Talk: Item infobox

Desc parameter

What exactly is the purpose of the description parameter? Why can't people just write the lead section underneath the infobox's closing brackets? Having paragraphs in the description parameter (which would end up happening for non-stub pages) would look absolutely horrible. TheSatanicSanta (talk) 19:03, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

History, it was there when i got here .. it would not have been my choice, but unless you feel like running a bot to fix every single item, it will stay — Game widow ^(talk) 04:45, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, most of the pages need rewriting anyway, to be at least up to my own personal standards. When I do that, I'm just going to take it out of the desc parameter, because I don't want paragraphs within an infobox template. It's on my todo list, and it'll get done after a long while. TheSatanicSanta (talk) 05:36, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. As for the rewriting, what exactly are your "personal standards" ? — Game widow ^(talk) 23:20, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Just sufficient content. From what I've seen, most of the articles here are completely incomplete and just not useful. See my changes to the Iron War Axe page that I made recently. TheSatanicSanta (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Also there's a lot of consistency issues, which I will be trying to fix. Some examples are the names of the navboxes (Weapons vs. City nav) and the names of the infoboxes. I will be changing this so that all navboxes begin with the word "Navbox", so that they are easier to find when sifting through page lists. I will be changing infoboxes to all begin with "Infobox" followed by a word describing its use, for the same reason as the navboxes. Stuff like this. It's just general professionalism and proficiency. TheSatanicSanta (talk)

descr

Is the placing of the "descr" parameter outside the infobox as the first article paragraph a consequence of the former topic? Unfortunately I can't check the code of the template. It doesn't show up as protected, but it seems to be… Anyway, as it seemed weird to TheSatanicSanta to have paragraphs inside an infobox, it seems weird to me to see an infobox parameter out of the box. (And it took me a while to learn, there's nothing I can do about it.) -- — CompleCCity ^(talk) 12:49, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

As i mentioned before, it's a historical choice that was made before i came on board. I'm not desperately attached to keeping things this way, but it would involve a lot of work to move the information in that field out of the infobox for the thousands of items using it. — Game widow ^(talk) 19:25, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Then it seems I didn't understand the first topic right. I thought, a paragraph/line break inside the infobox was meant, but it seems he talked about the placing of this specific "paragraph" being part of the template.

Why not changing the template to show the description inside the infobox instead of placing it as paragraph? That would only need more work on articles, where the infobox layout would be crappy afterwards, in cases where the description is too long. And that would be a task for editors/visitors when they stumble across that specific case… -- — CompleCCity ^(talk) 14:19, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

It is very long in many cases (the description). What exactly would be the point of changing it this late in the game? does it cause problems ? — Game widow ^(talk) 14:22, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Now that's a prompt answer… ;)

(At the moment I wonder about how yesterday I didn't manage to access the editing of the template, while it's possible today. So forget my talking about protection…)

"Changing it this late in the game…" – Isn't the whole wiki thing a constant work in progress? Can things not being added/improved, even if a game is "old"? Just musing… No, there is no "problem" with it. I only stumbled about it, because I didn't know of a feature to place infobox content outside the box before, was new to me. And I spent some time in searching for the reason why this happened, because I thought it was an error in my edit.

You "took this over"? You didn't create this one? ;) -- — CompleCCity ^(talk) 14:34, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree that it was a strange thing to implement in the first place and I also agree that wikis, by nature are constant works in progress. If you want to start making all these changes that's ok, but please don't start something expecting anyone else to just jump in and help. Look at the vast majority of edits on this wiki, they are almost all mine. Leaving things half finished would drive me positively bonkers, so if you are in for the long haul, then fix away! — Game widow ^(talk) 15:11, 12 May 2016 (UTC)