Talk:List of spirits (disambiguation)
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Reworking the layout of the spirits pages
Long ago, I separated the battle data from the spirits stats because the spirits per series pages were way too cluttered. Since then, a lot of extra data as been added and/or reorganized (music, inspiration, stats) and the lists are now very cluttered yet again. A year ago, I proposed to rework the whole layout of those page to make them more readable, but the moderators consider that such a change requires a consensus, and because of the lack of comments on the proposition, it just went nowhere. So here I am now, making the same proposition again, hoping this time you'll all give your opinion about it.
The proposition consist of two main changes that are explained in separate sub-sections bellow to allow you to reply to each one separately:
- Moving the origin informations out of the spirit stats arrays, and grouping them with the series informations.
- Separating the battle inspirations from the battle data, to put them in a more generic "trivia" section.
In order to provide a preview of the result of such a change, I made a sandbox to display what the Wario series page would then look like: just click here.
YoshiRyu (talk) 07:02, February 21, 2021 (EST)
Moving the Origin with the series
The reasons I propose to move the origin informations with the series are the following ones:
- First, it makes little to no sense to put the spirits origin and their artwork origin with the spirits stats and the other gameplay data.
- It makes however a lot more senses to group the spirits origin and their artwork origin with their series, as all those informations are related the the spirits history.
- It also makes no senses to separate the spirits origin informations by spirit types as those information are relevant to all the spirits, regardless of their type.
Incidentally, it could make more sense to put that list at the top of the page, in order to have it start with a complete spirits list, rather than the sublists.
Here is what the "Spirit Origin" array would look like in the end:
| Spirit | Origin | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Image | Name | Spirit Origin | Artwork Origin | Series |
| 1 |  |
Mario | Donkey Kong | Mario Party 10 | Super Mario Series |
| 2 |  |
Builder Mario | Super Mario Maker | Super Mario Maker Series | |
| 3 | .png){kind=small} |
Mario (Wedding) | Super Mario Odyssey | Super Mario Series | |
| 4 |  |
Luigi | Mario Bros. | Mario Party 8 | |
YoshiRyu (talk) 07:02, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- I'd personally move the series titles to the main tables and the origin moved to the origin table. Just like stats the series info is readily visible and the sticker tables do it that way too.
Granted this would make my life harder because of how my battle syncing code works. It would be easier for me to have the series info with the battles as well; if the below proposal goes through then spacing won't be an issue. - I heavily disagree with the proposed placement of the origin table. I like the useful information to be front and center, I don't consider origin stuff to be useful. As a player, the information I need to play the game is stats, abilities, and maybe battle info.
- Oppose the placement, neutral on everything else.
- --CanvasK (talk) 08:40, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- I'm not 100% sold on this array being first, I just pointed out a reason to do so as a compromise. What a user seek the most in such a page is pretty subjective. Some people will use it the way you do (stats), some will come here to get the "acquisition" information to complete their collection, and some will come here simply because they're curious about that character spirit they've never heard about. Kinda hard to tell what's the most frequent use case here. YoshiRyu (talk) 04:09, February 22, 2021 (EST)
Moving the Inspirations in a new array
So, on top of messing up the readability of the battle array, this column has another problem: since it has been added, contributors have been editing it back and forth to add and remove informations that are tangentialy related to the spirit battles. Instead of fighting over it, we could simply remove the inspiration column from the battle array (keeping it for the in-game data about the battles only) and put that information in a brand new array that could either be a "Spirit trivia" section of its own or be put at the begining or the end of the regular trivia section. Such an array would allow, with proper context, to expand the battle inspiration with other informations such as why a spirit as a particular ability, or is acquired a particular way, or featured in a particular location in World of Light. I put a list of examples a how such a more generic column could be used at the end of this subsection.
Here is what this "Spirit Trivia" array would look like:
| No. | Image | Name | Trivia points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 104 |  |
Geno |
|
And here are some exemples of informations beside spirit battle inspirations that could be featured in that new trivia section:
- Lakitu & Spiny: The type of this spirit is Grab in reference of Lakitu frequently using a fishing rod for various tasks since Super Mario Kart.
- Absolutely Safe Capsule: The maximum defense stat of this spirit is 10,000, the highest in Smash, because this capsule is supposed to be impossible to break.
- Waluigi: This spirit effect is Foot Attack ↑ as a reference to Waluigi being described having strong legs in Mario Tennis/Party (not sure, but you get the idea).
- Geno: In World of Light, his Spirit Battle is located on the space area because, in Super Mario RPG, Geno is a warrior from Star Road.
- Mimicutie: In World of Light, her Spirit Battle become available after the player tries to open a fake chest, referencing how Mimicuty tricks people by looking like a chest.
- Zelda (Spirit Tracks): This spirit is enhanced from the Phantom spirit because in Spirit Tracks, Zelda is first introduced as a Phantom (not sure, but you get the idea).
- Poppi α: This spirit is available throught summoning, reflecting how in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 she is an artificial blade built by Tora.
- Aegislash: This spirit is available at Anna's Emporium to reference the fact that it is classified as a Royal Sword Pokémon in the Pokédex.
- Stack-Up: This spirit can exclusively be acquired by purchasing it in a shop, referencing how R.O.B. was initially a real life accessory for the Nes sold separatly.
- Agitha: This spirit can be obtained by completing the challenge "Collect 10 unique spirits" just like she revolved around collecting insects in Twilight Princess.
YoshiRyu (talk) 07:02, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- I've been bouncing back-and-forth on how I feel about this. On one hand it adds another table to the page. On the other hand it removes the inspiration column from the battle table, which makes it much more user friendly on mobile (the Super Star inspiration takes more than a full phone screen, and makes the other
more importantinfo appear tiny). It would also allow for more trivia and have the WoL related stuff flow better. Neutral leaning towards support. --CanvasK (talk) 08:40, February 21, 2021 (EST)- I hate to be that one guy who slides into conversations, I suppose I should agree with the changes. The Pokémon Spirit Battle inspiration column does feel a bit to claustrophobic. Plus, the trivia points seem to highlight the Spirits' points in particular better than the inspiration column.Autismo555 (talk) 09:17, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- It's a proposal, an open conversation. You're free to voice your thoughts on the proposed change. --CanvasK (talk) 09:53, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- Cool. So would the Spirits of each series have their own trivia template apart from the Spirit Battle template, or would the battle parameters (including fighters, stage, music, rules and conditions, etc.) be included to help with the context?Autismo555 (talk) 10:50, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- I think the former. If it was the latter it would be a lot of repeat info. --CanvasK (talk) 11:03, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- Okay, so it would be like how YoshiRyu envisioned it? And if I may pick up where YoshiRyu left off, I'm currently conducting how his new array would appear with how I normally attempt to sort out the information regarding the Spirit Battles, World of Light information, etc.
- I think the former. If it was the latter it would be a lot of repeat info. --CanvasK (talk) 11:03, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- Cool. So would the Spirits of each series have their own trivia template apart from the Spirit Battle template, or would the battle parameters (including fighters, stage, music, rules and conditions, etc.) be included to help with the context?Autismo555 (talk) 10:50, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- It's a proposal, an open conversation. You're free to voice your thoughts on the proposed change. --CanvasK (talk) 09:53, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- Based on YoshiRyu's examples of the Spirits' trivia points, I've complied a few templates. Scrolling down, I've compiled these based on each different type of Spirits, including Spirits without Spirit Battles, Team Spirit Battles, Summonable Spirit Battles (with WoL information), Summon-exclusive Spirits, and Spirit Board-exclusive Spirit Battles
- I hate to be that one guy who slides into conversations, I suppose I should agree with the changes. The Pokémon Spirit Battle inspiration column does feel a bit to claustrophobic. Plus, the trivia points seem to highlight the Spirits' points in particular better than the inspiration column.Autismo555 (talk) 09:17, February 21, 2021 (EST)
| No. | Image | Name | Trivia points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 68 |  |
F.L.U.D.D. |
|
| 104 | |
Geno |
|
| 208 |  |
Fierce Deity Link |
|
| 208 |  |
Moon |
|
| 331 |  |
Dragoon |
|
- I wonder if it's is a bit much asking for a table, or at least a list, regarding the Inspirations for spirits without spirit battles? For example, the Inspirations regarding the enhanced spirits: (i.e. Skull Kid & Majora's Mask's Grab type and Lifesteal effect referencing Skull Kid stealing Majora's Mask and eventually falling under its dark influence), or purchasable spirits (i.e. the Super Mushroom's Support type and Stats ↑ after Eating effect referencing how the Super Mushroom increases the player’s health and power in the Super Mario platformers.)Autismo555 (talk) 20:03, March 8, 2021 (EST)
Comments about the whole proposition
Various problems cause me to oppose this in its entirety.
- The information is now more split up across the tables, making it harder to neatly track things. Right now all the information of importance is in the main Primary and Support tables, with the battles split out by necessity due to the impracticality of including them in the same table. Dividing this information up further is undesirable.
- The "Series Order" lists are honestly expendable considering they are redundant to List of spirits (complete list) and I would rather see them axed than extended.
- Using the same spirit image three times on one page is heavily excessive.
- The horizontally-merged table cells you have for the Spirit Origin section looks absolutely terrible and I would permanently ban mismatched row elements like that if I could.
Probably the thing I most appreciate out of your proposal is the idea of better covering the origin/inspiration behind various spirit attributes outside of their battles. We cover summon formula references on Summon, but other references in terms of spirit abilities aren't really covered at the moment. That said, I find the overall re-structuring you're proposing to be very undesirable, so I would, personally, push for a very different mechanism to cover that info than the way you're suggesting here. Miles (talk) 19:56, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- I do agree with Miles that using images on every table is a little excessive. I'd also be fine with axing the "Series Order" tables if it is incorporated into the main tables; the complete list and the other big lists don't list regional differences (which I'll probably fix later now that I've noticed it). --CanvasK (talk) 20:28, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- So, would this be a bit much then?Autismo555 (talk) 21:10, February 21, 2021 (EST)
| Spirit | Battle parameters | Trivia | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Image | Name | Enemy Fighter(s) | Type | Power | Stage | Rules | Conditions | Music | |
| 20 |  |
Super Star | •Rosalina & Luma 
|
 |
9,200 | Peach's Castle | •Attack Power ↑ •Temporary Invincibility •Item: Super Star |
•The enemy will occasionally be invincible when the enemy's at high damage •All fighters are easy to launch •The enemy's FS Meter charges quickly |
Main Theme - Super Mario 64 |
|
| 104 | |
Geno | •Sheik  •Peach  •Kirby  •Bowser  •Mario 
|
 |
13,700 | Mario Galaxy (Battlefield form) | N/A | •Defeat the main fighter to win •Timed battle (2:30) •The enemy's FS Meter charges quickly |
Rainbow Road Medley |
|
| 208 | |
Fierce Deity Link | •Giant Link 
|
|
13,900 | Great Bay (Ω form) | •Defense ↓ •Easy to Launch •Attack Power ↑ |
•You are easy to launch •You have reduced defense after a little while •The enemy has increased attack power |
Calamity Ganon Battle - Second Form |
|
- I don't have any critique or comment on the table at the moment, but can we start doing table revisions in user sandboxes? Just link to the revision to be shown? This page is already 2/3rds to the recommended archive size (I won't archive until everything is sorted), lengthy, and getting a little confusing because of the tables. --CanvasK (talk) 21:24, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- Alright. Here's the link to my revision: https://www.ssbwiki.com/User:Autismo555Autismo555 (talk) 21:39, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- I don't have any critique or comment on the table at the moment, but can we start doing table revisions in user sandboxes? Just link to the revision to be shown? This page is already 2/3rds to the recommended archive size (I won't archive until everything is sorted), lengthy, and getting a little confusing because of the tables. --CanvasK (talk) 21:24, February 21, 2021 (EST)
- It seems to me that Miles and I aren't on the same page at all when it comes to what a wiki should look like, I more or less disagree with all of his arguments against the first part of the proposition, here is why:
- Splitting up the information is not a problem here, when do a random user will ever have the need to compare a spirit stats to its origin game? In fact, having everything stuffed in the same array is what make things harder to check. This is not a database where the data structuration has to be optimized, this is a web page, it need to be easy on the eyes. Having a separation between gameplay data and lore data is actually pre-filtering informations by relevancy for different user archetypes.
- I don't know in which way using the same spirit image three times on one page is heavily excessive, but it's also user friendly: it allows people to find what they're looking for faster. Repeating patterns are good UI design. This is quite telling of a big problem on this wiki: Contributors here tend to forget that the whole point of a wiki is to make informations accessible, they often think about the informations itself, but rarely they do think about its accessibility. The images help user to find a specific line faster.
- And that the same point I will make for the idea of axing the series order entirely from those pages: Whenever a user ends up on on of those pages, and doesn't find that information, how are they supposed to know that they have to look for a complete spirits list to get it? It's pretty much the same problem here: You're thinking about where the information should go, when you should rather be thinking about where the information could be easily found by a random user.
- The horizontally-merged table cells are not core to the proposition, I just went the way this wiki usually does. We can do the same thing without them rowspan, so this is an irrelevant point in my opinion.
- Not that I want to push the idea so hard that I would dismiss any counter argument, but yours, just like a year ago, all sound a lot like "I just don't like it": Your point against dividing the informations seems pretty grounded, but for the other ones, basically, you don't like the series order section, you don't like using the same image multiple times, and you don't like rowspan...
- About changing the inspiration column into a trivia column in the battle parameters array, as proposed by Autismo555:
- That wouldn't solve the clutter issue, that would actually make it worst. And not all trivia points are related to the battles anyway, so we would still have the issue of people going back and forth adding and removing some trivia points that are relevant to the spirit yet not related to its battle (like summon cores lore). Independantly of the first part of the proposition, I still strongly think we need to get that inspiration column out of the battle array.
- - YoshiRyu (talk) 04:57, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- Another link to my userpage with the revision: https://www.ssbwiki.com/User:Autismo555Autismo555 I checked the mobile view, and it seemed better in that format. Autismo555 (talk) 18:16, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- (Direct link to the revision Special:Diff/1538059)--CanvasK (talk) 18:19, February 22, 2021 (EST)
Moving the battle information away from the battle data itself is detrimental to the exact thing you claim you're trying to improve: the ability to neatly find information. My point is that if you want information to be easily findable, try not to split it up whenever possible. Your recommendations would detach various bits of information away from each other in a way that makes them harder to navigate, not easier. [After the fact addition that I realize I forgot to say: I fully and thoroughly support condensing the wordiness of the battle inspirations/explanation notes to make the information easier to digest and less ridiculously verbose.] Miles (talk) 18:24, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- What would you personally propose to have the information be readable in both desktop and mobile versions? Autismo555 (talk) 18:35, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- I've found a way to keep the battle inspiration stuff where it is while making it more mobile friendly. Here is a mockup, done in Firefox simulating a Galaxy S9 (360x740). All it takes is adding
<div style="max-height:200px;overflow-y: scroll"></div>to the inspiration cell. --CanvasK (talk) 18:39, February 22, 2021 (EST)- You know, if you're given the green light for that, it might work.Autismo555 (talk) 18:46, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- Small change: "overflow-y: scroll" should be changed to "overflow-y: auto; overflow-x:hidden". This prevents the scrollbar when there is little inspiration text
- Another view I made out of curiosity. Never realized how bad mobile was; I feel sorry for mobile users. It also works fine on desktop (added extra lines because the table is less squished). --CanvasK (talk) 19:24, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- That's actually the reason why YoshiRyu suggested the change in the Spirit Battle inspiration column; so it could be readable to people who scours through the wiki on their phones.Autismo555 (talk) 20:44, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- Here's my take. Added my overflow suggestion, moved series to be in the top few tables, made several columns (No., Type, Slots, etc.) 1% width since they don't take much space to begin with, and made the Inspiration column 20% width so it doesn't hog everything. The "Series Order" table becomes useless with the second edit and "Spirit Battle" now allows for more than one to be visible, even on small screens, with the first and fourth edit. Some issues I've noticed is on desktop Mii Fighters tend to take a lot of width because of my 1% widths and on mobile Inspirations will "float" in the middle if other cells (like conditions) are larger than the max set for Inspirations (perhaps Enemy Fighter(s) and Conditions should have set widths). --CanvasK (talk) 18:47, February 23, 2021 (EST)
- In that case, you think you can widen the Pokémon spirit battle inspiration columns. It's so visually cramped!Autismo555 (talk) 10:07, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- Wouldn't be hard with my implementation. In this version I added "min-width:200px" and it makes it less cramped on smaller screens without changing the size of the other columns compared to the previous version. --CanvasK (talk) 10:36, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- Oh, I'm sorry, I meant for the desktop version.Autismo555 (talk) 11:22, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- Wouldn't be hard with my implementation. In this version I added "min-width:200px" and it makes it less cramped on smaller screens without changing the size of the other columns compared to the previous version. --CanvasK (talk) 10:36, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- In that case, you think you can widen the Pokémon spirit battle inspiration columns. It's so visually cramped!Autismo555 (talk) 10:07, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- Here's my take. Added my overflow suggestion, moved series to be in the top few tables, made several columns (No., Type, Slots, etc.) 1% width since they don't take much space to begin with, and made the Inspiration column 20% width so it doesn't hog everything. The "Series Order" table becomes useless with the second edit and "Spirit Battle" now allows for more than one to be visible, even on small screens, with the first and fourth edit. Some issues I've noticed is on desktop Mii Fighters tend to take a lot of width because of my 1% widths and on mobile Inspirations will "float" in the middle if other cells (like conditions) are larger than the max set for Inspirations (perhaps Enemy Fighter(s) and Conditions should have set widths). --CanvasK (talk) 18:47, February 23, 2021 (EST)
- That's actually the reason why YoshiRyu suggested the change in the Spirit Battle inspiration column; so it could be readable to people who scours through the wiki on their phones.Autismo555 (talk) 20:44, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- Another view I made out of curiosity. Never realized how bad mobile was; I feel sorry for mobile users. It also works fine on desktop (added extra lines because the table is less squished). --CanvasK (talk) 19:24, February 22, 2021 (EST)
- I though you were talking about moving away the game origin from the spirit data. Moving away the inspirations from the battle data could indeed be detrimental if poorly done. But this is were proper wording will be the solution to make it so users don't need to check the battle data. A proper wording of all the inspiration will allow the users to know what each inspiration refers to. Basically:
- Don't: The condition references (...)
- Do: The low gravity condition references (...)
- With proper wording, users won't need to check back the battle data when reading the inspirations. YoshiRyu (talk) 04:52, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- It still seems to me as an unnecessary step to have that information split away in the first place. Also, having the explanatory notes right next to what they're explaining gives more reason to use less wordy language and thus make the page more readable, rather than pushing the info elsewhere and requiring more wordy language to make clear what's being explained. Miles (talk) 04:59, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- That might be obvious to you, but what exactly are you calling an "explanatory note"? I have a suspicion you're assuming I have knowledge of a feature I haven't seen anywhere so far. Are you talking about some sort of pop-up infoboxes that could be placed on a "?" right after the condition, a bit like the references (but without the footnote part)? YoshiRyu (talk) 05:14, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- It still seems to me as an unnecessary step to have that information split away in the first place. Also, having the explanatory notes right next to what they're explaining gives more reason to use less wordy language and thus make the page more readable, rather than pushing the info elsewhere and requiring more wordy language to make clear what's being explained. Miles (talk) 04:59, February 28, 2021 (EST)
- I had an idea of adding an extra row table to separate the spirit battle inspirations with the additional bit of inspiration for a spirit, similar to the Spirit Battle tables have the DLC changes (i.e. Ninjara, Aerith, Cuphead, etc.), but I don't know how to program that in.Autismo555 (talk) 20:01, March 2, 2021 (EST)
- Doing what is done for the DLC alternatives would require every single cell to have "rowspan=2" except for the inspirations. I think it would be too messy to be worth. A simpler idea would be to put a section break/horizontal rule in only the inspiration cell, which can be done with 4 dashes (----) --CanvasK (talk) 20:20, March 2, 2021 (EST)
- Here: This helped a lot. https://www.ssbwiki.com/User:Autismo555#Spirit_Trivia
- The problem with what you propose is still the same: Those other trivia points have nothing to do with the battles. there only are four of us here talking about all that (and yet the rules tell me I need a global consensus... how?), but let's not forget that the two parts of the proposition can be done independantly. Miles is strongly opposed to moving the origin column from the stats array, but he is only sightly opposed to movin the inspirations oout of the battle array: He is only affraid that people will have to go back and forth between the two sections, so we just have to make sure it isn't necessary to do so, and you already worked a lot to reword the inspiration in that direction. In the end, my main concern is that the pages aren't very readable, and for that concern, the inspirations are much more of a problem than the origin games. So maybe we could first focus on that issue. And in a year, I will try again to convince Miles that the origin games would be better placed beside the series rather than beside the spirit stats (by the way, just thought about it, but the acquisition column could also be put with the series, for it is yet again an information that is relevant to all spirits, regardless of their type). YoshiRyu (talk) 03:12, March 8, 2021 (EST)
- I wouldn't fret about "global" consensus. I've seen Smasher namespace proposals go through easily with 4-8 people and that is a something the larger community actually cares about. The fewer people who focus on the pages, the fewer you can expect to respond, and the fewer you need for consensus.
- As of right now I would keep Game Origin in the stat tables, in fact move the Series Order info into them. They look fine on small screens. The artwork and origin information is useful to the viewer since they may not have extensive game knowledge; if someone doesn't know the name of a spirit but knows it comes from Breath of the Wild, they can search that and see it listed with the spirit and the familiar artwork. Both Miles and I don't like the idea of putting images into the Series Order section due to it being repetition and making the page vertically longer, so information for artwork should be where the artwork is.
- For the Inspirations, honestly if one day I noticed they were completely gone I wouldn't lose sleep over it. To me a lot of the Inspiration stuff feels like writing homework "what did the author mean by this?" "what does the white peacock symbolize". I don't think we need to write out every single little thing about spirits. For the World of Light information we already have a place for it: the World of Light pages. Now, if we were to move the WoL information to the WoL pages we should keep it short. "Moblin's placement reflects their frequent appearance in temples in The Legend of Zelda" is enough, stuff involving stage appearance matching placement isn't interesting "Desert themed spirit on desert themed stage in the desert in WoL". Other information (type, ability, etc.) I'm not sure how to handle, but it does tie into my gripe above of not spelling out everything. Is Paz Ortega Andrade having a Bob-omb straight-forward? No, so it would be cool to mention why but I'm not sold on where it should be mentioned. A part of me feels like stuff like that should just be nods to the people who know and be left unmentioned, and if interesting stuff like that isn't mentioned then less interesting stuff about type and what-not shouldn't either. If we limit it to less subtle references like Paz then perhaps there would be so little it can just go in the normal Trivia section.
- If we are concerned about the visual space the Inspirations take up, I already gave my suggestion above of making them a fixed size with a scrollbar. It would make things much more manageable on all screens and it would give more focus to useful information.
--CanvasK (talk) 08:12, March 8, 2021 (EST)
- Doing what is done for the DLC alternatives would require every single cell to have "rowspan=2" except for the inspirations. I think it would be too messy to be worth. A simpler idea would be to put a section break/horizontal rule in only the inspiration cell, which can be done with 4 dashes (----) --CanvasK (talk) 20:20, March 2, 2021 (EST)
Spirit Battle Templates
Because the above's main topic hasn't gone very far, I would like to bring something that I grew interested in: templates for Spirit Battles (and maybe the other tables). Here are my reasons for using a template:
- Sweeping changes on 100+ pages
- As someone who has made sweeping changes to said 100+ pages at least 3 times, I would like to have a simpler and faster way of doing so.
- Ease of adding DLC alternatives
- The sight of that many rowspans should be enough justification, but it is also confusing having to go to what is essentially a separate row to add the alternative info (and do it in the right order).
- A standard format that doesn't rely on cross-checking other pages
- Much simpler pages have templates they use, I feel it is time for Spirit Battles to do the same
I've already been working on some ideas for templates. I have one for rows (which incorporates many of my ideas from above), headers (which ties into the row template), and enemy fighter info. I'd like to hear other's thoughts on the idea of using templates in general before thoughts on the templates themselves.
--CanvasK (talk) 14:12, March 7, 2021 (EST)
- I can't exactly get a good visual picture of how the templates would work. Perhaps an example would help me grasp the direction of your concept better?Autismo555 (talk) 22:16, March 7, 2021 (EST)
- There's an example in the first link, just added a code preview. It wouldn't change anything for the viewer, but for editors it would ideally make things easier. Since you mainly deal in the "Inspirations" section, you would put everything in the "insp" param just like you would in the row cell; not much would change in how you operate. The benefit of using the template (assuming it has the scrolling "Inspirations") is that if it feels like there is too much/too little space for the "Inspirations", we can edit the template once and it would affect every page instead of manually changing 40+ pages. --CanvasK (talk) 22:44, March 7, 2021 (EST)
- Thank goodness for that. I hate how cramped the "Inspirations" column is on some pages, especially the Pokémon spirit battle "Inspiration" column. Autismo555 (talk) 11:42, March 8, 2021 (EST)
I wonder if it's is a bit much asking for a table, or at least a list, regarding the Inspirations for spirits without spirit battles? For example, the Inspirations regarding the enhanced spirits: (i.e. Skull Kid & Majora's Mask's Grab type and Lifesteal effect referencing Skull Kid stealing Majora's Mask and eventually falling under its dark influence), or purchasable spirits (i.e. the Super Mushroom's Support type and Stats ↑ after Eating effect referencing how the Super Mushroom increases the player’s health and power in the Super Mario platformers.)Autismo555 (talk) 19:16, March 8, 2021 (EST)
This seems like a good idea, and much more preferable to me than the earlier proposed idea of giving spirit battle inspirations their own section (because it seems like that would only lead to the pages becoming even longer and the inspiration sections becoming even more bloated, and that's a very bad idea in my eyes). In addition to the template itself cutting down on the number of bytes in each page, scroll bars for the inspiration sections would allow them to fit more information without having to split them off or stretch things out. That being said, we definitely need to implement some kind of quality control for what constitutes as "inspiration", as I think it's gotten a bit out of hand. ~ StrawberryChan (talk) 20:45, March 8, 2021 (EST)
- Truth be told, the old format of the Spirit Battle inspirations one part of the story. I just thought I'd expand on it so it'd give better context. My apologies if the current format makes it uncomfortable to the eyes. Autismo555 (talk) 21:33, March 8, 2021 (EST)
- In most cases my row template would use up more bytes than the original (at most 50), however that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Take {{PowerRankingsRow}} for example, it is the 113th most used template at the moment (not counting how much it is used per page). The first usage I found was 69 bytes, 56 if visual formatting is removed. Converting to normal wikitext it became 53 bytes. A small trade-off for usability. My template is similar in that it can allow the user to not reference other rows or the header and takes care of stuff like anchors, images, type, and other formatting. And, again, like PowerRankingsRow it will end up saving bytes when its full suite is used. --CanvasK (talk) 10:32, March 10, 2021 (EST)
Thought about was is being said in no particular order.
- I agree that the inspirations have gone out of hand, plus some are quite speculative by nature.
- I don't get the problem with the pages being longer, I'd rather see that than having 3 battle rules written over 6 or 7 lines, that's way more of an hasle.
- I don't agree with CanvasK idea that some nod should be left untold, this is a wiki, its purpose is to archive everything relevant, nothing shoud be left untold.
That being said, another alternative just came to my mind: Maybe we should put the spirit trivia (battle inspiration and other points) in separate pages? Just a random thought, but maybe that could make it more digest.
Sidenote: Templates are cool, I agree with it! Too bad we can have a database system that would allow to display spirits on several pages without having to duplicate the data. YoshiRyu (talk) 03:31, March 9, 2021 (EST)
- In regards to the length of pages I did some quick estimations with moving Inspirations out of the Spirit Battle table and turns out the page may be shorter, however this took some assumptions. First assumption was every Battle row was the same height of 82px (64+row padding); not always true because of conditions, enemy fighters, and those plus screen size. Second assumption is the Inspiration table's rows would be strictly 5 lines tall (scrollbar could be used for more lines) which works out to also be roughly 82px. Third assumption was only factoring in Spirit Battles and ignoring possible trivia of other spirits, granted most spirits have battles so this isn't too big. Using the Others page as an example, it would be about 9000px shorter with these assumptions and would require either 103 more rows or 8 lines per row to exceed the current size.
- To humor the separate page idea, I think it would be best to have a single page. The current pages already have issues with quality control, we don't need 40 more. Maybe the single page can have different sections for each series. I, too, would like the nods to be mentioned, but the current system nor my previously proposed system would work nicely. A separate page or even your own system that you linked at the start would be much better for mentioning these references.
- On to what this specific section is about, templates (Ironic the proposals for organizing is the least organized). Since there is some traction with using templates I would like to hear opinions on the templates I linked above and maybe suggestions on other templates that could be made. There are some subtle changes, namely replacing the bullet point with a list format and italicizing the music.
- Sidenote: I did at one point propose a database-esque template that used a switch statement to add battles to pages. However around that time the wiki slowed to a crawl because the SSB4 to SSBU template broke due to a stray missing curly bracket. I withdrew the proposal because if that is what can happen with a 1MB template on 80 pages, imagine what would happen with a 0.6MB template on 150 pages... times 10 (or however many battles are on the page).
--CanvasK (talk) 09:52, March 9, 2021 (EST)- The fact that I put my comment about the template as a sidenote was a sarcastic aknowledgement that we're going off road here. I don't have good enough of an understanding of the template feature to give a valuable opinion on your proposition, I've seen you working a lot with them during the past year, so I trust you to make the best of it. As for the off road topic, if moving the trivia points outside of the battle array actually make the pages shorter (which makes sense), that's another reason to do so (at the very least). YoshiRyu (talk) 14:03, March 9, 2021 (EST)
Since this has gained some support I went ahead and modified my Spirit Battle spreadsheet to convert everything to use the three templates listed above. I can work on changing everything over this weekend if no one objects. --CanvasK (talk) 20:25, March 15, 2021 (EDT)
