StrategyWiki talk:Guide/Organizing the pages

Ditchingness
Didn't echelon say we were going to ditch subpages completely?--Dan 07:58, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * Not as far as I recall. I think they work quite nicely. --DrBob (Talk) 10:52, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * No, quite the contrary--subpages are the foundation of the wiki itself. Who would want to download/read an incredibly long guide that takes 10 minutes to scroll through? Imagine the effect on editing and on the server itself, too! You might be thinking I was going to do away with the subpage hierarchy links at the top of every guide, but I've grown used to them now and consider them useful.  ech elon  10:55, 1 March 2007 (CST)
 * I think you misunderstood me. I was referring to the below text:

... then it should be split out into sub-pages of the items sub-page of the game, so a book, for example, would go in Game name/Items/Book.

I'm asking whether or not the /Items/ subpage should carry the weight of all of the items of the game. It was decided before that a /Walkthrough/ subpage carrying the entire walkthough was considered unnecessary, so what makes /Items/ any different?--Dan 23:20, 2 March 2007 (CST)
 * I think /Items/ should be used if there are a lot of items (as in a MMORPG). Regardless, most guides should just be putting all item information on a single page (/Items). The walkthrough pages are more important to the guide than the item pages, so they deserve to be "promoted" to being sub-pages of the guide's main page. --DrBob (Talk) 03:48, 3 March 2007 (CST)
 * Personally, I think striking a balance is the key. If there's tons of items, sure, it's a good idea to break it up.  But I would prefer to see it broken up at a classification level.  So going with Dan's book example, I would hate to see:
 * Game name/Item/Red Book
 * Game name/Item/Yellow Book
 * Game name/Item/Green Book
 * Game name/Item/Purple Book with blue polka-dots.
 * I mean, that just gets wasteful. Why not have all of the books in Game name/Item/Books?  It makes more sense that way to me.  I don't like seeing a sprawling list of items, but I hate seeing one or two sentences on an entire page just as much.  The same goes for enemies (and spells).  If you all agree with this policy, it should probably go in the guide. Procyon 09:25, 3 March 2007 (CST)
 * I agree with it. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 09:56, 3 March 2007 (CST)
 * I don't understand the whole idea behind excessive subpaging since, 1} we can't get a full list of the directory hierarchy if we put everything in /Items/, 2} it's just a waste of space in the header, and 3} Google discerns pages less as it transverses through a hierarchy. For example, say the Halo guide has each weapon on a separate page. The reader knows that an Assault Rifle is a weapon, so why have it under /Weapons/? Also, knowing you can't get a hierarchy listing of a subpage, again, why have /Weapons/? Finally, why waste space when it will do equally well without /Weapons/?--Dan 10:14, 3 March 2007 (CST)
 * If I follow you correctly, then using the book example, you would prefer to see an index of item categories under Game name/Items, and then all of the books under Game name/Books, as opposed to Game name/Items/Books. I'm completely OK with that.  It seems that what you're really against is too many sub-dirs.  Is this correct? Procyon 10:30, 3 March 2007 (CST)
 * Sorry if I'm not making myself clear. But yes, I am against having too many subdirs, and would prefer one subdir at the *most* (Game name/Yellow book, Game name/Green book, etc.) That way, we won't have much of the overhead brought on by Game name/Items/Yellow book. It's simply not needed or, for that matter, functional at all.--Dan 10:37, 3 March 2007 (CST)
 * You can get hierarchy listings for sub-pages actually, like this. I would argue that sub-paging things like items is functional if there are many items (and they all deserve their own pages), as otherwise there will be too many pages directly under the main guide page, and it'd get messy. :-) --DrBob (Talk) 10:39, 3 March 2007 (CST)
 * Ah well... I hold my peace.--Dan 08:02, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Guide top-level page
This article only says what to do in subpages. Could something be added about the top-level page for a guide, too? There is a bit of info in Guide/Starting_a_new_guide which could be moved. It would be useful to add to that stuff about the Infobox and Continue Nav thing. Pelago 14:01, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Controls format
I'm not sure, but I think there's a trend towards putting controls into a table now. I just saw convert to table format on a controls page using a list how it is presented in the guide. Is there a consensus on this? If so, it should probably be reflected in the guide. - naj zere 16:54, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm against the unnecessary usage of tables, and I believe controls pages are part of this. While Arcade controls are more complex and might benefit from the aligning properties of tables, most single-button (or two-button) controls do not and would be better suited as a bulleted list, as is already shown in the guide. You should probably contact the person who added that tag and direct them to this discussion so that they may explain their reasoning as well. -- 22:24, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I just looked and I figured out why. The table is so that like controls can be lined up, such as in Mario Kart 64/Controls. I think the list method is still preferred for single-console controls, but perhaps you'd like to bring this up at the upcoming IRC meeting? -- 22:30, 5 December 2008 (UTC)