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Ok so this has peeved me for a while now but certain VSPA (especially physiology pages) structurally make no sense.
I will approach this problem from the perspective of John Rando, the average passing wiki user.
Too Big
Let's look at Sephiroth's page. His "intrinsic" abilities contain verse specific jargon that I'm not familiar with. Spiritual Energy Manipulation? Let's open that. It takes us to this specific section on someone's blog. Now not only am I thrown into a page I have no idea how to navigate due to the sheer scale, but this same page is linked for every power in Sephiroth's intrinsic abilities. Like at what point do I just stop looking at Sephiroth's page and just read the entire blog. Oh yeah, why is this a blog? All VSPA should be vetoed through a thread by verse experts and made into their own page. This page is no exception.
Too Unnecessary
Let's look at these examples now. With these pages, we get a few general abilities of the magic system respective to the verses. Fair enough. Then they're bloated by the different schools of magic within the system (Sorcerers tab with Cursed Energy Manipulation and Herrscher Physiology for Honkai Energy). My issue with this is that the VSPAs were supposed to encompass powers all, if not most, of the verse use. If you have to divide the system into schools that specific characters (and I'm talking large groups) are incapable of using then what is the point of a unified page housing all the powers? In the bid to be inclusive of all powers, we've excluded any relevant information from the primary source, which should be character profiles.
Too Repetitive
Let's look at this example. Now my issues with this involve redundancy. With Special Ki, why on earth is Demon God Power even a tab? It's literally just Dark Ki and God Ki. But that's not even the egregious part. Towa is linked as having Demon Physiology, which leads me to this page, which upon clicking Demon God Power, takes me to the Special Ki page, and the description is tantamount to "Same powers as Dark Ki and God Ki" - which after removing the clown makeup from my face for having gone down this stupid rabbit hole - I still had to actually click on those other two tabs to even read what powers they give.
Now it's very telling that some of you have never taken a course on web design, but if I design a web page that takes the viewer on a point and click adventure, I'm going to lose their attention faster than reading our rules page.
The Solution
Now it might seem like I hate the idea of VSPAs, but I actually think there are some stand out cases for these pages.
Gem Physiology
Bleach's many physiologies
Sword Logic
Nen
The above are pages that I think are exemplary of good VSPA pages. First and foremost, they get to the point. An explanation on the hows and whys of the power, and then a list of all associated abilities. I actually remembered how egregious the Bleach VSPAs were, but now that they broke up the physiologies into individual pages, it's actually much easier to navigate. The specification on character profile pages also enhance the navigation like with Ichigo's page, I'm given in bold what specific levels of each individual power he has so I can navigate the VSPA pages and look for what I want. I'm not thrown in the middle of a word essay on a page whose structure I am unfamiliar with.
Which brings me to how we solve this issue.
Argument of Necessity: Not only should a VSPA be something a majority of a verse uses, but the power itself should be all encompassing. For example, Object Physiology should only contain the general powers of Objects. Specific subdivisions should, if we can at all help it, not be on the page if they could just as easily be on individual character profiles.
Standardised Structure: We need a general format, or at least guide, for verse specific powers that encourages readability over bloat. Links on character profiles should land you on the start of VSPAs so the user can read the summary, understand the power, and then navigate towards the specific subdivision. I heard from the Warhammer folks that they do this for their pages that link to Psychic Powers. I think this should be encouraged.
Common Sense: I think we get so caught up in trying to shove as many impressive feats into our VSPA pages that we forget what they're there for. I always saw them as explanation pages first and foremost, and power listing pages second. While the convenience of having a single page to point to so you don't have to relist everything on new pages was the original intent, I think we've simply lost the plot and have gotten lazy. To remind everyone, VSPA pages were supposed to be there so you didn't have to ask why Rose Quartz has Inorganic Physiology because you already read the Gem Physiology page and knew that if a character is a Gem, they have it by default. Ergo, it's dumb when you slap 10 subdivisions on it and I have to do an encyclopedia search every time I look at a character page.
That is all.
I will approach this problem from the perspective of John Rando, the average passing wiki user.
Too Big
Let's look at Sephiroth's page. His "intrinsic" abilities contain verse specific jargon that I'm not familiar with. Spiritual Energy Manipulation? Let's open that. It takes us to this specific section on someone's blog. Now not only am I thrown into a page I have no idea how to navigate due to the sheer scale, but this same page is linked for every power in Sephiroth's intrinsic abilities. Like at what point do I just stop looking at Sephiroth's page and just read the entire blog. Oh yeah, why is this a blog? All VSPA should be vetoed through a thread by verse experts and made into their own page. This page is no exception.
Too Unnecessary
Let's look at these examples now. With these pages, we get a few general abilities of the magic system respective to the verses. Fair enough. Then they're bloated by the different schools of magic within the system (Sorcerers tab with Cursed Energy Manipulation and Herrscher Physiology for Honkai Energy). My issue with this is that the VSPAs were supposed to encompass powers all, if not most, of the verse use. If you have to divide the system into schools that specific characters (and I'm talking large groups) are incapable of using then what is the point of a unified page housing all the powers? In the bid to be inclusive of all powers, we've excluded any relevant information from the primary source, which should be character profiles.
Too Repetitive
Let's look at this example. Now my issues with this involve redundancy. With Special Ki, why on earth is Demon God Power even a tab? It's literally just Dark Ki and God Ki. But that's not even the egregious part. Towa is linked as having Demon Physiology, which leads me to this page, which upon clicking Demon God Power, takes me to the Special Ki page, and the description is tantamount to "Same powers as Dark Ki and God Ki" - which after removing the clown makeup from my face for having gone down this stupid rabbit hole - I still had to actually click on those other two tabs to even read what powers they give.
Now it's very telling that some of you have never taken a course on web design, but if I design a web page that takes the viewer on a point and click adventure, I'm going to lose their attention faster than reading our rules page.
The Solution
Now it might seem like I hate the idea of VSPAs, but I actually think there are some stand out cases for these pages.
Gem Physiology
Bleach's many physiologies
Sword Logic
Nen
The above are pages that I think are exemplary of good VSPA pages. First and foremost, they get to the point. An explanation on the hows and whys of the power, and then a list of all associated abilities. I actually remembered how egregious the Bleach VSPAs were, but now that they broke up the physiologies into individual pages, it's actually much easier to navigate. The specification on character profile pages also enhance the navigation like with Ichigo's page, I'm given in bold what specific levels of each individual power he has so I can navigate the VSPA pages and look for what I want. I'm not thrown in the middle of a word essay on a page whose structure I am unfamiliar with.
Which brings me to how we solve this issue.
Argument of Necessity: Not only should a VSPA be something a majority of a verse uses, but the power itself should be all encompassing. For example, Object Physiology should only contain the general powers of Objects. Specific subdivisions should, if we can at all help it, not be on the page if they could just as easily be on individual character profiles.
Standardised Structure: We need a general format, or at least guide, for verse specific powers that encourages readability over bloat. Links on character profiles should land you on the start of VSPAs so the user can read the summary, understand the power, and then navigate towards the specific subdivision. I heard from the Warhammer folks that they do this for their pages that link to Psychic Powers. I think this should be encouraged.
Common Sense: I think we get so caught up in trying to shove as many impressive feats into our VSPA pages that we forget what they're there for. I always saw them as explanation pages first and foremost, and power listing pages second. While the convenience of having a single page to point to so you don't have to relist everything on new pages was the original intent, I think we've simply lost the plot and have gotten lazy. To remind everyone, VSPA pages were supposed to be there so you didn't have to ask why Rose Quartz has Inorganic Physiology because you already read the Gem Physiology page and knew that if a character is a Gem, they have it by default. Ergo, it's dumb when you slap 10 subdivisions on it and I have to do an encyclopedia search every time I look at a character page.
That is all.