User talk:M3lkor

The use of the templates such as AreabyName and NPCbyName

Hi M3lkor. I must admit that I'm not the greatest fan of what is happening with the use of templates such as Template:AreabyName and Template:NPCbyName, e.g. via this edit.

• The biggest issue is that it discourages editing by casual editors; and really discourages because very few editors are going to continue beyond the "empty" page that they are going to find when they edit articles such as New Garand Player's House‎.
• The other issue is that very large amounts of text will be created at those template pages – especially as the game grows (NPCbyName is now 2,500 lines!). The larger those pages get, the more unwieldy they will be to edit (e.g. a higher chance of edit conflicts).
• Wiki templates are traditionally used for standardising smaller units of information: dates, units of measurement, URLs, etc (with a notable exception being Infoboxes); their traditional use is not to replace entire articles.
• A final issue is that such templates tend to force editors into a restricted way of thinking because they present only a standard set of fields. By all means use templates within article sections to encourage standards, e.g. NPC lists, points-of-interest, quests, etc., but their use for entire articles will discourage creativity and collaborative editing.

Anyhow, just trying to be constructive in pointing out that such strategies move this wiki further away from the original concept of all wikis: areas that encourage people to edit. Andrew ^Talk 02:44, 17 December 2016 (MST)