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I had the impression that this template wasn't working before my changes....--Inquisitor S. 15:03, 30 January 2007 (CET)

German version

I have the impression that the german version looks waaay smoother, check [1] for example. Can we use that graphic style? --Madness 00:37, 1 May 2008 (CEST)

If you just mean changing colours etc. then that would be fine, rearranging it is also ok probably, but I would prefer not to have to change every single article with it in if the content was changed :P The templates originally looked like that here, but then I think I changed it (this was a loooooong while ago now, to the order of years, so perhaps it's time for an update!). If you could just confirm what you mean then i'm sure we could accomodate it.--Jonru 00:41, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
We could, and their colours are nicer. But I'm thinking in also creating proper templates for Lost chapters, Renegade chapters, Chaos Space Marine warbands (there is a diff which isn't shown between a mere warband and a Renegade chapter), etc. Many templates are slowly going to be improved. Irulan 00:45, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
I meant nothing but pure graphical rehash, no layout change, no other snazzy stuff. About the derivate templates, I could make complex templates that worked for all chapters/platoons/etc. but we can't parse them here due to the lack of the extension.--Madness 00:50, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
Of course first of all this template has to be unlocked (unprotected). Irulan 00:52, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
That was a simple one to solve :P Now for the other stuff. You might be able to get the extension added if you post on the forum, though I won't guarantee it. I'm all in favour of having less, more flexible tools to play with.--Jonru 00:59, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
Is this what you wanted? I think it is better now. Irulan 01:21, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
Bad, AFAIK to change the size tinker with the cellpadding number only. Irulan 01:24, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
I think it is too. Sorry about random edits by me, don't know what happened with the change of colour lol. I'd say keep it like that.--Jonru 01:25, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
No one is perfect. In my opinion it is better, and I honestly can't think of any further improvement. There is just one thing: the name of the template: LFSM (initials of Later Founded Space Marines ?). I believe we should give good simple names for templates, easy for everybody to understand (e.g.: "Tau Navy"). We could give this template the name "Loyalist Chapter" (to make a diff with "Lost Chapter", and "Renegade Chapter"). To be honest there are lots of templates using only initials which could be very cautiously changed. "Loyalist Space Marine Legion" "Chaos Space Marine Legion", "Loyalist Chapter", "Lost Chapter", "Renegade Chapter", and "Chaos Space Marine Warband". Irulan 01:38, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
I'm working on a sample on the immaterium, once I'm done I'll show ya guys. :) --Madness 01:28, 1 May 2008 (CEST)

Work be done

Please check the Lexicanum:Immaterium, mind you, I took some "licences", but nothing too irreversible.--Madness 02:07, 1 May 2008 (CEST)

Wrap it up

We have to choose which template we are going to use for the loyalist chapters, and to list all the improvements you still need. To use only one template for all the loyalist chapters of later foundings is a logical step.

Putting the cards on the table: I like this (much improved) template very much. Its creation code is kind of easy (at least for myself) to understand and to change. The size of the "Basic Data" fields is directly connected to the size of the images, leaving 'no empty space' below (but creating a minor flaw with "Fortress - Monastery" - the size of this field is dependant upon the size the "miniature - field").

Further improvements are easy to make, and one can yet create a middle vertical line if you truly want. The boldness of the letters is also changeable. In the end almost everything in this template is changeable.

All of you who care have to decide (vote) which template you want and list your remaining requests. Take a look at Lexicanum:Immaterium to decide, but do decide. Afterwards the chosen template will be introduced in all proper articles (lots of work). Later we use the basic schema to improve the other templates (in other words we copy and adapt it for other uses). I also have a couple of requests (listed below). Irulan 14:28, 1 May 2008 (CEST)

  • 1) some of the entries should get more accurate names: 'ancestral legion' instead of 'Founding legion', and 'estimated strength' instead of "Current strength" because no one is truly sure about the numbers of any chapter.
  • 2) AFAIK capital letters are sparingly used in the English language (unlike German where all substantives get a capital letter). I know that GW in particular disregards these rules on more than occasion, but we should use small letters in the "Basic Data".
  • 3) A simpler and easier name for this template. LFSM (initials of Later Founded Space Marines ?)? Give this template the name "Loyalist Chapter" (to make a diff with "Lost Chapter", and "Renegade Chapter"). This would also be changed for the other templates "Loyalist Space Marine Legion" (for the famous 'nine') "Chaos Space Marine Legion" (for the nine traitors), "Loyalist Chapter" (for existing loyal chapters), "Lost Chapter" (destroyed chapters), "Renegade Chapter" (for the chapters which have gone renegade for one reason or another), and "Chaos Space Marine Warband" (warbands tend to be smaller splinter-groups, like a single company which abandoned a chapter - the current schema lists them with the Renegade Chapters and on an equal footing). Irulan 14:28, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
Just one thing, I don't understand what do you mean by "The boldness of the letters is also changeable. In the end almost everything in this template is changeable." isn't that possible with like... EVERY template out there?
About "Loyalist Space Marine Legion", urh, there is none since the Horus Heresy, even the Black Templars which are a bazillion kajillions are just a chapter, so I sincerely despise the "Loyalist Space Marine Legion". Unless it's an article DURING the horus heresy, in which case I can understand the Legion bit, altough the Loyalist bit applies only in the brief period between the corruption and the Emperor's crippling.
The nine orginal loyalist legions/chapters are a special case. A couple of fields simply don't apply. Irulan 17:41, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
I DO agree on the need of a more readable name. Something like Template:LaterChapterDatafax, or Template:PrimarchChapterDatafax (first founding sounds redundant and I already said that legions are chaos now)
Aslong as the name is easy to understand... fine by me. Irulan 17:41, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
What should be bold? As some books on usability told me, there are 2 major branch of people, those who utterly ignore stuff like bold, caps, etc, when reading, and those who are affected by it, in the second case, people tend to give a brief scan of what's bold to understand what's in the whole content, and reading something like Dark Angels, Dark Angels, First, Azrael, Caliban, The Rock, Unforgiven dudes, Dark Green, red and others, Lookin' good, Repent! For tomorrow you die., about 1000 makes little sense for one that didn't already know what those words meant, while Name:, Founding Legion:, Founding:, Current Chapter Master:, Homeworld:, Fortress-Monastery:, Known Descendants:, Colours:, Speciality:, Battle Cry:, Current Chapter Strength: clearly show me I'm reading a summary table, about who? Both Name: and Dark Angels in bold solve this question.
Ok, only both name fields in bold. Roger that. Irulan 17:41, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
White space under the text data. My personal view is that it doesn't create much of a precedent, I like my extra whitespace (determined by the images size, somewhat unpredictable due to some symbol being elongated or square or horizontal) better after the data, so I don't have it randomly distributed on the rows. Tho it can help having a little more of padding (again, constant). It's also easier to add or remove data rows, as it's a completely independent table. --Madness 15:23, 1 May 2008 (CEST)

Right, I'm getting confused by what's being discussed. This is what I can see which is in discussion:

  • Name changes
  • Design (colours/arrangement)
  • Design (bolding etc.)

What will eventually spawn from this is:

  • Various other templates for numerous instances of different SM groupings (loyal and traitor alike)
  • A common theme/arrangement

Ok this is all good. Can I just ask about the content itself then. Are the titles what we need? Do we need more/less? I think what we have is correct. I'd also like to remind everyone of the amount of effort it will be to alter every single LFSM to whatever it becomes, unless Madness can make a bot or something to do that. I'm just off to vote :) Cheers--Jonru 16:33, 1 May 2008 (CEST)

I'm asking that we agree upon a single template for all the articles about loyalist chapters. Basicly one should go to the Lexicanum:Immaterium and decide which one is better-looking and vote for it (tell us why - perhaps something apreciated in "one candidate" can be improved into the other candidate - improving them even further). Later (when all of the loyalist chapters articles have the agreed upon template) we can create more templates for the other groups. In the end the Lexicanum will have 6 templates about Space Marines.
    • "Loyalist Chapter" - for existing loyal Space Marine Chapters.
    • "Loyalist Space Marine Legion" - for the 9 loyalist Space Marine Legions which were later reduced to chapters (special case).
    • "Chaos Space Marine Legion" - for the nine traitor Space Marine Legions (again special case).
    • "Lost Chapter" - for destroyed Space Marine Chapters.
    • "Renegade Chapter" - for the Space Marine Chapters which have gone renegade for one reason or another. ('Renegade chapter' seems to be an official term both for the idealistic chapters (e.g.: Crimson Fists) and chapters fallen to chaos, it is used in the armybooks and the novels).
    • "Chaos Space Marine Warband" - for the smaller groups of Chaos Space Marines. Most of them seem to be smaller groups (way smaller than a chapter). Most of them never seem to have been chapters at all. They are just warbands. Irulan 17:32, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
I think you covered all, the new colours are pretty much appreciated by everyone(except my girlfriend apparently :\ )so the 2nd point would be layouting only. A common theme with text-only variants is what I think we can expect. About the botting, I'm ready as soon as I can get Olympus to fix up what's to fix. :D --Madness 17:17, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
By the way, bolding everything is just useless, it's like screaming all the time, eventually people will stop noticing it.--Madness 17:19, 1 May 2008 (CEST)
Hmm, to bold or not to bold that is the question. What do we bold and what don't we bold? Only the name fields? Done. Irulan 17:32, 1 May 2008 (CEST)

Vote

Go to the Lexicanum:Immaterium and decide which one is better-looking and vote for it (tell us why - perhaps something apreciated in "one candidate" can be improved into another candidate - improving them even further).

Someone has to go first: okay, I prefer the fifth. The others are lookin'... unready (and the swapping of the pictures makes no sense - imo).--Genestealer 01:41, 4 May 2008 (CEST)

I prefer the fourth (current template). I like the colours and the fact that it doesn't have any empty spaces. Irulan 05:09, 4 May 2008 (CEST)

Okay, that's true (er...colours?). But the left part of the table (Name, Founding Legion etc.) should be bold (as there're nearly always some links on the right side it looks better).--Genestealer 05:31, 4 May 2008 (CEST)

I suggest we split up the case in mutiple subproblems, and then pick the winners of each section:--Madness 07:18, 4 May 2008 (CEST)

My vote goes to the fifth one... and is there some way we can clean up the voting process? Have a poll, maybe? --DMfromell 12:18, 4 May 2008 (EST)

Sadly we can't, just look at the various issues and vote for each, eventually if you screw the markup, we'll clean it up later. :) Just state your view on each point please. --Madness 18:24, 4 May 2008 (CEST)

1st) What gets to be bold?

Options include:

  • top row (the name one) only
  • left column only
  • left column and top row
  • nothing
  • right column

Cast your votes under here.

  • --Madness 07:18, 4 May 2008 (CEST): I vote for left column+top row as those are the main informations we want delivered.
  • --Genestealer:left column and top row
  • --Jonru 11:48, 4 May 2008 (CEST): left column and top row seems most sensible to me
  • --Ok, done. Irulan 17:36, 4 May 2008 (CEST)

2nd) Column order?

Options include:

  • symbol+miniature / data / big marine pic
  • big marine pic / data / symbol+miniature
  • big marine pic / symbol+miniature / data
  • ... add others if you feel like

Cast your votes under here.

  • --Madness 07:18, 4 May 2008 (CEST): I vote for symbol+miniature / data / big marine pic as per web standards logo in on the top-left and I feel that standards shouldn't be violated unless you got a good excuse to.
  • --Genestealerbig marine pic / data / symbol+miniature- as we're not arabic or japanese manga readers we look at first at the left image - and it's better to show a proper Marine picture there - and, a "standard in the web" doesn't exist. The "big marine pic" is also the most important one for most visitors of the Lex - symbols are sometimes not available as well as miniature pictures.
  • --Jonru 11:48, 4 May 2008 (CEST): I would imagine that people would want to see the big marine picture first, which I would imagine would be the picture we have the most of, big marine/data/symbol+miniature for me
  • --- Irulan 17:38, 4 May 2008 (CEST) big marine pic / data / symbol+miniature I think all of us come from "left-to-right writing and reading societies" (this fact molds our way of seeing things - Arabic, Jewish, and Japanese do it from right to left and that's why mangas are the other way around - I'm such a nerd :). Irulan 18:16, 4 May 2008 (CEST)
  • --Inquisitor S. 18:31, 4 May 2008 (CEST): big marine pic / data / symbol+miniature

3rd) Data columns

Options include:

  • embedded with the rest of the table (first 5 rows high as the symbol, last 5 rows high as the miniature)
  • nested table with independent height (this means ending with some empty space under the table to fill the void)
  • nested table with same height (each row has the same height but the table fills the space given, will require further test to make it work on all browsers but eventually I'll get onto it)
  • ... add others if you feel like
  • --Madness 07:18, 4 May 2008 (CEST): I vote for nested table with same height as we can change the number of rows to fit different similar templates and we don't incur in troubles with wrongly shaped images.
  • --Jonru 11:48, 4 May 2008 (CEST): nested with same height because it looks coolest
  • --Irulan 18:20, 4 May 2008 (CEST) Nested with the same height is truly the best presentation. The current template (fourth template) is unable to do so. The middle row (currently "Fortress-monastery") will always have the same size as the "miniature-title field". it has to do with the given parameters. Irulan 18:20, 4 May 2008 (CEST) Only flaw.

4th) Background colour

Options include:

  • MMMMMM Dark grey 1
  • MMMMMM Light grey 1
  • MMMMMM Grey 1
  • MMMMMM... add others if you feel like
  • --Madness 07:18, 4 May 2008 (CEST): I vote for Grey 1 as it looks like it's a good compromise.
  • --Jonru 11:48, 4 May 2008 (CEST): Yep Grey 1 seems a good compromise of not too bright as to blind and not too dark as to blend in
  • --Irulan 17:40, 4 May 2008 (CEST) Grey 1, no doubts about it.

5) Other features

Vote any you support or your non support on each

  1. First data column as a single column with the chapter name
  • --Madness 07:18, 4 May 2008 (CEST):
    1. I'm neutral about this, but if I have to break a tie, I'd rather have it with Name: chaptername than just chaptername for the sake of coherency.
  • --Jonru 11:48, 4 May 2008 (CEST):
    1. I'd say chaptername and then the chapter name because people would ask why we merged the first one and none of the others
  • --Irulan 17:48, 4 May 2008 (CEST)
    1. two fields for the sake of consistency.
  • --Inquisitor S. 18:29, 4 May 2008 (CEST)
    1. two fields: Name: Chaptername.


We should "finally" count the results 'above' and choose which template we are going to use (man it is nearly Monday, and we haven't decided yet)

  • 1st) What gets to be bold? - all of the templates.
  • 2nd) Column order? - templates 2, 4, and 5.
  • 3rd) Data columns - none of the templates (can be done later).
  • 4th) Background colour - templates 1,2,3,4 (but all of the remaining templates could be improved)
  • 5) Other features (one field or two fields) - templates 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 (but all of the remaining templates could be improved)
  • Now by my reckoning this means a draw between 2 and 4. The differences between the two are minimal, so here it goes: I personally know more or less how to tinker with nr 4 (I don't know much of parameters, codes, etc so I made it as easy as possible for me to understand). Could we please use nr 4? (yes, I'm asking and yes, I plan to personally see to the inclusion inside of all loyalist chapters articles asap). Irulan 23:35, 4 May 2008 (CEST) PS: And yes, I also plan to improve/create all the needed templates ('Chaos Space Marine Legions', 'Renegade Chapters', 'Chaos Space Marine Warbands', 'Loyalist Chapters, 'Lost Chapters', and 'Loyalist Space Marine Legions') in due time (I'm not going to do it in three or four days, but in a couple of weeks at the most).
Uhm, sorry to clash on you with this but no, we can't choose out of Irulan-compatibility. ALL the templates use the SAME parameters, also NO ONE, not even you chose to have the embedded table, everyone went with the nested option, so it's pretty clear it's #2 the popular choice, honestly, I don't care about the number of the template, but the people have spoken, they want those features, and the template must comply, the actual LFSM template has embedded rows, which is not what people want, if you want I can tweak lfsm to make it work accordingly, the inclusion code will NOT change, and I can safely manage to make all the other templates, or lend you a hand shall you need it. I didn't make Testmarines1-2-3 template as a mean to uhm... undermine this one, I just made them to preview some ideas I had, some of them were liked, some of them weren't. It's collaborative effort, let me help you helping. :P Btw, not many ppl hath spoken here, I'd rather wait for more opinions or see what the admin say about the final decision. Btw, we still have to decide what to do with the width of the table and the columns and how thick the borders should be. --Madness 23:56, 4 May 2008 (CEST) Btw, I say btw too often. --Madness 23:57, 4 May 2008 (CEST)
I too would prefer #2 (well, its the closest to desired) for the following reasons. Nested wise, #2 has more flexibility, experience tells me that the bottom section tends to have longer field entries than the top section and so it requires more space. Therefore allowing the fields to grow and shrink throughout the whole template allows for more equal flexibility and, overall, making the whole thing look more organised/stylish/better. Besides, the code wont be very different between 2 and 4, just a minor edit on the fortress monastery field me thinks? As for more votes, it's unlikely we will get any more because we have so few reliably regular contributors. As for the new options I would say current width but reduce the width of the marine picture to give more space for the text, and even chop out a bit on the article titles if we can. Some of the current tables have 100% width due to people describing every single colour. Perhaps Colours should be changed to primary colours for this reason. I like the border thickness also. Cheers--Jonru 00:49, 5 May 2008 (CEST)
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