Template talk:Infobox Villager

Appearances section
I'm not too fond of the addition of abbreviations and how the film is lumped in between them. I prefer the old version where it lists the name of the game; it's more neat that way. 18:48, August 1, 2014 (EDT)


 * Switching to abbreviations was a part of our attempts to keep the box shorter when we added more information to it; "Appearances" was the longest section of the box and the game abbreviations are fairly common, so getting them into fewer lines was a good way to save space. Since the box is still as long as many of the villager articles--primary villagers new in NL--I'd want to avoid lengthening it anymore, at least until we get some more information into them with the new template (although there is a small chance that we'll run into horizontal space issues between that and long infoboxes).


 * Infobox length issues aside, I'm not especially fond of how the appearances template is set up, but I'm not sure how much can be done without adding more lines to it. I agree with you regarding the film, but there's not much that could be done with it with the current setup. One option could be taking "Appearances" out of the infobox and adding an appearances list as a section at the bottom of villager articles, like how character appearances are sometimes listed on wikis for TV shows. That'd show that the movie is a movie more clearly where applicable, but that setup may not look good for villagers that only appeared in one game. -Sky (talk)   20:54, August 1, 2014 (EDT)


 * If we remove the appearances section, I would like to place in a "first appearance" section. (This should not be interpreted as an opinion on the appearance section).  SuperAlpaca  (talk ) 20:58, August 1, 2014 (EDT)


 * Quick idea (maybe awful?): if we had a "first appearance" field, we could use just that in the infobox and add an appearances heading to the article for villagers that had 2+ appearances. -Sky (talk)   21:01, August 1, 2014 (EDT)


 * I wouldn't like that idea in articles based on special characters, but that's my opinion. --XXSuperXXNintendoXx (talk) 21:05, August 1, 2014 (EDT)


 * I agree with Mario in that I found it odd/confusing for the film to lumped in with the game abbreviations. Additionally, I think it odd that we abbreviate the Japan-only titles as AF, AF+, & AFe+ when the page titles use the rōmaji (Dōbutsu no Mori) not the translated names. I suppose that may have been done so as to be able to use DM as the abbreviation for the movie... but still. :P I would suggest making a field for "In-game appearances:" and "Other media:" as there's also some Animal Crossing manga I believe. The "other media" field would only appear if you entered anything into that field. Also Sky, if you're worried about the length of the infobox, remember that the villager's skill and goal are included in the other template you were creating with the coffee preferences, favorites etc. So we can remove them from the infobox when that's done. --sunmarsh (talk) 21:44, August 1, 2014 (EDT)


 * The abbreviations were chosen to match the link templates; admittedly this is more convenient for editors than readers, so I wouldn't necessarily mind changing that. The movie abbreviation was picked last-minute, and DM was chosen over AM (its link template) with the assumption that people would more commonly know it by its Japanese title.


 * I'm concerned with the length without any new information added; it's seeming like that's just me, though, so I can let it be if other people don't mind. Nonetheless, if we're going to differentiate between appearance media, I'd rather do that outside the infobox. -Sky (talk)   22:03, August 1, 2014 (EDT)

Parameters
I'm concerned about moving the appearance parameters into this template rather than having a separate template typed in, which was somewhat more flexible. The former setup's code could be more easily compacted on villager pages and allowed the old style of appearance lists to stay visible for infoboxes that haven't yet been updated.

Incidentally, the star sign wasn't given its own row in the table before as part of trying to keep the box relatively short. I think having it by the birthday was decent context, but I suppose it does make sense in its own cell. -Sky (talk)   20:54, August 1, 2014 (EDT)