Forum:Sidebar overhaul

While working on the character sidebar, it occurred to me that something similar might be helpful for pages about places or organizations. One thing led to another, and eventually I came up with two separate sidebars for in-universe and out-of-universe pages, in keeping with how we've been splitting those two up recently. The OOU sidebar is mostly the same, except concerning episode pages - I added a navigation feature and some extra broadcast info. Some page examples:


 * Characters: Jack Bauer, David Palmer, Tony Almeida, Hector Salazar, Todd
 * Places/Groups: St. Mark's Hospital, Starkwood
 * Episodes: Day 2: 7:00am-8:00am, Day 8: 4:00pm-5:00pm
 * Actors: Kiefer Sutherland
 * Books: 24 Declassified:Trinity
 * Comics: 24: Nightfall

The templates themselves are here: IU and OOU. The default width is 250px, although that, and the width of the labels, can be adjusted in each instance. Switching all pages over could be done with the bot, although adding specific info to the IU ones would take a while. But with the show over we're pretty much made of time, at least until info about the movie starts coming out. Thoughts? --Pyramidhead 01:00, June 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * There are things I like and things I don't about both. First, I like the look and how it's similar to the new "Appearances" template. It looks more polished and stylized than current sidebars. Second, I like the addition of several crucial information to the sidebar. On the other hand, some of the sidebars (i.e. Palmer, Jack) end up looking too busy and clogged. I think we could do with less info. than what you put on the sidebars and leave the rest to the profiles. Finally, there's something about the alignment in the episode ones that doesn't work for me. I just can't pinpoint what it is. Regardless of, that's a neat work you're doing. Let's hope we can work them out. Thief12 02:05, June 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Wow, you've really put a lot of work into this. Which makes it hard to say that I really don't think they will work. We had this discussion before at Forum:Character sidebar. As Blue Rook said, all this does is make character pages look inconsistent. Some characters will have huge sidebars (i.e. Jack), and others will have practically nothing on them. I don't know why it is better to move stuff like Jack's educational info onto the sidebar, only to see that it doesn't all fit there and link to it somewhere else! The current sidebars are very consistent because all characters have the same info on them, and the only info that is necessary to know as soon as you reach the article: status, episodes and actor. Why do we need to include more information than that? -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 09:06, June 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Of course it won't all fit on Jack's page because he's the only character with a retarded amount of background info. That's literally the only situation where something like "see all" would be necessary. And I've yet to be convinced why having more info for some characters than for others is such a terrible thing - virtually every other TV-based wiki with huge casts of characters that I've been to implements something similar to this. Look at Lostpedia, or Heroes Wiki, or Battlestar Wiki. It's about placing the essentials right at the top where a first-time reader can immediately access them, without making them have to click away to some profiles page. Anyway, what do you think of the non-character examples? --Pyramidhead 19:20, June 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * I like the episodes, actors, books and comics. But you have a similar issue with the places/groups as you do characters: some pages will end up with literally huge sidebars, and others will have practically nothing. When you say that people have to click away to see a character's profile information, in most situations you don't because we include them in the "Personal" section at the top of the page. It's literally a mouse-scroll's distance away so I don't see the point in moving it all to the side and squashed up. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 10:50, June 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Again: I don't understand why having some pages with tons of info in the sidebar and some with very little is automatically a bad thing. It's like complaining that the page for Jack Bauer is really long, while the page for Bryce Moore has virtually nothing on it. That's just the result of what the show presented. And none of the wikis I mention find issue with it, probably because it's not really an issue at all. And the "Personal" section isn't even a standard - it's used only on Jack's page, as far as I can tell. This will standardize how it's all presented for everyone. As for the "squashing", I designed the template so that both the overall and the label width can be adjusted as necessary. Really, there's virtually no line spillover on the examples I made, which would represent the worst cases in that regard. --Pyramidhead 19:16, June 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * In any case, can I at least assume you approve of the new look? --Pyramidhead 19:15, June 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I approve of the look. As for the background info, I think stuff like Education and some previous Work Experience are probably unnecessary. That info really doesn't contribute a lot to the show so I don't think they would contribute to overload a sidebar with either. Now, stuff like Family, Dates of birth/death (whenever given), I kinda like. That's my take on some of it. Thief12 03:35, June 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah I do approve of the look and I think it's good because it follows this new style that you've implemented on the appearances and other templates so that is good. There's one or two small things I'm not sure I like though... I don't really understand why it says the article's title above the picture, then smaller below it as well. I think the smaller one can be removed. Also, I think the colons after the "Played by" or "Season" or whatever are a little intrusive; it may look better without them. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 09:27, June 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * The blue title will generally be what the character's most commonly used name is, while the "Name:" part would have the character's full name if it differed from that. I.E., the blue title would be "Tony Almeida," while the Name: part would be "Anthony Almeida." --Pyramidhead 20:22, June 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * SignorSimon, I emailed you a slightly altered versions of Monobook.css and Common.css which will need to be put in if we're going to use these templates. Also, the changes in Common will change all navigation sidebars to the blue-on-gray appearance that, before now, had to be manually changed to look that way. --Pyramidhead 19:07, June 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Whoa whoa whoa, what happened? On all your pages that you've made the cool style has changed! There isn't the blue bit at the top and the text is larger? Also we haven't sorted out what we're doing as to the inclusion of the extra material. It's too soon to get going with all this. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 19:25, June 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, what have you done to the Director and Post Production templates? -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 19:26, June 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * It's because I changed the templates from having really long style tags to using classes, which at the moment are defined in my own stylesheet. I can see them fine but nobody else will be able to until those changes are put in. But I can change it back for the time being. Same applies to those two navigation templates - once the changes are put in, they'll look like what they should to every user. --Pyramidhead 19:29, June 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, we may not have settled the "extra info," but there seems to be a solid consensus that at least the style changes and the extra episode info are things we want to start on. I can change all the pages over to the new templates with the bot, but hold off on extra stuff until we reach a consensus. --Pyramidhead 19:32, June 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, the first bit sounds good (about just changing the style). But wouldn't it be easier if the sidebars were all just in one, rather than having two separate ones? One of the good things about our system is that it is all in one sidebar and its just going to be extra work and more to think about when making new pages/adding sidebars.
 * One final thing, can you stop saving the page before you finish what you're writing? I've had two edit conflicts when trying to write this response. You seem to have forgotten about the "Preview" button recently and it does cause issues. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 19:36, June 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I always seem to find something to fix after I save. Okay, Template:Sidebar test now contains the functionality of both iu and oou, with one caveat: because of the new episode navigation thing, "season" and "seasons" are distinct - season is for episodes, while seasons is for characters/places/etc. Other than that, it's pretty similar to the existing sidebar. Once you put in those changes, I'll switch the current sidebar over to the new one. --Pyramidhead 20:04, June 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Right, so all you want me to do is paste the stuff you emailed me into Common.css? Is there something for Monobook.css? I only got one email through. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 00:22, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I sent two. I'll send them both again. Just to be clear, you should paste everything in the emails over the current versions - they're the same except for the changes I made. --Pyramidhead 00:57, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * OK Pyramidhead, I've updated the two pages. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 10:04, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks good so far, we just need to check random pages to make sure that the bot didn't randomly goof up something here or there. Very excellent work Pyramidhead!
 * There is an extremely minor detail I'd like to bring up that may be worth changing. Currently, the space between the field name and the datum — Status: Alive / Season(s): 5 — is too tiny in my opinion. Can you increase the space after the colon? It would make it seem less crowded. 22:32, June 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure thing. --Movebot 01:45, June 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * 1. Could someone update the documentation (Wiki 24:Sidebar documentation) for the sidebar? I will need to learn it from scratch anyway and that documentation has been rendered useless.
 * 2. Pyramidhead now that you've whipped out the bot again, would it be possible for you to use it and go through and replaced all instances of the old appearances templates, like Template:Appearances6, from all namespaces and articles? 02:17, June 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * Added some new docs. --Movebot 02:52, June 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * Excellent... but 1 thing, how come deleted characters like Danny (deleted) got their "Deleted appearances" templates removed entirely instead of replaced? 18:47, June 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * Because the title would still be "24 media featuring so-and-so," which is inaccurate. Anyway, it's pretty unnecessary since they're only in one episode and it's listed in the sidebar. --Pyramidhead 19:15, June 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * You've got to let everyone know when you alter something beyond the original parameters of a change. (Your ideas are excellent but their sweep often proves to be more expansive than originally explained, and it steps on people's toes!) The precedent is, for these non-canon characters, that they get an appearances template with a different heading: "Deleted appearances". Since your new template has text inside it that complicates things, we need to either add an alternative text line specifically for non-canon characters or create a new appearances template just for them... not delete the template altogether from their pages. And, your argument that it's unnecessary because they only appear in 1 episode doesn't hold since many canonical characters also have only 1 episode, and we'd never consider removing their templates. 03:14, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

storyby & teleplayby
Just a temporary thread: storyby and teleplayby are currently broken. It seems that they guides are supposed to have simply "teleplay" and "story" without the "by" inside the word. I think the guides should be changed instead of the template being changed. 22:43, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Why do you think that? It would be a helluva lot easier to just change the template. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 23:01, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Because the words in the template should be minimized to the fewest characters necessary. The "by" isn't needed at all. Plus it's just a bot doing the changes, it's not being done manually right? 23:16, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah that's a good point, I hadn't thought of the bot. But it doesn't really matter anymore I don't think how many words there is in the pages because they won't really be changed ever. -- SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 23:32, June 9, 2010 (UTC)

IU information
Now that the switching over is taken care of, I'll bring it up again. Is there any reason why we shouldn't put as much helpful info in the sidebar as possible? And don't give me that they'll be different lengths - the point of a sidebar is to collect everything known about a certain thing in one place, whether that consists of several volumes or just their name. From where I stand, it can only improve the quality of the wiki as a whole, so why not? --Pyramidhead 17:07, June 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * What's the complete list of factoids to be listed there, for the maximum? My answer would probably be "yes but remove [certain facts]". The one thing that doesn't belong in a sidebar is a list of people, for organizations and businesses articles. The Starkwood article should have its list of employees inside the article body, in a section, instead of the sidebar, for one example. That's definitely too much clutter. But most other things I probably approve of. 04:00, June 11, 2010 (UTC)