Forum:Villains Navigation templates

First, these almost all had the "show" link left black even when that made it hard to see (or, in the case of the Black Guardian, completely invisible). I fixed them all to match the title color (some of these are still a bit ugly, but now they're at least readable), but someone might want to check them over, as the only way I could find to do this was to change the default text color, which also affects the internal text, which I had to fix in different ways for different templates because they're all organized differently.

That brings me to the first problem: They're all laid out differently--both visually and, even more so, in terms of wikicode (some use tables to separate sub-categories, some use br tags, etc., to achieve similar effects).

More importantly, what's included, what they're called, and how they're organized is radically inconsistent:
 * Davros, the Sontarans, and the Ice Warriors have stories across all media, while the Master and the Black Guardian have only television.
 * Graske and Judoon separate out DW, SJA, and TW stories as separate subcategories with a heading for each; Raxacoricofallaptorian and Weevil do the same thing but with a prefix instead; Sontarans runs them together on a single line, but sorts them so all SJA come after all DWs (and similar for the other subcatgories, e.g. NA vs. NSA).
 * They don't sort the shows/lines consistently (as in, does DW come before or after SJA).
 * The Sontarans use the DW/SJA/NA/etc. prefixes, but most of the others don't.
 * Silurians and Sea Devils are two conjoined boxes with a single title, and you can't even tell that Sea Devils are going to be included until you click the show button.
 * Some of them capitalize "stories" in the template name, others don't.
 * Some of them capitalize "stories" in the box header, others don't, and this isn't even consistent with the template names. In fact, Silurians and Sea Devils gives us one of each in its two boxes.
 * Some of them just say "stories", some say "TV stories", some say "television stories", and the Master says "- TV stories" with an extra hyphen.

I think it would be a good idea to come up with a consistent way to do these. I'd be glad to do this, except for two things:
 * I can't decide which of the many options is the best for each choice. If we can get a consensus on which existing template is good, I can fix the others to match.
 * If we decide that we need to include all appearances, not just TV appearances, I don't have the knowledge to find all Master appearances except by going through every comic, audio, etc. and seeing if he's mentioned, and this would take forever. --Falcotron 01:13, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

One more problem: Half of these aren't really villains. The Ood are an obvious example. But, since the word "villains" only appears in a category for the templates themselves, which nobody will see unless they're editing the templates, that's probably not a problem. --Falcotron 01:18, May 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll put up my hand to say I'm (somewhat) responsible for them looking inconsistent, they always irritated me that the individual templates were just called 'Davros stories' when they only had TV stories, so whenever I'm feeling particularly motivated I go through and edit them to have all the stories (only now that the show/hide is there has it become a viable option).
 * So it's kinda my fault for the inconsistent look, I've intended to get the basic information down and into the boxes and then work back and make sure they all look consistent once they all have their info (in retrospect possibly not the best idea!).
 * Anyhow, I think that Template:Sontaran stories has the basic idea down quite well. Everything arranged under what it us not capitalised 'Television stories' etc.
 * I don't think we should have mentions or cameos or anything like that, a like to the 'Complete list of appearances' like on the Template:Ice Warrior stories would be best.
 * So just to wrap up (as I tend to ramble sometimes), they need to include all stories where they 'villain' is in (or sharing) the feature role. They need to include all stories but not cameos or guest roles and include a link to the 'complete list of appearance'. --Tangerineduel 14:01, May 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, so you're suggesting we make them all like Sontarans (with a few minor tweaks). I was thinking the same thing, even though it's actually the most different from the rest of them, and I agree with all of your other points.


 * But, as I said, the one problem with that will be adding the non-TV appearances for all of the templates that don't currently have them. Although that isn't quite as much work as I initially thought (if we can assume the complete list of appearances is correct, we can use that to build the templates), it's still not exactly trivial.


 * But I can get started and do as much as I can. --Falcotron 20:07, May 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I just did Template:Auton_stories, but now I'm not sure about a couple things.
 * Maybe it was better to have comics separated out from novels (as the Autons did, but Sontarans didn't)?
 * Would a "complete list of appearances" list be useful even if (as with the Autons) there are no minor appearances? --Falcotron 20:14, May 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * I decided to do the hardest one next. Template:Cybermen stories has tons of appearances, in all kinds of media, and there are two different kinds of Cybermen. I think I got everything right (although I wasn't sure what prefix to use for BBC Writers' Comics so I used WEB, which is probably not ideal).


 * It's readable, but it's gigantic, and I'm not sure how useful it is. So, let's see what someone says before I do any more.... --Falcotron 20:55, May 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Make that Template:Cyberman stories.... --Falcotron 09:11, May 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * The Cyberman template is rather large...perhaps we should separate them out into the Cybus and regular Cybermen?
 * Perhaps have the comic separate from the prose, I grouped them together (as it's prose more or less) and to keep the bulk down, but would it make more sense to have them separate?
 * If there isn't a complete list of appearances, it might be useful to create one, just so there's a list of all the minor appearances. The Auton infobox is at the point where a list page needs to be created (and there's a few minor appearances missing). --Tangerineduel 15:37, May 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * It'll still be pretty big with just the classic Cybermen, but yeah, that'll probably be better. We could add a link to "Cybus Cybermen appearances" at the bottom of the original ones and vice-versa, I guess.
 * Do we call them "Cyberman stories" and "Cyberman (Pete's World) stories" to match the articles (including the List of Appearance articles), or "Original Cyberman stories" and "Cybus Cyberman stories", or...?
 * By the way, I like what User:Kh93 did with the Silurian and Sea Devil stories, incorporating the two bars into one box, instead of using normal headers and a horizontal rule the way I did for Cybermen. But, if we're going to split Cybermen up, and there are no other "dual templates" besides these two, I don't get to copy that cleverness anywhere....
 * I think having comics separate makes more sense, since they're not grouped with novels/short stories/etc. in most other parts of the site.
 * I can create the "Autons - List of Appearances" page, but I don't have the info to put there, and likewise for any others.
 * One more questions: Do two-parters get spaces around the slashes, or not? Looking around, I found: no spaces, spaces before and after, space after only, and spaces plus repeating the header. I went with no spaces, just because that's what Cybermen (Pete's World) - List of Appearances used. --Falcotron 21:07, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

Archivist's notes
This was a design changer in 2010, but it's been eclipsed in 2011 by the coming of navbox, which has revlutionised how all these nav templates work. 21:12:57 Sun 05 Jun 2011