Anyone who's been on any kind of wiki, including Wikipedia, has seen these things. For those who don't know them by name, infoboxes are boxes with little snippets of info. They're like a microcosm of the article's information. For example, if you go to an article on an aircraft on this wikia, you'll find an image of the aircraft, its role, its variants, aces who flew it, and other small stuff like that. They're incredibly useful and handy, and a staple of wikis and wikias everywhere.
Acepedia, unfortunately, still needs to catch up with the times on how infoboxes are styled and managed. Would you believe me if I told you we currently have five different styles of infoboxes? Yep. And that's something I want to work on fixing as soon as possible. I have been for months, but I want to start putting a lot more focus into this to finally formalize one style of infobox across all of our infoboxes.
I need the community's opinions and assistance on this, because there is no way I'm doing this drastic of a change without opinions and discussion.
These are the current five layouts of infoboxes we have, as well as the situation surrounding them:
- Hatakaze-class destroyer - This one seems to be embedded directly in that article. This infobox style is not being kept around no matter what.
- 0 prefer
- Larry Foulke - This is the old style of infoboxes we've had since at least 2012, with few outward changes since then. I would like to not keep this style of infobox around anymore; the code that creates this style of infobox is archaic in 2015, and it's not good on mobile devices depending on the content.
- 0 prefer
- ADF-01 FALKEN / November City - This is the new style of infoboxes you may have seen on the aircraft articles. This is one option that we can stick to. It's easy on the eyes, easy on the code, and supports mobile a lot better than the old code.
- 4 prefer
- Acepedia:Sandbox#New Wikia Infobox Formatting - This formatting is brand-new and designed by Wikia themselves. This is another option that we can stick to. Along with being easier on the eyes, this style is very basic in code, making it easy to make modifications to and easy for people to read if they edit the infobox code! It's also supported by CSS and the wikia's theme, but also supports mobile devices the most of any in this list. Personally, I prefer this style, because this might end up being the future of Wikia's infoboxes.
- 2 prefer
- Erusea - This is an alternate style of the formatting seen on Acepedia:Sandbox, where the labels are next to the info like in previous infobox styles. This is another option that we can stick to. It comes with all of the benefits of the infobox style directly above, but keeps the original side-by-side look that people may be familiar with. However, that comes at a cost of space for the info itself.
- 11 prefer
To recap: Styles 1 and 2 are going away permanently. Style 3 is much more simple in code and style and supports mobile better. Styles 4 and 5 are the most simple in code and style and support mobile the absolute best, but obviously look different to the others.
Please give your thoughts as well as the infobox style(s) you'd like to see us adopt as the main one for the future of Acepedia! I'd like to get as many people's opinions as possible!