Forum:Portable Infoboxes

Okay, I know this thing was discussed before while I was away, but at this point in time, I feel we really need to go over this again. At this point, the use of portable infoboxes has gone beyond aesthetics and gone well and truly into the question of actual functionality. Case in point, Jackson's Revenge, where I've had to align the template to the left, because otherwise we were left with a bunch of broken code. Think it looks bad? Well, because we can't join boxes anymore, that's what we're now stuck with. But hey, at least pages like the Siege Breakers and Devil Dogs look slightly...less...terrible. If you want to see it look even worse, look up the JR's edit history.

As I said, this is no longer a question of aesthetics, this is a question of actual functionality. So far, the following issues with the new boxes have been identified:


 * Boxes can no longer be linked (which has given us stuff like Jackson's Revenge in worst case scenarios), and at best, has left us with the meta-campaign info being separated from mission info in mission articles. Whatever one thinks of the latter, the former is now borderline illegible.


 * Only HTML code has been able to set foreground and background color, and so far the bot that was said to clean them up has apparently been ineffective. This has affected faction and character pages, and to a lesser extent, mission pages (as in, the color no longer corresponds with player color). I'd also like to point out that HTML code, while I'm familiar with it, is far less user friendly for editors. I've just seen Psi-Ragnarok try to alter the color of the Void Seeker, and lo and behold, it hasn't worked. Why? Because "green" no longer works as a field.


 * Portraits can no longer be adjusted for size within the new boxes. In some cases, this has given us issues like Edmund Duke and Jake Ramsey, and has extended to hero units as well (see Fenix (dragoon). This has also affected faction boxes (see Terran Dominion and Tal'darim for example).

Now, as I understand, the argument for portable infoboxes is that it makes things easier for mobile users, and that mobile users account for over 50% of wikia page views in some cases. Alright, fine. I understand how ad revenue works. But at this point, functionality has reached the point of being outright broken in some examples. This isn't quibbling over aesthetics, this is actively impeding information (faction color), legibility (code), and yes, aesthetics (portrait size). I'd also like to point out that such boxes aren't going to make it any easier for mobile users to edit/create pages - there's inherent drawbacks with mobiles as editing tools when compared to a keyboard. The idea of "shafting" mobile users has been brought up, but it appears to have got to the point where we're sacrificing far too much to accomodate them. Potentially this is a solution without a problem, as mobile edits still occurred at times before this, and no-one complained about the format before.

If these issues can be sorted, great. But I'd like to propose the following:

1) Revert the boxes. I appreciate that work has gone into the new ones, but so far this has resulted in broken pages.

2) Return to the showcase concept. If the boxes can be recreated there, with proof that functionality can be maintained, then we can alter the code of the original boxes. Looking at the examples chosen, clearly a lot more testing needed to be done. We can go through each box and make sure that nothing is lost in the transition, because clearly, something has.

I'll wait for other admins to weigh in before doing anything drastic, and I know that in theory these issues were sorted before, but I have to question - is this the kind of thing that we signed off on? Jackson's Revenge is a worst case scenario, but so far not a single page has benefited from the change (IMO), at least from the perspective of an editor.--Hawki (talk) 00:28, June 15, 2017 (UTC)