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Iron Man Profile Formatting

Wokistan

Bioluminescent African American Working At The CIA
VS Battles
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Tldr a character's profile should list that character's capabilities that's the entire point

I don't really think the way the current Iron Man profile is done is the best, and the particular issue I have with it is that it doesn't list the powers he has with the armors for some reason. The profile is formatted in a way that seems to mostly revolve around an unarmored iron man and then also a plot device cosmic one, instead directing the reader to find information about iron man through the individualized suit profiles.

Well, this is just not how profiles work.

Vs battles wiki profiles are written with the general user in mind. The objective is that someone with zero familiarity with the source material should be able to read a profile and get at least some understanding of what the character's capabilities are. The objective is not to cater to the enthusiasts, and as such profiles should minimize jargon and be user friendly. It is not very user friendly to look up "what does iron man do" and be met with "iron man does what his armors do." A casual viewer is probably not going to be able to tell the similarly colored Iron mans apart, they're not going to know whether the version they saw represented in some out of context screenshot their buddy posted is mark 18 or 64 or 18,000,000. Telling them to "look up the iron man suit" is just telling them to control+f on 24 profiles instead of just 1 like a normal person. There's a thing in web design called the three click rule, the idea being that the client of a web service should be able to complete their task in three clicks or less. Loading into the website is one, loading onto Tony's page is two. Clicking the "iron man armors" tabber would be click number three, and in an ideal world the information would be visible from there, but it's not. In catering to the niche tastes of enthusiasts, the profile gets too lost in the sauce and violates standard web design principles, creating an overall inferior user experience and ultimately failing to accomplish its goal as a profile. The current layout of his profile is simply not the best way to convey the capabilities of the character.

So, what should be done instead?

Technically I don't have to answer that question. The validity of criticism is not defined by whether or not the complainer has a better idea, that's not the point. I could theoretically just thrust this onto the comics people and force them to figure something better out. Not going to do that here, though. I don't think it's that productive to start problems and not even try to fix them, and I don't think the fix for this is even that hard. Here's the thing: The work of indexing Iron Man's abilities is already done, it's just that this collected information is presented poorly. There's no need to scrap all the individual armor profiles, they're still perfectly capable of working as an aid here. Really, all you need to do is actually list the abilities the suits would provide on the main page, except rather than a description or justification all you've really got to do is say which armor it's from, provided that armor has a profile. This should satisfy both crowds: The casual viewer can pop in and get an idea of Iron Man's capabilities, satisfied at being able to see what he can do and with what armor within the allotted three clicks. Someone who's more critical or into greater detail? Well, this method inherently points them to where they can find more. The armor profiles are able to be as detailed as they like because they're not really constrained by more aesthetic fears such as creating too much clutter on the main one, and can include more intricate detail on the exact mechanisms of a power and the justifications for that power's existence and so on. With a 60 year old character you're bound to have a bigger file than most, but this method should get the best of both worlds of having all the information in one place while also providing easy access to further reading for those wanting more (which is really not the majority of viewers of any given web page.)

Some of the more technically inclined members on the forum could definitely just put together a script to organize that in like ten minutes. Personally, I could learn to do that or I could just control f control c control v my way to the end of it if I had to within like, an hour max. Like I said, the majority of the work has already been done, this is just a formatting change.
 
I believe we could consolidate the primary abilities shared between all suits and list them under a tab called "Common Suit Abilities" and then list down the added abilities of individual suits on other tabbers.

As for the tiers we could put a varies tier between the most common tiers and single out the armors with abnormal tiers like Phoenixbuster.

If you wanna be even more precise you could create a Standard Armor Physiology page and then add the extra abilities from individual armors onto their own tabs.
 
If you wanna be even more precise you could create a Standard Armor Physiology page and then add the extra abilities from individual armors onto their own tabs.
This seem like the best approach to me, I'm pretty sure Iron man possess enough abilities to justify his own physiology page.
 
"I don't really think the way the current Iron Man profile is done is the best, and the particular issue I have with it is that it doesn't list the powers he has with the armors for some reason. The profile is formatted in a way that seems to mostly revolve around an unarmored iron man and then also a plot device cosmic one, instead directing the reader to find information about iron man through the individualized suit profiles."

The reason the profile is made this way is to make it simpler, compact and quick to read, this format makes the page more user friendly than listing several hundreds of powers in multiple of dozens of tabbers at once (Said tabbers being non-existant in mediums like mobile devices). That format is most likely overwhelming for an inexperienced person who is not used the endless walls of text that normal users here have cultivated in the profile for years.

The very nature of our profiles already surpasses the 3-click limit; power scaling means that if a user wants to know why Goku is small star they have to click into the link that leads to Frieze, then click to Vegeta’s link, then to Nappa, then to Krillin, then to Picolo, and maybe they will find the alleged as to why they are small that (actually planet level), to put an example.

This also goes for abilities too, verses like DMC and Bleach have specific in-verse powers that are listed in the powers and abilities section that led to a cluster of powers that normally would be put on the character profile themselves.

The 3-click you are talking about is not even a mandatory rule for website service by the way, but a suggestion which's veracity and usefulness is questioned in multiple articles: Pointing out how there is not evidence for the sastifaction of viewers and how it just needlessly cuts down clicks for things are probably better over multiple pages

"If you wanna be even more precise you could create a Standard Armor Physiology page and then add the extra abilities from individual armors onto their own tabs."-Ovens
"This seem like the best approach to me, I'm pretty sure Iron man possess enough abilities to justify his own physiology page."Tomfer
This very much approves what the OP is criticizing, you are just doing the same thing by distributing information to external pages that should be available in the main one.
But it really doesn't matter like I say.

"Vs battles wiki profiles are written with the general user in mind. The objective is that someone with zero familiarity with the source material should be able to read a profile and get at least some understanding of what the character's capabilities are. The objective is not to cater to the enthusiasts, and as such profiles should minimize jargon and be user friendly. It is not very user friendly to look up "what does iron man do" and be met with "iron man does what his armors do." A casual viewer is probably not going to be able to tell the similarly colored Iron mans apart, they're not going to know whether the version they saw represented in some out of context screenshot their buddy posted is mark 18 or 64 or 18,000,000. Telling them to "look up the iron man suit" is just telling them to control+f on 24 profiles instead of just 1 like a normal person.

(which is really not the majority of viewers of any given web page.)

Is there concrete data of this particular viewer being the average in here? What about users that are unfamiliar with our pages yet have enough understanding to realize that visual difference between some of those suits, (specially considering that they are numbered anyways), why can't they be the average?

Profiles are mean for people to learn about their favorite character's stats, a person who doesn't know Iron Man but wants to know about his power level through our current profile can do it fairly quickly, they can familiarize themselves with the different suits and distinguish them over time without the jargon that would be adding of that many tabbers in there.

Here's the thing: The work of indexing Iron Man's abilities is already done, it's just that this collected information is presented poorly. There's no need to scrap all the individual armor profiles, they're still perfectly capable of working as an aid here. Really, all you need to do is actually list the abilities the suits would provide on the main page, except rather than a description or justification all you've really got to do is say which armor it's from, provided that armor has a profile. This should satisfy both crowds: The casual viewer can pop in and get an idea of Iron Man's capabilities, satisfied at being able to see what he can do and with what armor within the allotted three clicks. Someone who's more critical or into greater detail? Well, this method inherently points them to where they can find more. The armor profiles are able to be as detailed as they like because they're not really constrained by more aesthetic fears such as creating too much clutter on the main one, and can include more intricate detail on the exact mechanisms of a power and the justifications for that power's existence and so on.
I don't want comment of this yet butbecause I have to see how the profile in question looks like, but I have to; from the way you are describing it, it seems you are just going to copy/paste the abilities info of multiple pages over a single compressed one.

Which makes me question, why the individual armor page would retain any purpose? Why, for one, either type of viewer would look for those extra pages when that is just repetitive information that is already addressed to them? and why would one expend on elaborating the special attributes of certain profiles if you can also just copy paste these details in the same fashion to the main page, which contributes to the first point.

To avoid cluttering? You would be cluttering the profile with the amount of info you are c+p in there, maybe I misread something but like, the idea you are expressing here seems kind of counterintuitive?

With a 60 year old character you're bound to have a bigger file than most, but this method should get the best of both worlds of having all the information in one place while also providing easy access to further reading for those wanting more
But you can avoid the clusterfuck that are 60 year old comic book characters in this occasion, you can make the profile much easier to digest for new readers without sacrificing information by distribuiting it in smaller pages, clicking multiple pages that doesn't necesarily erase viewer satisfaction, but information overload can.
 
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Hmmm, the idea of an Iron Man Armor physiology page sounds interesting. However, I can only think of four abilities off the top of my head:
  • Superhuman Physical Characteristics
  • Flight
  • Energy Projection
  • Information Analysis
Unless there's more I'm forgetting, I don't think this would be enough for a physiology page.
 
Ah yea, not sure if OP aware of this, but I wanted to point out that the individual armors are indeed present on the main page, just gotta scroll down to Gallery.
 
I'm pretty sure he is already aware of it, since he points out the Iron Man Armor tabbers.

It would be funny if he didnt realize it was there tho.
 
So, I have been told by Wokistan that he won't be able to respond to for a while due to some internet and wifi problems.
 
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Nobody has addressed any of the stuff I said.

Wokistan has not even shown a draft of how the profile will look like.

There is certain F word I want to say but I better not say it.
 
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