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Powers & Abilities Formatting [Staff Only]
- Thread starter Damage3245
- Start date
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- Tags
- power and abilities
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I don't see how it's more professional (what does professional even mean here lol), but eh, whatever, don't really care. As long as my pages are never affected by it, it's irrelevant to me
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Anyway, about this...
Is somebody willing to write a list of all the staff members who have helped out here previously please?
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Strongly dislike the new format, makes things way more dispersed and harder to read on long pages and is unnecessary on short ones, thus leaving a very specific sweetspot which it actually improves, which I don't think is worth causing the confusion- there's so many ugly ass pages being made out there by misusing the format.
- 29,732
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- Thread starter
- #126
Why isn't the same complaint being directed towards the Notable Attacks/Techniques section?
Because that's all really the new format is doing, making the list of powers more similar to that section so that it is clearly readable.
If there's "ugly" pages that are objectively bad then they can be individually fixed but there's no pleasing everybody so we need something something more concrete to work off on than just "They look ugly".
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Because NA&T is secondary and is meant to explain certain things in more depth, it's not the focus of the page.
Unfortunately P&A is not NA&T.
not really.
Cool, my primary complaint was never "they look ugly" so we agree here.
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- Thread starter
- #128
Seems weird for me to have the secondary part of the page be clearer and more in-depth and not the primary part of the page.
It did seem like one of your major complaints.
Your other complaints are "it's unnecessary" which will never make sense to me as a complaint because there is very little that is necessary in truth for our pages to work, and "it makes things harder to read" which is difficult to answer because I've had the opposite experience.
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"Clearer and more in-depth" because NA&T tends to focus on bigger textwalls while P&A usually doesn't.
It's a secondary one.
"It's unnecessary" is a complaint because it actively makes the page longer and difficult to read, and an excessive usage of bold is annoying on the eyes.
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- Thread starter
- #131
That's a complaint I can't take seriously. We might as well remove all of the bolding on the ratings if we're going to use that as an objection.
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Completely false equivalence, ratings are two words surrounded by much bigger explanations. There's a difference between
Wall level (Can destroy walls and doors, comparable to durability) | Wall level (Much stronger than before, destroyed an arcade machine)
and
- Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Superhuman Speed
- Small Size (Type 0) (Sonic is 1 Meter tall[1])
- Acausality (Type 1)
- Self-Sustenance (Type 1)
- Fourth Wall Awareness (Sonic's idle animation waits for the player to move him. He causes game overs in Sonic CD when he becomes impatience with the player)
- 29,732
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- Thread starter
- #133
Not all ability lists will have that few justifications next to them.
And there's still way more bolding elsewhere on the page, like with the Name, Origin, Classification, Attack Potency, etc. All of those fields are bolded.
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Yeah, but the list format puts all the links on the same row and that looks ugly.
Yes, and further spaced out by not being in a list and being associated with more information. Also, the new P&A format is added to the previous amount of bolding, it's not like it replaces it.
Bolding by itself is fine. Not my thing but it's fine.
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I suppose that this is a valid suggestion. What do you think, Damage3245?
- 29,732
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- Thread starter
- #138
I made a start of identifying several elements of Powers & Abilities section in another thread which can be the beginning of some guidelines for them:
1) Links (Mandatory: Abilities should be linked to their respective pages on the wiki)
2) Justifications (Mandatory: Abilities should have a short justifications with necessary links, unless the ability is extremely self-evident and requires no explanation such as Superhuman Physical Characteristics)
3) Tabbers (Optional: If an ability list becomes too extensive, the abilities can be separated into different tabs. Recommended that this be done along the lines of character's keys or different forms)
4) Bolding (Optional: Abilities can be bolded to help distinguish them from the rest of the text.)
5) Scrollboxes (Optional: Abilities sections that are so long that they take up a huge portion of the page should be fitted into scrollboxes so the user can scroll more easily. Do not use scrollboxes for short to medium lists of abilities)
6) Bullet Points (Optional: Abilities can be listed in paragraph format but for more than just a few abilities it is recommended that the abilities be displayed in a list which displays the abilities in an organized fashion.)
I'm all for keeping some of these optional and case-by-case, but I'm against throwing out bullet points entirely.
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@AKM sama @DontTalkDT @Ultima_Reality @DarkDragonMedeus @SomebodyData @Celestial_Pegasus @Wokistan @Mr._Bambu @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @LordGriffin1000 @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou
Your further input would be appreciated here.
What do you think about the above suggestions?
Colonel_Krukov
🖖 Live long and prosper
He/HimVS Battles
FC/OC VS Battles
Bureaucrat
Administrator
Image Helper
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I like Damage's suggestion personally.
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I'd add that justifications are pointless if the ability is explained in further depth in another section of the profile, such as the NA&T, sometimes powers are both not self-evident but also too long to be properly explained in the P&A.
As long as they are correctly described somewhere within the file, it should be ok.
Agreed, bolding also looks terrible when the powers are few or don't have many explanations within the P&A section itself.
The rest is fine.
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Imho, bullet points are nice when the P&A section has mid-sized explanations, meaning that the powers are many and don't need to be explained further elsewhere.
To use a couple of profile I made recently as examples, ARIA's file looks fine imho becase I couldn't have explained such powers in a more comprehensive way in the NAT section, and the explanations were still rather long but not that much.
For Gargos, the powers are many but the explanations for most are very short, and the others are either self-evident or properly explained in the NAT section. In this case the bullet list would have been too long and without much improvement, at least to my perspective.
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- Thread starter
- #144
That's understandable but our profiles are already pretty varied in general, some having images and some not, Notable Attacks sections, references, quotes, top navboxes etc.
As long as profiles have a few core structured areas like the ratings, summary, classification/age/origin sections, etc. I think we have manage with some variation elsewhere.
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Damage's points on mandatory and optional sections look good to me.
And honestly, I actually don't see that much of an issue with the bullet point + scrollbox format, looks fine to me. I feel like a lot of bluewalls would be more coherent but eh, that's just me.
And honestly, I actually don't see that much of an issue with the bullet point + scrollbox format, looks fine to me. I feel like a lot of bluewalls would be more coherent but eh, that's just me.
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I also concur with Damage's points.
And I don't really see the issue with having two optional formats. In truth, our profiles have a great deal of variation as is. They will still have many commonalities with these two formats, at least in areas that matter most. They're just different ways to organize and display the P&A.
I still believe having it as optional is the best way to go. Because I don't actually think it's best for every single profile, but I definitely see many cases where it's a major improvement.
And in all cases, I'd say it's at least good for readability if nothing else.
And I don't really see the issue with having two optional formats. In truth, our profiles have a great deal of variation as is. They will still have many commonalities with these two formats, at least in areas that matter most. They're just different ways to organize and display the P&A.
I still believe having it as optional is the best way to go. Because I don't actually think it's best for every single profile, but I definitely see many cases where it's a major improvement.
And in all cases, I'd say it's at least good for readability if nothing else.
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I have voiced saying I like the OP's new format
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Thank you. Damage's suggestions should probably be mentioned somewhere suitable in our standard format page for character profile pages then.
Instructions for how to properly add the code for such sections should also be included of course.
Instructions for how to properly add the code for such sections should also be included of course.
- 29,732
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- Thread starter
- #151
It would probably go in the Additional Information section. But yes, let's wait.
Mr. Bambu
Suffer-Not-Injustice Bambu
VS Battles
Joke Battles
Super Moderator
Administrator
Calculation Group
Silver Supporter
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Still greatly dislike the new format, still dying on that hill. Looks awful in most scenarios, and I share AKM's complaint in that we're removing the purpose of a standardized format.
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Personally I would also rather keep the standardized system and work with that, but ¯\(ツ)/¯
What the points are concerned:
So explanations should only need to be given if the ability receives no clear explanation somewhere else.
What the points are concerned:
Caveat: If they exist and it's clear what the ability is. Should obviously be no requirement of an ability is purposefully not sorted into one of our P&A pages.
Disagree. I often use the P&A section to give a quick overview of abilities and extend on them in detail in the Notable A/T section, where I also give references and everything. For characters with 200+ distinct abilities even a short justification gets long, so that system work much better for pages like Master.
So explanations should only need to be given if the ability receives no clear explanation somewhere else.
Is alright, also I want to add the other direction: Tabbers should only be used if necessary. They don't work great on mobile, I believe, and make it much harder to get an overview of the P&A (Personally, I frequently click to edit pages, because I want to see what is written in the P&A regarding one particular ability and can't ctrl+f it otherwise...)
Disagree. Explanations in the P&A shouldn't have links, so that the powers are visibly marked by being the only blue texts. Links should be placed into references instead. Bolding looks ugly and is an unnecessary step of destandardization.
Agree, I guess.
Should IMO only be used if really necessary. Personally I think most pages could be brought into a good format by just not using the P&A section as a dump for everything that isn't stats.
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- Thread starter
- #155
Yes, agreed.
Characters with 200+ abilities are going to be a significant minority. We shouldn't stop reasonable justifications being added to pages with smaller ability sections than that just because some characters have too many.
That's fair.
I can't agree with P&A not having links, and bolding makes the abilities more distinctive than just having blue text. I personally think that this is more of a standardization as I consider individual abilities to be somewhat comparable to the ratings. The ratings are bolded and stand out with a justification behind them, likewise it makes sense for me for the abilities to stand out and have a justification behind them (most of the time).
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Nobody said don't add justifications at all. I said, don't make it mandatory to add them in the P&A. Where to add them depends on the total volume of the explanation(s) and how one structures the page in general.
I didn't say remove the links, I said put the links into the references. They are still there, right in the P&A, just that there is no blue text except the abilities anymore. The blue text is distinctive enough.
I think the bolding looks ugly regardless and we don't even remotely have the resources to apply it to all profiles, so it is extra ugly due to being destandardized.
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- Thread starter
- #157
Okay. It's fairer to mark them as optional anyway I suppose since we already skip over it for some abilities universally on profiles like Superhuman Physical Characteristics.
Putting all links from profiles into references sections would be a similarly unfeasible task to bolding all abilities on all profiles. But I agree that it is a good idea in general and references should be more commonplace on profiles, though I prefer keeping both features optional. The bolding may be ugly to some, but it improves readability to me.
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The difference is that the amount of profiles that don't bold abilities currently are literally all of them, while the amount of profiles that link to scans in the P&A are very few.
If users gradually move the links to references when they edit profiles anway, we should have 99% of all profiles in that format very quickly.
Vietthai96
He/Him- 9,233
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Disagree. P&A explainations, descriptions, justifications can be either linked on use references. Problem with people using linked explaination is they use too many words or even the entire sentence and then linked them with scan thus created an entire blue text wall which make thing hard to read, instead they can just use some key words in the explaination and link it them to the scan, leave the other part of the sentence black thus doesn't create confusion on where is the ability where is the explaination when reading
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This is a much better option. We already did this to a considerable degree for the God of War profiles and Devil May Cry profiles while also adding reference sources and it greatly reduced the blue-text to 1-3 key words.
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