Forum:Card article redesign

Following Forum:Set page redesign, I think card articles need reworking too. They've been following the same format for years and just got added to rather than redesigned as new stuff was documented on them. There are a number of problems with the current format:

• The first thing you see when you open a page, is the image and the card's name in many languages. The image is fine, but most readers aren't going to be interested in more than the English name, which is already in the page title, the top of the table and in a lot of pages, the image. So most people are going to be scrolling through a lot of information before getting to what they're looking for.
• Once you scroll past the image, which probably happens at the end of the names section, the left column of the article is blank. The default skin has a small enough content area as it is, so it's not desirable to waste another 300px. A lot of stuff on the right gets crammed as a result.
• The card's stats, English lore and sets are probably the content the reader is most interested in. Sets is kind of lost in the middle of a sea of collapsibles.
• The pages look terrible on mobile devices.
• The "other card information" links are near the bottom. I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I think a lot of readers aren't noticing them. I think they should be somewhere more obvious.
• The black box at the bottom is a bit of an eyesore. The cards limitation status(es) are also something the reader is probably most interested in and I think they're easy to miss in that box.
• Long outstanding problem: We can't search by sets using SMW.
• A lot of the properties for "card search categories", which are not applicable to the card have "No Entry" as their property. I'm sure there's a much better way of handling this.

I've taken a stab at designing a new layout trying to address as much of these as possible and make the pages a bit more visually appealing.

• At the top of the page, you have the image at 200px, with some of the more important information next to it. You don't need to scroll much to find it and it's not crammed. There's no wide empty column below the image after this section. It's a bit more colourful and somewhat matches the design of the cards and yes, it is slightly influenced by Konami's database. Statuses (Forbidden, Limited etc.) would be displayed in this section too if the card is anything other than Limited.
• The aforementioned section has a set of tabs, split by language. Click a different tab, you get mostly the same information, but with the name, lore and image in the chosen language. I'm a bit unsure about how I've handled the extra Japanese name stuff. I don't think we'll go beyond English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and maybe Chinese for this. Although I think we'll add a section for other names and make some distinction between official and unofficial names.
• In the mobile skin, you'll only see the English version of the above section. Tabber does not work so well on mobiles.
• I think the "other card information" links are much more obvious.
• Sets (and everything below them) have the full width of the content area to play with. English and Japanese are set to show by default, while the other languages are set to hide by default. (They're all hidden in the current setup.) Set number, set name and rarity are nicely tabbed. The rarities full names are used now that we have space. The abbreviations we were using were unofficial and I think we should use the abbreviations from Konami's DB if we are to continue to abbreviate. I haven't actually wrote the code to add the set searchablity, but it should be doable.
• Anime/manga appearances have room for both the episode name and number.
• The "other versions" section for cards which are quite different in the anime, manga, video games etc... I've thought it was out-of-place to put another card table in the appearances page and that it would be too much to make separate pages for them. I thought it would be nice to give them some decent recognition. Anything in this section probably won't be given SMW properties, so that they don't mess-up search results.
• A lot of the parameter names and input is the same. Some stuff has been changed for simplicity or having some standardisation across all templates. One of the things I like is for the Japanese name, you'll just use ja_name = name with ruby if applicable There's no need for any separate parameters to split up the kanji and furigana.

-- Deltaneos (talk) 02:13, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I have to agree with you on most of your points. The card articles are really cluttered, and the important stuff that most people want is somewhere in the sea of collapsible boxes, your design seems really simple and clean. Plus, with the current card articles, I think most people get flooded with information when viewing the page, and making it much more user friendly is something I would love to help with if I can. Although my one suggestion would be to have the various language tabs correctly spelled and capitalized, I think that makes it look more professional and reliable. ---Dark Ace SP (Talk) 19:33, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I must confess, I had a peak at your new design while you were creating it (I saw it on the Recent Wiki Activity) and I thought the Tabber function worked great, and separated the languages out nicely. I also thought the image was also a nice, manageable size, thus letting me agree with Ace's comment about the new design being user friendly. I think the current images are a tad large. --Bobbles^Talk 19:41, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

The card article pages are also really large with all that information they have, and Neo's design takes care of that. ---Dark Ace SP (Talk) 19:44, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

• Oh... dear. Well, I can't say I'm a fan. I think it'll take some getting used to if we do use it. I like the little box with the card information, but I don't like the rest of the page much. Also, how do we deal with cards that are OCG only, or part of sets not out in Japan yet in this version? Since it separates ENG and JPN information, we'll need a JPN section with English details, which may be a little messy. Also, I would argue that Japanese names have enough relevance to have more prominence on the page. I definitely think it's a well-presented and neat redesign, but like I said, it will take a long time to get used to.--YamiWheeler (talk • contribs) 20:01, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

• Just wanted to add that I'm a fan of the current way we list cards. Yes, it's old, and yes, it has issues, but isn't there a way we can redesign it and keep it more close to home, while still fixing the issues that you mentioned? Just a thought.--YamiWheeler (talk • contribs) 20:04, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for being honest.

I agree the page gets pretty dull once you get the past the first table. The remainder of the page may have been a bit rushed.

I'm not quite following the problem with Japanese exclusives. There'll be an English and a Japanese tab. Name and lore in English in one, name and lore in Japanese in the other. The English tab would probably use a Japanese card image though. Stuff like sets are dealt with outside of the tabs.

I did feel kinda bad pushing away some of the Japanese information like that. A lot of the name stuff is of interest to English speakers, including those who don't speak Japanese. I was hoping I could find a way to give the kanji/kana, romaji and translated names more recognition in later drafts.

Looking at the old format and fixing problems without making drastic changes; we can prioritise stats over translations, not waste space below the image, move the other card information links to a noticeable position and it should be possible to add set searchability without changing the appearance. I get this. You'll need to imagine there being language tabs at the top and "other card information" links appearing in a horizontal line above TCG sets. It looks alright. -- Deltaneos (talk) 01:09, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

• You know what, the more I look at the first design, the more it's starting to grow on me. If we could somehow make the set pages and so on less dull, and maybe make the Japanese name a little more prominent, I'll be happy to support it.--YamiWheeler (talk • contribs) 18:29, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

Long overdue, and very nice looking (and, once again, beats the pants off of the ideas I've been kicking around for the same thing =D ). I've made a couple of tweaks adjusting the display of the database ID and associated links and changing a proposed parameter name to match current guidelines. Now, some notes:

• Most importantly, anyone paying attention to the "Not part of the article" section should keep in mind that {{Card table set}} is not ready to be used in articles. I have improvements planned for it that break all current uses, and it is mostly these uses that have kept me from adding the improvements (I think I'm just gonna get a bot run done to orphan the template before updating it (other botops can do it instead if they want *hint hint* ;) ); I'll just copy test cases from random articles instead of testing on live articles, like I should have done in the first place).
• Since we are now clearly segregating information by language, I'm wondering if it would be worth it to localize some of the information (for example, presenting a monster's Attribute and Type in e.g. French when looking at its French tab). This can all be trivially handled in the template, so we could keep using e.g. "|attribute = Light" without having to have separate parameters for each language. I'm not sure if we really want to do this, though (since it would duplicate some of the work our counterparts in other languages do), and if so, just how far we want to take it (e.g. would we only want to translate the actual information, or also the labels, etc.).
• Since there is now basically an unlimited amount of screen real estate (of which half isn't being wasted any more), I don't see any reason not to have a similar table for each video game the card has been featured in: under Other versions, there would be a "Video games" subheader, and then each individual game (or game series - looking at you here, Tag Force) would have its own subsubheader and Tabber table. This would allow for a much better-looking presentation of almost all of the random information previously crammed into the ugly black box, while also allowing us to unambiguously document differences in card names, lores, and other details (and all without having a constellation of similar parameters, since each one would use its own instance of {{Card table}}!), and the general idea is trivially extensible to also allow merging e.g. the DDM, CM, etc. versions of cards which currently all have their own pages. And, since each of these has its own section, it allows direct linking and direct editing for anyone interested in that information specifically.
• On a related note, perhaps we should allow splitting the anime and manga boxes up per-series, using Tabber to switch between the series; if nothing else, it would let us have an image of the card from each series the card appeared in.

「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 21:01, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks.

• {{card table set}}...
  • The template requires you to input the set name, followed by the set prefix, followed by the rarity. In the draft I've done, the sets are displayed as prefix, name, rarity. It's the way it's done in Konami's DB and I think it looks neater. Anyway whichever layout we decide to use, I think we should keep the order of the input and output consistent.
  • I doubt I'll be able to do any immediate bot work. I can't quite use AWB as often as I'd like.
• Translations...
  • Translating the other values and labels in the language tabs is something I do see inevitably happening. It's why I was unsure about the placement of the kanji, kana, rōmaji and Japanese translated names, since they're only in the Japanese tab and would be left with no English presentation.
  • By "our counterparts in other languages", do you mean other language wiki communities? I do think we document too much material in other languages. Official names from other languages are good, but unofficial translations, lores and entire presentations of information in other languages I would have preferred to see done on other language wikis. I think ideally we should be an English site that gives information about other languages, not an English site that gives information in other languages. I did go against this principle by setting up those tabs, but the mass translations seems to be the path this wiki is taking and I didn't want to put thousands of edits to waste. I had also thought about including an interwiki link somewhere in each tab to link to the card's article on the wiki of that language.
  • There is one aspect of other language documentation, I think we do need to stop outright though; Filling in sets sections in their local language. These sections aren't simply the English sets in other languages. They're separate information, especially the Japanese and Korean sets. All information on an English site should be presented in English and can have other languages in addition, but not instead.
• "Other versions"...
  • You don't mean every video game, do you? Mainly ones like FMR and DOR, where cards work by different mechanics and ones like the aforementioned Tag Force series, where cards have different effects (yay, Dark Synchro Monsters).
  • I'd also like Capsule Monsters, Bandai etc. to be merged into this section. I was a bit unsure how other people would react. I suppose I'll retract saying that this section probably won't use SMW, because there's a lot of properties from these games that could be incorporated without interfering with the properties for the main card. Also, Yu-Gi-Oh! BAM cards have been waiting patiently for a decision on how they should be documented. They'd fit in nicely here.
• Yeah, I guess that could work. The fallback for tabber in the mobile skin is to display the content of each tab one below the other, so it should be fine there too.

-- Deltaneos (talk) 01:09, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

That's something I hadn't actually given much thought to; I'd just been going with the idea that the ordering would stay the same and the formatting of the input is what would change (well, there'd be a bit more input as well, but that's neither here nor there). The reordering seems reasonable, though, especially if the template output is changed to a table as you've done in your sandbox.

Yeah, I was just being unreasonably obtuse again. =) The proliferation of unofficial non-English information is something that's bothered me too; in the future it would probably be better to be more aggressive about having Wikia set up interwikis between the different language communities and encouraging people to contribute to those communities or start new ones instead of adding an unofficial Tuvalu card name here. Of course, this is where something like the current Wikidata Wikimedia project would help; if a new community could pull all the card info from a central repository automatically it would eliminate a huge chunk of the work they need to get started (and if the whole thing is designed correctly, it would also trivialize interwiki linking).

Video games like those would probably be the ones we'd focus on, but I don't see any particular need to actively prevent people from adding other ones as well; as far as I'm concerned, documenting that a card is in a given game via a box that shows the card's info and stats in that game (even if they're identical to the OCG/TCG) is better than trying to find the least-inappropriate place to stick a list of the games the card's appeared in (which, IMO, would be pretty out-of-place no matter where it was put).

I don't see much reason for restricting the application of SMW at all, really. As far as I'm concerned, we can just put all the information in per-media properties; I'd rather have a dozen properties that duplicate each other 99% of the time then only have one that covers a single case, and anyone looking for information in the other cases is left high and dry. If we can apply this to the various card search categories as well (assuming we can find a better way to handle them in general), it would also solve e.g. the problem with archetypes whose support card(s) don't keep the support effect/wording when moving from the anime/manga to the TCG/OCG.

「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 05:24, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

At Forum:Redirect changing: Necessary or not?, most people liked the short forms of writing the rarities. I'm wondering why it's changed in this.

Also, is there a page with every possible parameter shown in the order they are to be added? including showing the number of spaces before the "=" and where extra new lines go.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 23:27, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

It's changed here because we're no longer losing 300 pixels (actually a bit more, after you factor in padding etc. related to the table cell that contains the image) of usable space under the image, meaning the set information can stretch across the full width of the content area. In addition, our abbreviations are unofficial (though they are, for the most part, fairly logical), and the official database uses different abbreviations in many cases. I'm in favor of using the full names as well, but if we do keep using abbreviations, this would be a good time to switch over; at any rate, the templates used in this layout will handle how the set info is displayed, so it'll be automatic and consistent between articles (which also means we won't have to worry about someone trying to force a new consensus by running around and changing stuff).

Not that I know of, but I'm quite sure we'll end up with one as part of the redesign, since it's looking like we'll be largely replacing our current card-article-related template system.

「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 23:39, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

It's way too soon to get a list of parameters. Are you asking about the spacing for the sake of using bots to transition from one format to the other? I don't think how we space it is too important and I doubt we can count on everyone using the same number of spaces each time. Do you think this could be a problem? Also, if we decide to use SMW Forms on card articles, any time a form gets used it automatically strips out excess spacing, removes empty parameters and parameters it doesn't recognise, so | parameter =   value would get stripped to |parameter=value. -- Deltaneos (talk) 01:41, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

That's one of the reasons, the main reasons are actually:

It's something that the previous card table should have had as well. A page which contains one list for an empty template with everything in the first section, another section with an empty template which contains everything an anime only card should usually have, another section which contains everything an anime and TCG/OCG card should have, etc.

So you can just copy the empty version of whatever one you need when creating a new card page without having to go and look for a similar card and then replacing each value, without leaving any incorrect previous values.

This also makes it so that users don't need to mess around with the spaces. Simply copy the empty table and type in values.

A while ago Dinoguy1000 mentioned re-ordering everything in the previous card table, and also there are cases where people asked where to put the parameter when adding them. If it's made early, it also doubles up as a "table of contents" like list so you know what you've added to the template and where each item is located.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 14:28, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's a great idea. Having everything ordered the right way there would simplify everything. I have a word document that I copy over when creating new anime cards. It's definitely better than copying over a similiar articles, I think. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 16:37, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it's odd to have all the languages first. I recall when I first start edited here and was looking at card articles. I actually said to myself "why the hell are they telling me what this card's Croatian name is before what its Japanese name is? I don't care what its called in Croatia." For the most part, I agree with YamiWheeler here. I like how much of the CardTable is currently set up and I don't like having separate tabs for each language. Orphaning the Japanese names away from the first tab just strikes me as a bad idea, given how important those names are for archetype categorization (which is still something that causes us problems and always will).

However, I love the idea of using the tabs, just not in the way they've been set up. Would there be a way to have a TCG tab, OCG tab, video game tab, anime tab and manga tab? Each with its own separate table, which would let us include card search cats for anime effects and display anime and manga images next to anime and manga lores even when the card is also real, among other things. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 00:07, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback.

Okay, I think can say at this point that Japanese names need to have more prominence in the final design.

When I started working on the redesign, I hadn't planned on using tabview, but then went with it to actually put the language stuff out of the way. But you're other problem with the language tabs, is that you think the tabs are a good idea, but are being wasted on languages? Okay, that's interesting.

It is possible to give the tabs to different versions of the card. That's basically a horizontal version of the "other versions" section in the current draft. Input would be largely the same. Is there any reason why you suggested splitting OCG and TCG though? It'd be largely the same material in each tab. Other things worth considering for tabs are games like DDM and Bandai and there are a lot of different video game versions of cards, so I don't think one video game tab would suffice.

When you mention giving separate search categories to anime/manga versions cards, would you like them to also be stored as SMW properties? This would result in things like "Spellbinding Circle" appearing in lists of cards that cause monsters to lose ATK. The alternatives are to include the information, but not store it semantically or to create separate properties that only deal with anime effects, but this could mean a lot of duplication, particularly for cards that are the same in the anime and TCG. -- Deltaneos (talk) 01:18, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily saying don't use them for languages, but I certainly don't think we need a separate tab for every language. For cards with lots them, it would get quite messy, I think.

I'm not sure why I suggested splitting the OCG, actually. It was probably an almost automatic thing I typed, given how often I end up typing out "TCG/OCG in Notes sections and the like. Integrating DDM, Bandai and the like as tabs seems like a good idea as well.

Unless there's a way to prevent things like "Spellbinding Circle" from showing up, then no, no SMW there. However, it would be odd to have the anime tab of "Spellbinding Circle" link to a list that doesn't have "Spellbinding Circle". Separate properties would be fine, but I'm also completely ok with just forgetting the card search cat thing if it's going to be more trouble than its worth (and truthfully, I feel the whole card search cat system needs an overhaul to begin with).

Moving the other card information links somewhere else seems like a good bet too. I recall when I first started editing, they also appeared near the top of each of article. I assume a Wikia update caused that to stop. I'm not quite sure where to put them though. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 01:43, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

The proposal would limit the languages only to English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. ;) Other language information would either be displayed somewhere else (probably in dedicated name/lore sections or something) or stripped entirely (probably all the unofficial stuff; I for one wouldn't miss it terribly much).

I don't see any problem with stuff like "Spellbinding Circle", but I think I'd prefer having separate properties. The lists would then be changed to list cards with a particular category in each media, instead of all in one list (or two lists, one for OCG/TCG cards and one for anime/manga or just all cards) like is currently done. No disagreement on the overhaul from me, though I'm at a loss as to what the new system might look like.

You recall correctly. The links displayed in the header in the old Monaco skin (and maybe in Monobook, I don't recall, but if it did it broke at some point before Oasis), but after Monaco got removed and replaced with Oasis, the script that copied the links to the header was never updated to work in Oasis or Monobook. For Monobook, I'd say tabs would be a good place for them (probably in a dropdown tab), but Oasis doesn't have tabs so I'm not sure where they might be put there either. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 03:46, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. I wouldn't miss the unofficial stuff, but its obvious by how widespread it is that many people would. So retaining that information and allowing people to continue is probably best.

The main thing I mean when I say "card search cat overhaul" is limiting redundancy, but still maintaining the info. For example, we need a way to make it that any card listed under "Destroys your opponent's face-up Attack Position Monster Cards will automatically also appear in the list for "Destroys your opponent's face-up Monster Cards, on down to Destroys Monster Cards." After typing all that out though, it's clear to me we need to do more. The fact that are so many search cats for what amounts to the same thing is just odd.

Another thing I dislike is the list of episode appearances. This is going to sound petty, but the fewer places the text "Yu-Gi-Oh! GX episode 07777: "J-Dawg and T-Bone"" appear on this wiki, the better. Even if we used the Japanese episode titles, it would still annoy me; I don't know that we need to mention episode names, really. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 05:04, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

As I said above, we probably want to ultimately encourage people to contribute to the other language wikis (or start a new one) instead of sticking it all here.

That can already be done (and, IIRC, it already is to a very limited extent), though doing it properly and thoroughly would probably require heavy use of concepts, due to the sheer number of sub-categories a top-level category like "Destroys Monster Cards" would have to contain.

I hadn't noticed that. That output is trivial to implement even while keeping the current comma-delimited list of episode numbers, and I personally have no opinion on whether we want to just present a comma-delimited list of linked episode numbers (current style), an unsorted list of episode numbers and linked episode titles (proposed style), or something else. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 07:08, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

Hmm.

There must be a better way. Someone who has better knowledge of how everything in the game works may be able to figure out something better. Is having all those "Destroys Monster Cards" variants really that important, for example? I don't know.

I know there are good reasons to use the dub names. But a lot of people off-wiki don't understand that. They see dub names, they assume the entire wiki is full of dub only stuff (which if they actually looked, it obviously isn't, a lot of DM articles aside). So I really prefer to minimize where we use them. Characters, fine - but I don't dub titles all over the wiki is going to do us any favors.

Ooh, something else we could implement. Having anime and manga tabs gives us a great solution to the "anime card with the same artwork but different Japanese name as real card" issue. We merge "Monster Replace" into "Shift". Having the different tab lets us display the Japanese OCG name and the Japanese anime name in the right places. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 16:37, August 23, 2012 (UTC)

I've made a few changes. I don't know if I've made it better or worse overall. Here's the changed version.

• Other card information links are up higher.
• Japanese names are displayed in more places now; the ruby name in the heading and the kana, kanji, romaji and translated names just above the stats. We've normally put kanji before kana. I've swapped the order this time, because furigana appears above kanji, so I thought this looked a bit more right.
• Card number and database links aren't something on high demand, so I've moved them down a bit to compensate for some of the space the Japanese names are taking.
• Sets are up higher. Each language tab has its own sets inside it, including an extra column for the sets' local language names. Japanese (and probably Asian-English) sets are displayed in the English tab too, because they're too important to have hidden by default.
• The anime appearances section is moved into the anime table and the episode names have been dropped. So just the series name followed by the list of linked episode numbers.
• Removed the table of contents. It seemed awkward and out-of-place, even moreso than in the last draft.

Some problems:

• It still uses tabs for languages rather than other versions of the card. I don't think I've that idea sold on many people.
• The anime appearances section appears in the table for the anime version of the card. Unless we're going to have an anime version and manga version table for every card, even when they're the exact same, this could be a problem.
• Video game sets. Pretty much the same problem as above. Unless we have a table for every video game the card appears in, we may need a better way of documenting video game sets.
• I didn't touch the search categories section. We might want to do something along the lines of Cheesedude's suggestion with these.

As a side note, there's some problems with the <mobile></mobile> and <nomobile></nomobile> tags. We can get back to changing the appearance for the mobile skin if we can these fixed... or if we'd finally be let change the CSS in the mobile skin. -- Deltaneos (talk) 13:51, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

• Love it. Think it looks fantastic, and it fixed almost all of the problems I stated. I'm a little iffy on the Card Number being so out of view, but you can't have everything, and you probably are right about lack of demand for that information. The Set information isn't perfect (again, we can't have everything), but the way you've handled it is better, in my opinion. It makes the page as a whole look less cluttered. I'm personally liking the language tabs. It's nice to be able to put card images from all languages on display, as well as offer them more dedicated space, as opposed to just hidden boxes. I'm not savvy enough with Wikia coding to offer a solution to the anime and video game problems, but I hope you figure it out, and honestly, well done, Delta. I think it's a great redesign.--YamiWheeler (talk • contribs) 14:13, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be better if you align the Number/Set/Rarity boxes so that both/each are aligned to each other. -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 14:18, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

We can do that if we give a fixed width to the number and rarity columns. 80px seems fine for the numbers. Rarity is a bit more difficult, since some can have very long names like Duel Terminal Secret Parallel Rare. I don't think we should make the rarity column too wide, but it looks bad when a rarity runs over more than one line when there is more than one rarity in a cell. To fix this, I guess we could use the (official) rarity abbreviations or have multiple rows for when a card appears in a set with more than one rarity. -- Deltaneos (talk) 14:40, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

I must say I like this version much better. In fact, if we can tweak the anime section a bit, I have no problem with not using tabs instead. It sounds like tabs for that may be more trouble than they're worth.

Would it really be that bad to have an anime section for every card that appeared in the anime? Just like the languages, it lets us display the images more prominently. It would be weird for cards that have appeared but weren't played though.....later today I'll play around with it a little bit and see how it would look and put in my sandbox. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 17:01, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

I agree, it looks quite interesting.

For the video game stuff, we could have a handful of tables that each handles a few games according to what's related (e.g. FMR and whatnot would be in one table, the TF series in another, the WC series in another, and most of the rest in another (though maybe BAM should get its own table?)), and the template would assume that information provided applies to all the games covered by the table unless a given piece of information is specifically overridden for a specific game or the template is told (by whatever means) that the card didn't appear in a given game. In cases where something's overridden for a specific game, the template would display that in its own row or something. This would allow us to cover all the games a card might appear in while keeping the number of tables under control.

For the column widths on the set tables, it's better to use em units instead of px, so that the widths will scale in the event someone uses a different font or text size. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 18:30, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

Made an attempt to display what the new table would look like for a card that has three different lores - anime, manga and real. User:Cheesedude/Sandbox3. I obviously messed up spacing, but I can't figure out what I did; I'm pretty terrible with basic wikitables. The gist of what I intended is there though. I really like how it comes off, overall. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 19:19, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

Man that was a lot to read, and here is some more. Mkay just some more feedback, I like the design. It's clean and simple, the tabs are something I thought we always needed on the card article page so those are welcomed. And the language tabs are a great addition, for the idea of making the tabs into TCG/OCG, Anime, Manga, etc., I would say to have the Other versions section should have tabs as well. The top section could still have the language tabs and possibly the Bandai and other versions cards as separate tabs. The Other versions section would have Anime, Manga, Video games as tabs.

On the subject of adding the video games, it is tough one. We could try to separate them by Tag Force, World Championship, etc. but the problem then is all the other one off games, looking at you >.> BAM! So the only thing I can come up with is to still have multiple video game tabs but divide them by the different cards. For example, if you have a card like Kuriboh for most games it will follow the original card, so we would have a tab for that version and list all the games that use that version (we can list them similar to the set tables in the top section just divide them by system). And then again with BAM!, that version of Kuriboh has completely different stats/abbility so that would get its own video game tab. Still not sure on how to name each tab in this situation though. If anyone likes this or not, do we have a solution for cards that change type, i.e. Serpent Night Dragon in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards? Are we able to change the table color on additional tabs with different types?

Nice on cleaning up the External links section and the black box at the bottom of the page. With TCG/OCG statuses could we build something that based on the current listing for the card on the official Forbidden/Limited list could display an alert somewhere on the page, something noticeable but not obnoxious, that would let the viewer know that this card was say Forbidden in Traditional format. I saw mention of this above, do you have an example of how this would look?

I agree with Falzar, the set tables would look nice if the English and Japanese were aligned equally, at least for the Number column we could limit its size to the Duel Art Campaign Promo Card number's length, YGOPR-JP001, since it is currently the longest. The rarities are a nastier bit, especially when it comes to the Duel Terminal rarities. I would say stick with the abbreviations but I see the problem with some being unofficial, but they are needed for the sake of image naming. We should use the full rarity name now that we have the space. And sad day for filling in sets sections in their local languages, I thought this was good due to the fact that probably the only person interested in the French sets this cards was in would probably want to know the French name. But I can see the problem with the OCG sets which do not have a TCG counterpart. This would probably be fixed by the whole discussion about linking to the partner wikis, but that's a whole other topic for another forum.

One last thought for now, we shouldn't dump all of the name/lore info for non TCG/OCG printed languages. Hopefully we could bot copy/move that info onto the Names and Lores pages. We can just designate those pages for unofficial names/lores since we now will have the other languages on the main page in the tabs. Just my opinion, people have been putting some work into those additions and until we can build a uniform database for all the wikis to access to simplify the whole process of building an new language Yu-Gi-Oh! wiki, we should at least give that info a home.

Keep it going guys! It looks great! ^_^ Look234 (talk • contribs) 04:31, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback Look, I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates your extensive write-up (and now here's another healthy chunk of reading)! =D

I'm pretty sure the "Other version" stuff will be tabbed as well, though we haven't really discussed how that'll work just yet. I'm pretty sure, though, that it will contain the tables for all non-OCG/TCG card releases, so stuff like Bandai, DDM, etc. will get listed there too. The way I'd like to see it done would be for the different tabletop/card games (Bandai, DM, DDM, CM, Labyrinth, etc.) to each have their own subsections in this section, with tabs for different languages where appropriate (did any of these ever see any release whatsoever in languages other than Japanese and English?), and the same for the anime, manga, and VG versions (including tabbing for different language info; in the case of the anime and manga, this would give us a place to put a *lot* of the non-OCG/TCG language info). Maybe I should expand Delt's sandbox page with examples for what I'm talking about...

The video game stuff, though, is a beast unto itself, as you pointed out. To reiterate, I'd like to see it tabbed for different languages, but then we have the problem that different games handle the actual card game differently, so we'd need to figure out a reasonable way to group the information to avoid having a ridiculous number of tables on e.g. BEWD, which I'm sure has appeared in every game ever. The major groups/series I'm aware of are Tag Force, World Championship, the old FMR et al. games that did their own thing, and maybe the Power of Chaos trio; I'd be willing to bet that many of the remaining games (apart from BAM, which will have to be by itself no matter what, I think) could be covered in one or two tables without too much trouble, but I don't know nearly enough about the differences in the games to know if that would actually make sense. If we can get this done reasonably well, though, it gives us the perfect place to put nearly all of the black box info; Delt and I would just have to be careful about how the table was designed in regards to determining which games a card was released in and how to handle if a single game did something about a card differently, etc. I don't think it'll be an insurmountable challenge, though (or even particularly hard, once the groundwork is in place and we have a few examples to work off of).

Every instance of the table that you see on Delt's sandbox and the forum sandbox is a separate instance of {{Card table}}, and all the relevant information on a card must be provided separately. When we're ready to deploy, we'll have one or more wrapper templates that handle making the tabs automatically, and which will also automatically provide all the tables with the proper card information without editors having to manually enter the same info for each language. This means it's trivial to provide overrides for e.g. video games that change a monster's Type or other details; we just provide game-specific override parameters where needed (and to control a parameter explosion, I would argue to add these override parameters as needed, instead of trying to guess which ones we might need).

Right, statuses. I *thought* there was something glaringly obvious that we were overlooking so far in the sandboxes and template. The best place I can think to stick them would be in the table, at the bottom of the right column, but as with everything, I'm all ears for better suggestions. =) I think the Advanced and Traditional statuses should only be shown on the TCG tabs, and the OCG status only on the OCG tabs; does that sound reasonable to everyone else?

I think we should wholeheartedly adopt the official rarity abbreviations, actually (hey, who feels like moving all of our card images for the seventy-third time? =D ). We'll need to cover cases where we make distinctions that the official DB doesn't, though.

Once {{Card table set}} is finished, one of its required parameters will be the region that the set in question is for. With this information, it will be able to automatically pull the set's local name via SMW and we can then display that in any manner we want (this also means full consistency in how it's displayed, and being able to update all the instances of a set's name by editing only the set's page); my immediate thought is to have both names in the same cell, with the English name first and the local name beneath it (only one name would be linked, I think).

I agree with you on the other languages info; I'd hate to see all that work come to naught and I think it'd alienate quite a few people that contribute and look up that information. I don't, however, think it has any place in the card tables themselves in the new version, since all the leftover info should be unofficial; it should either go somewhere else on the card page or be moved to the Card Names/Card Lores pages (and I'd personally prefer the former, both because I've never understood why we need separate Names/Lores pages in the first place, and to simplify potential interwiki linking). This would be something else we could template, and in the case of names that would also allow pretty much complete automation for adding new interwiki links whenever a new language wiki is added to our interwiki map (which we should probably start requesting more often). And, as you said and as I stated earlier, this would also allow us to start off a centralized database with a huge amount of data, so new language wikis could much more easily hit the ground running, assuming Wikia ever gave us such a resource to make use of (another big one would be images; I think all the wikis would love having a Commons-like shared repository for images and other files so they didn't have to re-upload literally 70,000+ files (Seriously, we currently have 408,516 files. Insane.)).

「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 05:47, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

It is a lot to read, especially with no section headers or images (or immediately obvious links to what the redesign looks like). Most people aren't going to want to comment if they think they'll have to read all of the above. It might be worth starting another forum soon, which summarises the key points of what we've covered so far and link to it form places where people are more likely to see it.

A problem with using per medium tabs in the other versions section is there won't be anywhere to put other language info apart from Japanese names. This is particularly a problem for the Capsule Monster Chess pieces from Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule Breed & Battle. A lot of them such as "Sweeter" only have Japanese lores because nobody has been able to translate them to English.

Forbidden and Limited status, I think is one of the most important things to readers alongside stats and sets. For the first example, I picked "Rainbow Dragon" because it was the first card I thought of that had a different anime/manga and real life effect. I should have went with something like "Brain Control" or "Crush Card Virus", so I could demonstrate the status too. What I'd been thinking was, we'd leave out that section for Unlimited cards. We get free space for information that's otherwise implied. For the position, either just above the lore or just below it. If it's the same in Advanced Format, Traditional Format and the OCG, just say what the status is once and if it's different say something like "Forbidden (Advanced, OCG), Limited (Traditional)"

Wow, I hadn't noticed there was a five character set prefix.

For rarities, I think the official abbreviations would be a good idea. Although there are a few changes I think we should make:

• This first one isn't a change to how the database does it. Before I had thought we should merge Holographic Rare into Ghost Rare because I thought they were the OCG and TCG names for the same thing. But now the database calls both of them Holographic Rare, so I think we should merge Ghost Rare into Holographic Rare.
• The database makes no distinction between the different Gold Rares. It uses GR for Gold Ultra Rare and Gold Ultimate Rare and HR for Gold Holographic Rare. I think we should use G+UR, G+UL and G+HR, which is consistent with how they handle Parallel Rares.
• For the terminal rarities, it ignores the "Duel Terminal" and the "Parallel" parts. For example it just uses SR (Super Rare) for a Duel Terminal Parallel Super Rare. I think we should use something like D+SR, D+UR etc.
• It might be worth keeping C for Common, rather than leave it blank.
• I'm not sure what to do with Short Print, Prismatic Secret Rare, Ultra Secret Rare and Secret Ultra Rare.

Off topic: I was looking for an example of a Normal Parallel Rare and it seems that the database is excluding the Mattel Action Figure Promotional Cards. Are these the cards that UDE got in trouble for making without Konami's consent?

Unless any of us can configure a bot to rename all the images and correct their links while running unsupervised, I can't say I'm in the mood for another mass rename.

Sets names in local languages isn't totally lost. In the last draft, in the language tabs, the sets section has an extra column for the sets' local names. I've it left out for the German one, since they seem to always use the English set names. Since the set page redesign, it should be possible, as Dinoguy said, for us to have the local name columns fill in automatically.

I had been thinking of just including a table further down the page for names in other languages. Something like bulbapedia:M04#In other languages. Although I'm not too keen on their use of hover text for translations. They have plenty of room for another column. Putting them on the names page could be done, but then you wouldn't be able directly query or search for a card's name in those languages. e.g. if you want to use Special:Ask to return a list of Greek names, you'd have to generate a list of Card Names pages, rather than a list of card pages. Or if you wanted to find out which card's Greek name is "Σκοτεινός Μάγος", you'd get its names page, rather than its card page. -- Deltaneos (talk) 16:25, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the video games. You have a couple that drastically change the rules and a few where a completely different game is played. Excluding them, each card is pretty much the same in every game apart from their Forbidden and Limited Status. The exceptions I can think of are the Egyptian Gods in many games prior to the release of their legal versions and some cards, which were appeared in Tag Force between their anime appearance and real world release. e.g. the Dark Synchros. -- Deltaneos (talk) 16:42, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, the cards' English names also differ between games. -- Deltaneos (talk) 16:44, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking about the lack of sections here when posting that wall of text last night. A summarization and discussion reboot would definitely be a good idea, though I don't see why we'd need to start a whole new thread for it; just start a new section here, and maybe collapse the old discussion in a hidden section so that people aren't intimidated by all the five-mile-long comments. =D

I was trying to emphasize that I think each of the medium incarnations of a card should have its own table (and, potentially, subsection), not just its own tab in a Tabber instance. This would let us provide per-language tabs for each of these releases and resolve that problem entirely. The only exception would be video games, because there's a million of those and we can handle them in groups without much of any difficulty.

What does the database do for Normal Rare cards? If it identifies those, we might as well go with that, both for NR and SP cards.

For UScR and ScUR, maybe something like U+SE and S+UR? I don't know about how we should handle PScR, though. (also, we need a table somewhere here that lists all of our rarity names and abbreviations, and all of the rarity names and abbreviations from the database, so we can get an overview of the whole situation)

Video games that have different English names for a card should be pretty simple to support; just use the {{{name}}} parameter in {{Card table}}. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 17:50, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

Is there a list for every rarity + abbrev shown on the Database? If not, here's a start

Should/Could we copy the colours shown there as well, and possibly do that fancy effect of showing the whole word on mouseover? -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 14:15, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

Not that I've been able to find. I'll get started on a table.

Copying the colors will be a bit difficult; the abbreviation and coloring are all an image (e.g. for Rare, it's this image), and there's at least one rarity (Ultimate Rare) that uses a striped background and two (Gold and Parallel Rare) that uses a gradient, meaning we'd either have to use an image ourselves or average the two main colors. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 18:16, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

Table's finished; it's at User:Dinoguy1000/rarities. Thoughts/observations/suggestions/additions/corrections/etc.? 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 20:40, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the correct place to bring it up, and not sure if someone already has (or we already have a rule in place for it), but since we'll be redesigning the card pages anyway, can we decide on a rule on how to organize the Set names on the card pages (under TCG Sets and OCG Sets)? At the moment, they seem to be mostly alphabetically listed, but some seem to be added by release date and others are just all over the place.--YamiWheeler (talk • contribs) 12:46, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

I always thought (and agree) that it is in chronological order. Most of the time it's easier to add and you can also quickly approximate when each rarity or errata was released. -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 14:15, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

I second Falzar in that sets should be listed in chronological order, though I admit that might be hard to code. Another thing I thought might be cool (and which I think I've heard Del propose probably years ago now) is for the article to include a paragraph or something on the history and creative process that went into the card itself. So, for BEWD you could say something like "This card was created by Takahashi for chapter 9 of the manga, first appeared as a real thing in the Starter Box, is most associated with Seto Kaiba, etc." Rod (talk • contribs) 02:09, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Card articles having tables should not stop them from being what they are - articles. Granted, a lot of it can be handled by appearances and trivia pages, but a bit of exposition in the article wouldn't be bad. We could also add info to manga only card articles that confirms their Types/Attributes, etc (ie. "Reincarnation Dragon Samsara" is confirmed to be a Dragon-Type because it was revived with "Immortal Dragon", not because it has "Dragon" in its name). A place in card articles for prose gives us a lot more options to work with for sorting things out in pretty much every area of the franchise. A given card's transition on the banlist would be something else to write about too. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 02:32, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

Ooh, that gives me an idea as well: a banlist history timeline for cards. I'm not sure quite how it would work, but I'd be willing to bet there'd be plenty of people who'd like it. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 06:26, August 29, 2012 (UTC)

So instead of having current status for each card, we have a history. This way we don't need to revert people changing the current status before the next list is supposed to be used.

Maybe you could make each item on the Historic Forbidden/Limited Chart into SMW values and have the card page read off that. -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 01:31, August 30, 2012 (UTC)

An update

Some of you have probably already seen this, but here's the draft after another few updates. 'Changed the card from "Rainbow Dark Dragon" to "Blue-Eyes White Dragon", since it appears in pretty much everything. Some changes based on what's been said above, some talk with Dinoguy and some other stuff:

• Gallery, Rulings, Errata, Tips, Appearances, Trivia, Artworks, Lores, Names links are outside the tabs now.
• Japanese names aren't included in any of the tabs other than English and Japanese.
• The cards released in Japanese sets in fullwidth English; they've been switched form being called Asian-English to Japanese English (ja-en). They're listed in the Japanese sets, rather than the Asian-English sets. The other Asian-English cards that are more alike the TCG English are still considered Asian-English. The Chinese cards from Japanese sets are also listed in the Japanese sets section.
• Forbidden and Limited status is shown below the lore. I still don't think we'll need it for Unlimited cards. It's just there for show in the example.
• Interwiki links appear in a slightly more obvious place.
• Sets are in a separate set of tabs than the card details. The different types of TCG English share a tab. Same with French. This will probably be split later.
• The alignment of the table columns is a bit better. The line down the middle of the two language names isn't always consistent.
• For the rarities, I've shortened the names of the Duel Terminal names. "Duel Terminal" → "Terminal" and since all Terminal rarities are Parallel, the "Parallel" part is implied by the word "Terminal", so that's been dropped. So "Duel Terminal Ultra Parallel Rare" is "Terminal Ultra Rare". This change was mainly so the rarity column wouldn't be so wide. But abbreviations are still fine, I think.
• A lot of other games/mediums versions of the card are listed to give us some idea of what that's going to be like. Some of the tables or information might be superflous.
• A table for languages other than the ones given tabs has been added at the bottom.

Another thing, not relevant to the above draft. A lot of the SMW stuff will probably be restructured, so a lot of pages using #ask: and #show: are going to need to be updated. If anyone knows a way of getting a list of pages using #ask or #show, that'd be great. If you disagree with any of these names or setup, below or have a better idea, please say so. Some stuff that's likely to be changed in terms of SMW:

• Currently every card has the value "No Entry" for search categories irrelevant to them. This shouldn't be needed. These should just be left blank and [[Property name::!+]] can be used to filter a list to exclude pages that don't use a particular property.
• The Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3 properties used to tell if a card is OCG/TCG existent, anime only, anime and manga only etc. are very messy. There are much better ways of querying that information.
• Property:Card type will say if a card is Monster, Spell, Trap, Trap-Spell, Virus and maybe Speed Spell and Character Card.
• Property:Primary type will say if a Monster is Normal, Effect, Ritual etc. Property:Secondary type will say if it is Toon, Tuner, Union, etc. Tuner Synchro monsters will have both [[Primary type::Synchro Monster]] and [[Secondary type::Tuner monster]]. Template:Card table/type is already set up to assign these properties automatically. We might need a property to state whether the monster has an effect or not. This can be easily done.
• It's currently looking like each card will have the properties "Language sets" to list all the sets of a particular language they appear in, "Language set number" (italics mean variable) to list the number they have for a particular set and "Language set rarity" to list the rarity they have for a particular set. Some of the problems with this are we have to create two new properties for every set and some cards have more than one number and rarity for a particular set. e.g. "Cyber Dragon" appears in Ra Yellow Mega-Pack as RYMP-EN058 and RYMP-EN059 as a Common and Secret Rare respectively. Using SMW queries, there'll be no way of telling which rarity belongs to RYMP-EN058 and which belongs to RYMP-EN059. -- Deltaneos (talk) 01:28, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

The problem pointed out in your last bullet could be handled by having another property, "Language set number and rarity" (and we may not need one-per-set, making it just something like "Card number and rarity"), and then when we need that information, just do {{ #ask: [[Language set number and rarity::~Number*]] }} or {{ #ask: [[Language set number and rarity::~*Rarity]] }}, and #explode the result to get the part we need. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 03:23, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

That sounds great actually. It fixes other minor issues too, like searching by rarity to find particular prints of cards, without needing to specify every language set rarity property. I wonder if we should also include the set name and language in the property. [[Set information::LOB-000 --- Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon --- Secret Rare --- Asian-English]]. In that case, we should only need one property altogether. -- Deltaneos (talk) 13:08, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

The only potential problem there would be with sorting automatically-generated lists, if we wanted a different sort order than alphabetically by page name (e.g. for set spoilers, which are normally sorted by set number). Though we could get around *that*, and, I think, get the best of both worlds, if we had the "Set information" property as well as another property for each individual bit of information: "Set number", "Set name" (or just "Set", or maybe something else), "Rarity" or the like, and "Set region" or the like. That way, we could query based on the "master property", and display based on the individual sub-properties. Or would that still require identifying which property values belong together? Hmm... 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 18:47, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

For set lists we can sort by ?Set information since the set number is the first item. The final output would be a table with sortable columns for number, name, rarity and possibly language and set name depending on what kind of list you're making. It would be possible to sort by rarity, language and set name after the list has been created, but it wouldn't be possible to order them that way for their initial state. It also wouldn't be possible to create set number, name or rarity columns through Special:Ask.

The extra properties you're suggesting. Wouldn't they need to be the original "language name number" and "language name rarity", so the query will know which of the card's numbers and rarities to sort by?

For properties using Type:Length, such as Property:Height, it possible to use queries to output just the number or just the unit. ?height#-n and ?height#-u. I wonder if we could have a custom Type for set data, so that we could use ?Set information#-number, ?Set information#-rarity etc.

There's also the problem that pages with multiple values for a property only have one row in results tables and will include the values in one cell, separated by a comma. For set information, it would be handy if each value was given its own row. Sorry, I'm not explaining this very well. -- Deltaneos (talk) 20:42, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think my "extra properties" idea was a very good one.

We really need a Type:Array or the like for this... or an SMW guru to descend from the heavens and tell us "lol ur doin it worng, heres how it should be" (and then we can mock him when his suggestion turns out to be an even bigger hack then this =D ). 「ディノ奴千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 23:09, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

Tags report has a list of pages with #ask. However it can't list pages with #show.

-Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 00:26, September 4, 2012 (UTC)