusiasm for the above proposal, I have prepared a second demonstration which maintains the spirit of the existing template while eliminating its unwieldy girth:
This nested tab structure improves accessibility while eliminating confusion regarding under which heading an NPC may be found: a character appears in every appropriate tab. As an additional benefit, article authors can specify which tab should be open when the user unfolds the navigation template. For example:
This table opens to the Windurst cast:
This table opens to the Rise of the Zilart cast:
This table opens to the Shantotto Ascension cast:
Note that Yoran-Oran and Aldo, the heroes of the Shantotto add-on, are listed there as well as in the Zilart and Windurst sections where they previously appeared. Character notability is based on missions and this system allows all notable characters within a mission series to be browsed together.
The national categories contain both the present day and Shadowreign cast members. I feel that the overlap between the two sides of each story is great enough that we accomplish very little by distinguishing between the eras. This leaves the Wings of the Goddess tab for the characters that advance Lilisette's story specifically. Please note that I do not claim to have every character sorted under every appropriate heading as this is only a proof of concept! For reference, the Windurst section is about as big as any section should become as it is the most complete nation on our wiki.
I would like to change the font on the tabs themselves to match the rest of the navigation template but that's a stylesheet issue somewhat outside the scope of this demonstration. It shouldn't be a problem if we move forward with this, however. Thanks again to those that supported the previous proposal and to everybody that has taken the time to consider this one! BlueGoobbue • 22:57, November 14, 2010 (UTC)
- Now this one, I rather like : ) Especially the automatic preselection of the relevant tab, which is excellent. My only minor gripe is that the template height changes between tabs, which is something I personally always grapple with in my own tabbing whenever I have tabs with differing amounts of content in them... but maybe that's just me >_> Anyway, nice work! -- Sorceror Nobody 14:31, November 15, 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks! I agree that it would be nice to avoid the height adjustments. It's a little tricky because the width of the overall template varies. I'll see what can be done. BlueGoobbue • 18:55, November 15, 2010 (UTC)
- I updated the template to make the tabs at least 80 pixels tall. That works pretty well for the default Wikia skin at a 1024x768 screen resolution, which I assume to be the most basic viewing scenario. It has quite a bit of whitespace in Monobook, though, and as the table grows wider the height is increasingly unnecessary. If anybody views the tabs on a small screen they will still grow and shrink but this is preferable to text floating in space because it can't fit in the tab. Ideally the tabber script would be able to figure out the height of its biggest element and set everything else to match. In the meantime I suppose it's a question of preference: too much whitespace on big screens or shifting table height for everyone? BlueGoobbue • 20:44, November 15, 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry for the triple post! It seems that the width is fixed after all. Wikia claims that articles are supposed to be 660 pixels wide. The extra length of the table in places like the talk page led me to believe that it could stretch but it seems that this is not the case. I've rigged the table to use the 660 pixel width for illustrative purposes. With these dimensions the 80 pixel tab height is fine. I've also played around with stylesheet modifications and it is very easy to change the font of the tabs to match the rest of the template without affecting tabs elsewhere. BlueGoobbue • 20:24, November 16, 2010 (UTC)
