Talk:Game Record (boilerplate)

General

this page is an attempt to create a template for the Game pages on MafiaWiki... EVERYTHING is subjective, so please critique as much as you want... name what you like, name what you dislike, even the smallest of details... this page utilizes a lot of templates to make the creation of additional pages as simple as possible... the templates included on this page are:

so please critique them as well... thanks!-- Lying Brian 03:14, 20 August 2007 (MDT)

From the point of view of a somewhat experienced HTML/XML/CSS coder, I strongly recommend not using <font color="#00000">. Use <span style="color:#00000"> instead. I fixed this myself. Also, there is a CSS shorthand you might find useful: When you have an RGB code consisting of three pairs (such as #00aa00), you can abbreviate this by using only one letter per pair (using the previous example, #0a0). This shortcut will not work with something like #0cdea1 or even #0000a5; the color code must consist of three "double digits".

ok, i'll take your word about <font color=> vs. <span style="color:">... thanks for the shorthand tip...-- Lying Brian 00:52, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

My other major concern comes from being a Newbie to Mafia. I'd really prefer to see the game in chronological order (Night 0, Day 1, Night 1, ... Endgame) rather than scrolling back and forth between separate "Day" and "Night" sections.

yeah, a couple other people said the same thing... i don't remember why i liked them separated, so i fixed it...-- Lying Brian 00:52, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

A third concern come from my time on Wikipedia. It is generally considered a Bad Idea to have heading consisting entirely of a link. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 19:20, 20 August 2007 (MDT)

again, you're the expert, so i'll take your word... i kinda didn't like it either... i fixed this as well...-- Lying Brian 00:52, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Vote Counts

awww, SE used a table for the vote count [sarcasm]somebody should've thought of this earlier[/sarcasm]... SE, here's a link to the discussion we had about this subject Wiki Group... basically, most everybody (read everyone except me) want the vote counts in the wiki to look like the vote counts in the threads, i couldn't create a table that was easy enough to fill out (maybe a template?), and also mith doesn't like white space... you would probably have my support if we wanted to bring this up again, but i don't thing it's a big enough of a deal to worry about...-- Lying Brian 01:13, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

As far as the presentation of the rest of the page, the table'd vote count does look really out of place. Though I'm not really in love with the jumbled one-liners, either. Hmm. --YYCguy 08:33, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

What mith said was: "Raw HTML tables in general look bad. Especially when they're sitting in a fairly sleek looking wiki. I much prefer the one-line vote list I used in the Open games, and that's what we're more used to in vote counts anyway." The version I have is far different from "raw HTML." I'm using CSS, which results in a VASTLY superior appearance to what "raw HTML" can achieve. As far as "one line per vote" is concerned, I can easily change that. The one-name-per-line was just an experiment. I changed it back. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 09:02, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Based on reading through that thread, I'd say it's likely a lost battle ;). But I wouldn't mind trying out other ways to present the vote counts. I agree that the current way feels a bit odd (though I'm getting used to it). --YYCguy 09:17, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Also, in threads you're very limited. You can't make a table in a thread. Why are limiting ourselves when we have such powerful tools available? SigmaEpsilon (talk) 09:04, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Actually, you can use tables in the forum (with [table] tags). The vast majority of mods, though, choose not to. --YYCguy 09:17, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

I'm not sure how familiar you are with MediaWiki, but MediaWiki's tables are vastly superior to anything a forum can produce. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 12:20, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

p.s. the 'Grey Screen of Death' just reminded me that the tables i had created were all lost when our crappy server ~~bluehost~~ crashed our site awhile back...-- Lying Brian 01:19, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Forum notation provides a nice shorthand notation that's easy for mods to type and is generally easy for the players to understand. With the power of this wiki, we should strive make things look better than they do on the forum. We an use this wiki to organize and display information in a way that is too cumbersome to do in the forums. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 12:23, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

i don't remember to which table the "raw HTML" quote was referring, but if i remember correctly i was using syntax similar to what you're using (i think my first table may have been "raw HTML", but after that i used CSS), and people STILL didn't like it... another thing that was brought up (it may have been lost) was if we have the vote counts in a table, so should the player list & night choices... also, if you want to go ahead and spearhead this, you'll probably want to make the border & background color transparent w/ interior lines to separate cells... also, the point was brought up that we don't need a header row since we know what we're looking at... another thing, the 'Voters' column should probably be left aligned if you're going to use the 1 line approach (i prefer something along the lines of your first example, but 'white space' and all that)

please understand, i'm not trying to discourage you, i'm just rebringing up the points from when i tried it... again, i'm a supporter of the tables idea, but sometimes a good idea isn't favored by the massess, but i am going to post in the 'Wiki Group' thread to see if i can revive discussion...-- Lying Brian 15:52, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

On of my major efforts here is to make things easier for everyone to understand, not just those familiar with the game. That's why I put headers on the table. To a newbie (i.e. me) seeing "Fiacso - Townie" followed by a bunch of names and numbers is confusing. sure, experienced users will know what they're looking at, but newbies may not. I want to make this easy for everyone to understand. Is the extra info hurting anything? SigmaEpsilon (talk) 16:05, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

And making everything transparent defeats the purpose of a table. That would make things harder to read. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 16:11, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Personally, I find this like "{ Commodore Amazing | LyingBrian | Poker | SpamWise |}" weird looking. That line looks very much like a table (just add a "|" after the "{"), yet it's not a table... It's probably just an affect of coming from Wikipedia, but seeing curly braces in ordinary text just seems weird. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 09:02, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

yeah, that could probably be improved if we decide to go w/ the text rather than a table, but i used braces '{}' to separate it from the parentheses in the vote counts, night choices, & player roles, and braces looked better than brackets '[]' IMO...-- Lying Brian 15:52, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

I really don't like that curly-brace thing, either. I'd rather go with something like this or a variant on the tables idea, like I used in Reservoir Dogs. -- Mr. Flay 17:44, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Playerlist

Currently, the template has the playerlist is sorted alphabetically. Most game threads, however, have the playerlist sorted by "time of death". What are your thoughts on this? Somestrangeflea 02:24, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

20:38, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

i like the player list to be alphabetical, b/c when i am looking through a player list, most of the time i'm looking for a specific player... especially in bigger games, it can be hard to find them amongst all the names... for those times when i want to see who died in what order, i added the "Timeline" heading... i also regrouped the vote counts & night choices into separate groups... clicking on the title under "Timeline" or clicking the timeframe listed in the Player List will take you to the specific timeframe
-- Lying Brian

Template

I was thinking .. this page serves as a good example of the style we're aiming for (or will, when we finish deciding what that style is ;)), but it's a little cumbersome to use as a template. I'm thinking about creating a stripped down boilerplate template. It would have every section and template that you should need for a game, but only once with the intention that the user can copy and paste to suit their needs. The person creating a game page could subst the page in to where it's going, and then go in and fill in the details. --YYCguy 08:14, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

'boilerplate' is a better word for what i'm trying to create, so yeah, i'm not actually thinking of creating an actual 'template' for games, just a guide for styling & such...-- Lying Brian 15:56, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Moved it to a title that seemed a little more descriptive. I admit I was confused at first, and daunted with the idea of trying to use everything in this in one table. -- Mr. Flay 17:41, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Adding text

I strongly feel that we should have more text describing what's going on.

BillyBob (Townie) - blue

is overly concise. It should say something like:

BillyBob, a Psychotic Townsperson, was killed by the Mafia.

This provides the same information in a much better manner. Conciseness is nice, but why is everyone so vehemently opposed including details and spelling things out clearly? Everyone seems fixated on abbreviations and shorthand notation. I'm trying to look at this OBJECTIVELY! Stop concentrating on how the "in crowd" does things and make this place accessible to everyone. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:15, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

I agree that we can make some of the game info more user friendly. Especially with the compressed timeline section, it's a little non-sensical. --YYCguy 17:55, 22 August 2007 (MDT)

actually i think a table would be great here too... hmmm, i think i'm going to experiment w/ a table-only page, see how it looks...
-- Lying Brian 18:27, 22 August 2007 (MDT)

Now that I've got {{vtable}} up, I could start working on {{tlx|ntable}}. The only issue is that I don't know how many player to make it for... SigmaEpsilon (talk) 12:57, 23 August 2007 (MDT)

I'm not really seeing the point of putting votes into a template. A boilerplate, yes, but since games vary in size from 5-50, how many parameters are we really going to try to account for?? Also, what does ntable propose to do? -- Mr. Flay 14:26, 23 August 2007 (MDT)

ntable would be a table for the "night choices". I'm trying to make these as easy as possible for mods to input, and as easy as possible for people to read. As far as the number of parameters go, MediaWiki has no limit. It's just up to me to make them all. Input will be very easy, and similar to the whole "separate everything by pipes" style that already seems prevalent.

Table only version

ok i made a table only version... let me know what you think... the tables need a little bit of work, i'm sure... here's the link: Newbie 1/Tables
-- Lying Brian 16:20, 23 August 2007 (MDT)

dead players' night choices

Why do we list the night choices of dead players? If the "result" is always "n/a", why bother listing that person at all? SigmaEpsilon (talk) 16:50, 26 August 2007 (MDT)

I don't know either. I wouldn't list them myself. Their presence there makes no sense. Somestrangeflea 16:52, 26 August 2007 (MDT)

Gamebox & TOCRight

I do not like having the combination of TOCRight and Gamebox. Both are meant to be floated right, and having one beside the other looks a bit weird... Somestrangeflea 12:20, 27 August 2007 (MDT)

is that better?... i have a couple problems w/ this setup, though i'll admit, they're probably minor... 1st problem... the right edges of the Gamebox & TOCright don't line up... don't ask me why, i'm not sure, but they don't... 2nd problem, if you have a bigger game say w/ 10 days & nights, the 'Table of Contents' is too long, and doesn't fit on the screen for those of us w/ smaller screens... plus i like the way the Gamebox & TOCright create a frame for the page... meh, it's not a big deal to me, but i do prefer it the other way...
-- Lying Brian 16:42, 27 August 2007 (MDT)

I was the one who originally changed it. right now, the lines under the headings collide with the Gamebox and TOC. This is a bug in MediaWiki, so there is not much we can do about it. I tried to rearrange things so that the lines didn't hit anything, but apparently it didn't look very good. SigmaEpsilon (talk)

vote counts2

so why do we need vote counts on the wiki pages of a game? we could easily condense the information to include just the players on the lynchee's wagon...
-- Lying Brian 02:37, 5 September 2007 (MDT)