NSWiki talk:Info boxes

Major changes to template layout

I took out the {{NSwiki_meta_toc}} toolbar from the this page, as it just screwed with the layout of this important page. I also added some headings to make new nation creation a lot more obvious. It make need some tweaking in terms of phrasing, but this is our front door. It needs to be shinier than it was. -- Frisbeeteria 03:02, 6 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Pudding 

so hey ... where'd you get that awesome Alliance Infobox format from?

Taken, as with many things, from Wikipedia and altered a bit to fit the needs of NationStates. --Goobergunch|? 16:25, 9 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Zoogies 

I'm not sure where to put this, or if I'm even doing this the right way...so feel free to delete this if it's out of place. But isn't 'capitol' when used in the sense of a nation's captiol spelled with an 'o' rather than an 'a'? The info box for the nation has it with an a.

No, the city in which a nation's head of government is located is the capital. The actual building is the capitol. --Goobergunch|? 19:56, 24 Oct 2004 (GMT)

I had edited the corporation infobox, adding the logo field. Please change the infobox informations. Rufus T. Firefly 07:20, 4 Jul 2005 (GMT)

Adding Stats Buttons to Infoboxes

This started as a sandbox idea for the stats buttons, but things have been moved around to make them clearer and to fit in examples. Suffice to say this came first, before the solutions. Comments began after a way to add buttons was found and implemented globally. → Frisbeeteria Θtalk

Personally, I'm not a fan of NS calculators, burt when I do my region, I'm not gonan be using the regio infobox for lack of a map link, so it doesn't really matter to me. Is there any controversy aroud this calc though? --Quintucket 01:35, 20 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Economy links... Could those be an optional thing, as is everything else in the infobox, or would that be mandatory. It's a very nice idea, I just don't personally prefer them, and logic assumes others would share my opinion as well. Optional'ism gives people choices, and the illusion of freedom duntchaknow. --Fodian Federa 00:34, 22 Oct 2004 (GMT)

The only way I can make it individual is to:

• add a confusing second Nation InfoBox

• add a confusing pair of Calculator Infoboxes that would have to be carefully positioned in order not to overlap the primary infoboxes

• remove them entirely and provide quasi-automated code for people to add their own

• let people find and add the calculators on their own

• manually create the Table equivalent of an infobox for any nation that wants one without a calculator link.

My inclination is to leave it, but I'll gladly accept consensus of the Wiki community. Right now, using the automatic variables detailed below, we're automatically generating links to NationStates Nations, NationStates Regions, the NSEconomy calculator for both, and the Pipian calculator. We've had markedly less mistakes from new users adding infoboxes to new pages, so I'm fairly certain we don't want to take out the NSlinks at least.

As for me, I obviously like the calculators, and made them small enough not to be obtrusive in the infobox. A lot of players still don't know about the very concept of calculators, and it satisfies an often-requested call for more information. So, let me have it ... → Frisbeeteria Θtalk 00:52, 22 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Technical details: The change was made to the Template:Infobox Region, so implementation was global. It seems to work fine on all regions except the ones that have always been too big. We're using a variable we just located called {{PAGENAMEE}} (Info_boxes) which passes along the the name with spaces parsed into underscores. We already knew about variable {{PAGENAME}} (Info boxes) which passed the standard pagename with spaces, but we knew that wouldn't work on the NSEconomy calculator. We're using the same paired variables to auto-generate the Region and Nation URLs, and it works like a charm! → Frisbeeteria Θtalk

Global Stats Box may now be turned off for Nations

I finally figured it out, and frankly it was a pain-in-the ass, but it's coded and in place. At this point, I don't intend to add it to the nation instructions. They can look here.

In order to turn off the Stats box on your nation, add the following line to your infobox section:

statsbox= |

(leaving it blank after the | makes it a thin blue line)

It's actually become an optional, centered field for a picture or other additions if you so desire

statsbox=URL of my picture |

That last character is a Pipe, btw. Probably a good idea to add spaces or a line feed. It can't be the last item, or appear after the final }}, but if you add this the line turns into a thin blue line at the bottom. I'm not going to code the one for regions because those aren't the property of a single player (not even the founder, from one perspective). Ya'll can just live with that one. → Frisbeeteria Θtalk 23:53, 23 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Global Stats Box now optional for Regions as well

I advise against using this, but against my own better judgement I've incorporated the same fix into the Regional box to turn the StatsBox into an option field. Code is slightly different from above:

Rstatsbox= |

Leave it blank between the = and the pipe for no stats, or add a URL or text if you prefer. If you're going to incorporate a regional flag or map, please try to keep the width at or under the standard infobox width of 300 pixels.

You're welcome, Quintucket.  :) → Frisbeeteria Θtalk 00:51, 24 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Capital/National Animal

Is there a way to add a 'National Animal' entry and to remove the 'Capital' entry? --Tiago Silva 01:54, 14 Jul 2005 (GMT)

Coat for provinces/cities

I hope that you want to change the infoboxes, in order to put the coat of arms, because if I want to put 2 or more images, it sucks (see Pobicant). Rufus T. Firefly 10:31, 16 August 2005 (GMT)

Instead of changing generic infoboxes, I think its better to just make advanced ones, like the new Template:Infobox City 2, which I made. I might soon make an advanced province infobox, even though there are no provinces in Swilatia, as the nation of Swilatia is a unitary state. Swilatia 12:48, 8 January 2006 (GMT)

Religion Info-Box?

Religions popular, but they not get infobox. I no code monkey person, but maybe some person who IS code monkey person write infobox for religion? --Equalitonia 13:47, 30 December 2005 (GMT)

I'll make one. Gruen2alk 14:09, 30 December 2005 (GMT)

Ideas for content am:
Founder
God
Holy Book
Believers
Practised in
Founded in (years) --Equalitonia 15:06, 30 December 2005 (GMT)

Maybe something a little like this? I'm aware of faults, so if you want to help me figure out what I did, then please do.

This is a good design. I've put a template up at Template:Religion. Thoughts? Gruen2alk 15:39, 30 December 2005 (GMT)

PROPOSAL: Makeover and unification of Infobox Nation

There are lots of nations that have added bigger templates to their pages because they want more advanced information (see Pacitalia, Ceorana, Gruenberg, many other pages). I think that this is somewhat harmful, as it would be better to have one template that went on all nation pages by consensus. Of course, this would create a problem because there are only so many fields filled out in existing nation articles, and changing them all is not feasible. However, by using the {{qif}} template, we can create a bigger box that also works with basic nation parameters. I've created a sample at User:Ceorana/Sandbox; obviously, it could contain more fields. Would this idea have any support? Ceoran_ta 23:14, 2 November 2006 (GMT)

Nice, I like it. And I agree that it would indeed be better if all nation pages used the same template :: BramP 07:16, 3 November 2006 (GMT)

This would be a fairly large change, so we'll need a lot more input...hopefully users will see this if I bump it up on recent changes...Ceoran_ta 16:18, 5 November 2006 (GMT)

Why not... Although I can't imagine how you/we'd prevent anyone from using another template of their choice/creation. Nor do I see diversity as particularly harmful. Aridd 17:02, 5 November 2006 (GMT)

The thing is, this template ought to cover most everything that any pre-existing templates have, so the same information would be there. (There's a few other fields that need to be changed, but that shouldn't be much of an issue to do.) And with the new fields, it wouldn't be a problem to just have all nation pages use the template; there's nothing wrong with diversity, but it would be nice to have just one template page that all pages could use (the template uses so many qif tags that there's a lot of room for diversity. Ceoran_ta 17:17, 5 November 2006 (GMT)

OK, I've got a fully functional and working version going; User:Ceorana/Sandbox. Since this is such a huge change, I'm going to put a notice on the template to ask for comments. Ceoran_ta 19:24, 11 November 2006 (GMT)

I don't see how it is harmful to have multiple nation infoboxes. there are just some fields that some nations feel the need to add, but other don't have the incentive to do so, and are just not applicable (sp) to others. could please tell me why you find diversity harmful? --swilatia 21:54, 11 November 2006 (GMT)

Because this is an encyclopedia, not a bunch of national home pages. I think the encyclopedia would look a lot better with standard infoboxes that accommodated all nations, as opposed to a whole bunch of infobox forks. Ceoran_ta 22:45, 11 November 2006 (GMT)

I've got a more Wikipedia-esque template suggestion on User:Blast/Sandbox, with additional fields. It's untested as far as the map coordinates go, but I'd still like to put it forward for review alongside Ceo's. Blast 12.11.06 1240 (UTC -5)

(BTW, I took the code for my proposal right of out of WP for the most part.) I like yours, but you'll need to add a whole bunch of qif tags to get it to work with the current nations, and some of the fields don't really apply to NS (e.g. we don't really have a single HDI statistic, etc.) Good work.. Ceoran_ta 18:23, 12 November 2006 (GMT)

That's the nature of the beast, I suppose. Maybe we could change the HDI to the CHDI, though?

And thanks. :3 Blast 12.11.06 1434 (UTC -5)

Where to put the vertical bars?

The meta page says that the vertical bars should be placed after the line, like this:

{{Infobox Nation |
flag=Flag URL |
region=[[Region]] |
motto=Motto |
language=Language(s) |
}}

But I think they would look much better on the left, with the line titles vertically aligned:

{{Infobox Nation
| flag     = Flag URL
| region   = [[Region]]
| motto    = Motto
| language = Language(s)
}}

This would make the code much clearer to read and it would be much easier to read a page like this. What do you think? -- NaBUrean Earth

Good idea. Ceoran_ta 22:14, 7 November 2006 (GMT)

New Currency Infobox

I created a new infobox for currencies, to obtain some consistent statistical information on each countries currency, now that we are building up a huge collection of currencies. The infobox is Template:Infobox_Currency - Sayyan LeSuere 02:04, 21 November 2006 (GMT)

We already have a few currency Infoboxes, such as Template:CurrencyBox --swilatia 13:35, 21 November 2006 (GMT)

I actually like the new one better. It's like an extended version of the old one.--Ked|talk|fax 23:22, 14 February 2007 (GMT)

Question about the regional stats box:

I've recently moved my nations into a single reason. However, because my region and oldest nation both have the same name, I ended up using a different name for the wiki.

http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Daistallia_Region http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Daistallia

Because of that, the regional statbox links break, as they aren't going to the region.

"Rstatsbox= |" doesn't seem to work, nor does "Rstatsbox= Daistallia|". I'd prefer it actually work, but turning it off to avoid broken links would be better than nothing.

Any suggestions?

--Daistallia 2104 11:16, 18 February 2007 (GMT)

Oh, and also, how would I go about adding or changing the calculators?

--Daistallia 2104 11:24, 18 February 2007 (GMT)

Major Problem

The RC thing links to regional control...which would allow anyone to acess a region's regional control. Lightman 17:16, 6 March 2007 (GMT)

The game is intelligent enough to prevent you from making any changes unless you are authorized to do so. If we didn't want you to be able to see it, we could have prevented you from doing so. It's benign and can stay. - NSwiki sysop and NS Senior Game Mod - Fris 04:34, 7 March 2007 (GMT)