User talk:Theothersteve7

Hello!

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Hello. Nice to meet you. I've spent some time on Minecraft and Terraria wikis. The namespaces thing is probably the most confusing bit to me here, but it's easy enough to figure out. Have you considered adding a few more navigational templates? Perhaps for crafting materials, or major quest chains? --Theothersteve7 20:06, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

A navigational template for crafting materials works very well on Minecraft wiki. It is pointless on this wiki. The only crafting-related pages (for Skyrim) are Alchemy (with Ingredients and Alchemy Effects), Smithing (with the respective crafting level articles, e.g. Daedric and Glass), and Enchanting. With plenty of in-article links, there is no reason to have a dedicated Navbox for crafting materials.

As for the quests, they are listed in full and in order on their respective pages (e.g. Main Quest and Thieves Guild (faction)). You can easily go to the next, previous, and concurrent quests from whatever quest you may be on. Either way, there isn't much justification for having a dedicated Navbox for each questline.

Just thought I'd offer my 2¢. Jak Atackka 19:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I personally did a lot of fumbling around trying to figure out how Jewelry worked, and I don't like having to bounce to the main page and back repeatedly while juggling several different quests. Navboxes would have fixed both of these. Becoming Thane would also be dramatically simplified with a good navbox. --Theothersteve7 19:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

In that case, changing Jewelry so it redirects to a different page would be a fix, or just writing a new article for it. A Navbox would be completely useless for that type of thing, because it would only be used on two pages. Skyrim, as you know, is WAY different than Minecraft and Terraria, thus the wiki is as well. Most of the Minecraft stuff can be generally categorized under items/blocks, mobs, and game info, which can all be used in a handful of navboxes. Skyrim, on the other hand, has such an incredibly varied number of topics that navboxes are nearly useless. There are literally hundreds of different quests, so having them under a single navbox (or even a series of navboxes) is not only cumbersome, but also redundant, because all of that info is listed somewhere else. As far as becoming Thane, that really shouldn't be a problem. The relevant quests are all listed on the quest's page. As for having to juggle quest pages, separate tabs/windows will work wonders.

I'm not trying to shoot you down, I'm just saying why we don't use Navboxes for everything. Items are all on a single page, like Clothing, Generic Magic Apparel, Weapons, etc. Searching for the particular item will also send you to the right page. Quest lines are all described on the faction's page, e.g. you'll find all of the Thieves Guild quests on the Thieves Guild page. On that page, you'll find a Navbox that links to all the different factions of the game. Basically, whatever you're looking for, you can find it by searching for it or by following the hyperlinks. ?• JA^Talk 00:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

1. A navbox for smithing would include each of the nine materials pages as well as possibly a few other pages.
2. I checked a few random wikis. Other wikis using navboxes more than this one does include Fallout, World of Warcraft, Zelda, and Halo. Wikis that use them on the level that this one does include My Little Pony and Infamous. I think it's clear which category we fall into.
3. Skyrim's individual NPC pages, quests outside the six main chains, and individual item pages would be poorly suited to navboxes, I agree. However, there are many subjects which would be improved with them. Would you really suggest getting rid of the Skills navbox? What about the Factions navbox?

The navboxes I would propose would be one for each major faction quest chain, one for smithing, one for daedric quests and artifacts, and one for each city containing the sidequests for that city.

--Theothersteve7 03:00, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I am not suggesting at all that we get rid of any navboxes. I'm just suggesting that we don't really need any more. Those are some pretty good points you make, though. Comparing us to My Little Pony is a bit underhanded, but it's a good point nonetheless. Here are my thoughts on some of those.

• Zelda Wiki has the advantage of dealing with a (relatively) small amount of info spread across a large number of games. From the looks of it (under Ocarina of Time, which I assume is one of their best subsections due to its popularity), they really only use navboxes for main characters and games. Because a lot of pages fall under those categories, it seems like they extensively use navboxes.
• Halo Nation is, quite honestly, a mess. They have plenty of information, and it's pretty well written, but the formatting is a bit of a disaster. It's hard to read it, because it's just a big block of text. That aside, they do use a decent number of navboxes, although I don't think I found a single one that didn't have the word "Spartan" in it. They have a small number of large articles, unlike us, who have a large number of small-medium articles.
• Fallout Wiki is the closest to ours. They do use a lot of navboxes, and it's largely effective. The one navbox that I hate, despite it's usefulness, is Fallout New Vegas locations. That one is ridiculously long. A similar navbox for Skyrim would be incredibly unwieldy. However, their overall implementation of navboxes is pretty effective.
• inFamous Wiki does use some navboxes, albeit very big and ugly ones. We definitely don't want that.

You have convinced me to take another look at more navboxes, considering their usefulness elsewhere. As for your suggestions, I'm not sure. The greatest issue is that it goes against our current setup. The navboxes for each major faction questline would be helpful, but it would be rather redundant and it would clash with our current setup. Smithing would be interesting; I'll have to think more about that one. Daedric quests & artifacts are a no, because those are already listed under Daedric Quests and Artifacts. A sidequest navbox would be more or less useless, because the only pages where those would be relevant are on the city page and on the Thane quest page for that hold.

Thanks for pointing these out. ?• JA^Talk 05:42, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for being open-minded about this. I didn't mean to be unduly sarcastic about the MLP comparison, I just wanted an extreme example (and was also just googling the first things that came to mind). I agree that the biggest obstacle is that it is a bit of a fundamental shift in the structure of the wiki; it would have been better if this had been the format in the first place. I also agree that navboxes should be limited to a couple dozen items at most. --Theothersteve7 06:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I think the current setup is much better. It's unique and just as useful, since in general you have to do the quests in order :) I've thought about it more, and a navbox dedicated to Smithing seems a bit much. However, we do need to improve it considerably, so that the casual viewer can just click on the first link they see in Google and say, "Oh, here it is. That wasn't hard to find. This is a nice website, maybe I should use it more often." I'm thinking about ways we can fix that particular hole in the Skyrim namespace. ?• JA^Talk 06:17, 26 February 2012 (UTC)