Forum:Infoboxes

Infobox Discussion - OP
Identifying the issues:
 * 1) The rich text editor (Visual mode) should be available to all editors -- this makes it possible to edit infoboxes visually, as well as add styling, images, etc. in a visual environment. However, we have had many pages where we pass templates as parameters in an infobox, and this complex code (passing a template as a parameter to another template) disables the RTE. We want to improve infoboxes so that this issue is solved and Visual editing mode can be used by everyone.
 * 2) Infoboxes are too big. Some pages like this one just don't look very pretty with a huge infobox and so little article content. Part of this can be solved by improving articles, but there is still a case to be made that our infoboxes are too tall and could be cleaned up a bit.
 * 3) Parameter naming between infoboxes is inconsistent. Template:Infobox-Items uses lowercase names for parameters, whereas in Template:Infobox-Accessory, all the parameter names are capitalized. Template:Infobox-Items has only an parameter, whereas Template:Infobox-Monster has both  and, and so images are added to the infobox differently for these 2 templates. These inconsistencies are unfortunate, and we should try to fix them if possible.

Suggestions thus far: (some partially implemented)
 * CoinCalc being implemented within the infobox templates, as in Pathogen's blog post - designed to shorten code that appears when substituting coin templates, e.g.
 * Collapsible infoboxes. This is something that Gracey had talked about in the past. It would allow for collapsing portions of the infobox. An example can be found here.
 * Removing redundant info from infoboxes. Every weapon in standard Terraria pretty much has a 4% critical strike chance. Do we really need that information in the infobox? On the other hand, if we didn't have that parameter, and a mod item has a different critical strike chance, what then?
 * Isolate crafting. Keep it in the infobox, but give it its own, color coded section in the infobox. Also, I think we may need to make explicit the quantity of items produced as a result. For most items, it's 1. Sometimes it's like 5, in which case we've been doing stuff like writing "Makes 5" such as on the Unholy Water page. While this works, I personally think this is a bit sloppy and could be improved upon, especially if crafting is to be given it's own specialized section in the infobox.

Questions:
 * Do we feel comfortable using the same infoboxes in the main namespace as we use for items/monsters in the Mod: namespace?

Feel free to edit / update this OP as the discussion goes on or if it's inaccurate, etc. — Mathmagician talk ♥ blog 05:11, March 29, 2012 (UTC)