Revisiting some old ideas

Looking back at Khenta's Template:Skill Page project, there are two things in particular that I want to re-discussed for use even without the template. Were the training method tabs and the navigation menu ever discussed? Were there any arguments for or against them? Is the only issue with the tabbing being linking directly to a specific tab from out of page? (Though I think only skill books if at all link to specific rank training methods.) To me, the biggest issue with skill pages at the moment is how unnecessarily long they stretch the page, you should not have to scroll down several screens full to find what you are looking for, there should be almost no need for table of contents ideally, though I'm not sure if my view is even close to what the viewers want. As for the skill navigation menu, its usefulness is obvious assuming it is hidden by default (not shown by default) and it has better organization than it does on Khenta's page. May I hear other peoples' thoughts?

Whoa, blast from the past. I recall looking at it. i found it a bit unintersting and the only thing I saw useful would be the wiki nav at the bottom. Here's my insight:

• Skill Training Methods (while they stretch the page, yes) makes it harder for new/average users to edit the skill method should something update. To save themselves trouble, it's easier to make it editable, rather than leave it in one big header and risk bad editing due to editing the wrong area of the tabs.
• Wiki Navigation was never discussed. I found it to be a staple in many wikis and makes it easier to hop around...unfortunately the entire page had little to no input and well...it went under/never used.
  • It could be hidden or it could be like a small table. Only problem is how far down it would be. most people would scroll back up and search the skill since...this wiki never had a wikinav. I would utilize it in a heartbeat.
  • Of course, that would mean every page would have to have one (to some degree, I think there might be exceptions) if the wiki decides to use the navigation, and of course, it'll be a template that will be transcluded across the wiki. Problem is, Talent is the only page that has too many transcludes, so getting on on there will require much reworking on the Talent page.
• I'm not sure how I feel about the ToC being listed at the top like that. The standard ToC is fine.
  • It might work to some degree, but I found it akward looking (maybe I'm used to the current layout too much and I'm being biased lol.)
• Personally, I feel skill details could be cleaned up further. As it stands now, it's okay. Can't complain, but gets the job done.
• Battle Tactic is...debatable. There's too many ways people use skills and it risks making the page messier than it should be. It'll add some insight, but overall not a lot of people will use it in t particular way. I mean, there's the obvious well known strategies like N+Smash and such, but I feel it can easily be cluttered.

I agree. Beyond basics like N+Smash, specific combos/team-strategies/tactics should probably be kept to Monster-specific pages.

My thinking is that this will keep some very esoteric strategies under enemies that may need them. Also, looking at it from the end-user's perspective, monster pages are often only searched if one is having trouble overcoming a specific kind of mob (or theory-crafting more efficient methods of dispatching them). They would sooner turn to the page for the problem mob/dungeon rather than reference individual skill pages.

Thank you for responding, I was worried this might go ignored.

• For skill training methods, we could like, add hidden headers which will look like the [Edit] at the right but not have any header since it would already be at the top of the tabs, if we want to embrace this tabbing idea.
• Well we don't necessarily need a Navigation table for everything, we could have it for some things that group up together like skills or equipment list pages, but we can leave out broader categorization like putting Talents, Homestead and other game system functions together. Though, to be quite honest, I would rather see the wiki's side bar be updated.
• Ya, I was not fond of Khenta's ToC either. Mainly because its center spanned but I guess some people might like that more. It could be useful in that each header doesn't consume its own line, but then that could also have the opposite effect unless it is like two or three columns rather than two or three rows. It could work but I'm fine with the ToC as it is right now.
• I feel skill details is fine as it is right now as well, though I'd be opened to better organization ideas. My main issue is that some pages have too large skill detail sections, which is just a part of my pages being too large peeve I guess.
• Don't we already have a tactics page listing different ways to use skills in conjunction with other skills? Or is this for the skill by itself?

My two cents on this:

• I like the idea for wiki navs and now that it's been pointed out, I'm really surprised how long we've gone without one. I agree with Kapra that we don't need to have them on every page.
• I have no opinion on the training methods. I can see good and bad things about both methods. For one, tabbed training methods would make the page look much smaller and the wiki nav would be much easier to spot since those are usually at the bottom. On the other hand though, it's much easier to make a comparison on how much work you have to do per rank with all the training requirements shown at the same time.
• The ToC is kind of ugly. I prefer the standard one we currently have.
• Battle tactics is useless in my opinion. So is the tactics page that Kapra mentioned and we should probably get rid of it in favor of user written guides when we get that implemented.

I already started making User Guide Category, but the only problem is...how barren it is.

It also only has ~20 views, which were probably all from just the people here in the thread(s). Another wiki I've done a lot of stuff on [1] has a "tactics" page with user guides ([2] the last two images are mine) and it gets plenty of attention, ~800,000 views. This is because fundamentally the game has a steep learning curve and a very active forum community though. I even have a special green username for being an "official wiki editor", which I absolutely must brag about.

Anyway to sum that up I don't think userguides work very well for Mabi. There isn't much demand and everyone plays differently. The other game I mentioned above is extremely competitive and stat-whoring. Of course people are always looking for guides, but with the way our front page is set up I don't think it will work out well here. They should go on Mabination forums. Lexis's guides clearly have many hours of work put into them but the viewcounts aren't very pretty. And on forums you can promote your stuff all you want, doing that here will clearly not turn out well. Just imagine userguide links all over every page.

• Blargel has a point with making comparisons easier on training methods. Otherwise I have no input.
• Navigation, navigation... Since we've never had one I've only used the search bar. Though, Kapra has a point; the sidebar is pretty outdated.
• I'm more used to the ToC we have now than what Khenta put.
• Mikaya has a point; Battle Tactic is gonna be pretty messy and there's too much opinion about it. There's probably gonna be a lot of debates about whether the tactic is useful or not (e.g. smash spam = cockblock everyone else).

I think we need to revisit old pages in addition to old ideas. There are way too many things that are outdated or horribly messy, aggro or nearly every single link to exploration for example.

Going over this, yes. Lexis has a good point at a lot of things.

The bit about Battle Tactics, I feel that one would be more opinion based or specific towards certain players, and the information added to it would be really weird, so getting rid of that would be a good idea. In addition to what Swissed Toast said, yes. Everyone does play differently and we all do a number of battle tactics and such, so it may not work for everyone!

The ToC is weird, I feel it's more uniform staying on the top left and it looks neat that way, rather than being centered. The WikiNav looks awesome, but as mentioned, the sidebar would really need to be updated. I've noticed that sidebar links and the WikiNav links are redundant and we don't need copies of links, so maybe clean up or expand the sidebar.

I like that there is a separate category for user guides as well. Though, yes- the way everything is set up they're not shown so easily. They'll all be set up differently too, and weird to follow due to everyone's different ways of doing things.

Tabs are -really- annoying to edit if you don't know what you're doing. I love the idea of them for lots of pages, and I think maybe adding a link like "to edit, click here", so it would probably be easier for new users to edit. Otherwise tabs become a mess if they're not done right. .-.

I think the skill format we have right now is fine as it is.

I really do like this template though. I like how things can be simplified and shortened. I like tabs for being able to control what you're looking at at one time, it's not distracting, and it's organized. It's just hard to edit. :c

Kapra said something about making it editable with hidden headers or something. I don't think it quite useful. I'm one of those people that like everything infront of me...then again, using the wiki all these years, I got used to it. It is much neater in tabs though, I will admit that.

I think he meant edit tags like how dungeon/shadow/theatre mobs have that, not hidden headers.

Something like that^

Both should be possible, though the second might require making specific ranks be separate pages, which is why I suggested using hidden headers instead. But ya, it should still look like a big edit button at the top right.

I like it, and I don't much like tables of contents either. Just look at the fished items list page. It's a disaster there. If we add that navigation thing, maybe we can clean the wiki front page and have it just have a link for skills, equips, and stuff, and not have a link for every single skill there is on the front page, but that's another thing.

The tabs template can only do 11 tabs right now, but most skills have 16 ranks, so if you do implement tabs for this, don't forget to expand that first. I don't understand why people think adding tabs here would cause problems for new users, editing tabs through that tab template is a lot easier than editing the tables that are going to be in them.

I kinda prefer the way the training methods are now over the added tabs idea.

Tabs get in the way of side-by-side comparison

They look unprofessional half the time.

The first time I saw the race tabbed version, it took me a while to notice the tabs.

Tabs break anchored links.

If the machine is running slow, tabs make the page spaz while it's loading.

I'm surprised this wiki hasn't added navboxes everywhere yet, but I'm definitely against the categorization in that example.

ToC should never be centered. On some pages I think it would be better to move it to the right, but never the center. Arranging it horizontally instead of vertically like the default makes it more compact, but the way it's done on that template sacrifices detail; there's no longer indentation to identify sub-headers, so it needs something else to make it possible to match the organization of the page(maybe use bold/underlined text or something to identify one header level).

• Tab count can be increased easily.
• Side by side comparison, I'll brainstorm for this.
• In this case, the tabs would be outside of the table and there would only be one, so it should be easy to tell that there are tabs.
• Anchoring can be fixed.
• Good point on the spazzing though, not sure what we can do about that.

• Yea, we can decide categorization of the Navboxes later. First we need to decide if we want one.

“	Anchoring can be fixed.	„

Please, show me.

If you're willing to put in all the work to fix anchoring for hidden items, I guess I'd change my vote to yes.

Tabs are crap.

I'm not seeing this problem with side by side comparisons. Can't you just click back and forth, and the box would be right on top of each other for even easier comparison? Putting 2 boxes of tabs right next to each other would be silly, but maybe that's what you want?

That would actually be a bit harder. The reader's focus would have to leave that area of the chart to find the right tab and click it. Right now, we can get consecutive ranks on the screen simultaneously, and we don't even need to move the mouse. The difference in effort isn't much, but the effort we'd save the reader by switching to tabs is even less; on typical modern monitors, you need to scroll just to get to the summary chart anyway.

Not much to say about the navigation page at the bottom, other than it's been needed for a while now, but for storyline quests and skill pages in particular (and a few more than I can't think of off the top of my head).

Just a few things I want to bring up about the tabs though. While it's true that tabs break anchors, does it really matter whether or not anchors work when you're using tabs for this specific topic? I highly doubt that there will ever be a need to directly link to/reference rank x of skill y's training requirements from another page. I thought the whole point of same-page anchors was to help you skip the unrelated text, which tabs are better at doing. You could have it anchor to the training methods section and click the rank you want to see, shortening the ToC considerably with the drawback of requiring one additional click.

As for looking at consecutive ranks... while the current layout allows for side-by-side comparison, what if the reader only cares for one rank in particular, or wants to compare rF to r1? It'd be 1-click versus scrollscrollscroll for the latter.

Ignoring the discussion of Tabs for a moment, I'd like to bring back up the discussion of the NavBox. I made a few iterations of the NavBox, which you may view here. It shows the original one Khenta made, in addition to A, B, and C.

• A lists the skills in text and hovering over shows the icon, in addition to being clickable links obviously.
• B is the exact same thing but shows icons rather than text, and hovering over them shows the name. In addition, it is a clickable link as A was.
• C is like B but instead of a table, it is tabs.

Now lets discuss the advantages and disadvantages.

• A Disadvantages:
  • Hard to read.
• A Advantages:
  • Faster to load than B and possibly faster than C.
  • Can be viewed without breaking on any window size.
• B Disadvantages:
  • May make pages take longer to load.
• B Advantages:
  • Easy to read/attractive looking.
  • Can be viewed without breaking on any window size.
• C Disadvantages:
  • Looks ugly (in my opinion)
  • Breaks when you view on smaller screen resolutions.
• C Advantages:
  • Possibly loads faster than A and B.

I have not performed any tests to be sure if any of these load faster than eachother.

I also wanted to make a version D which would look identical to B, but call forth a sprite map of a smaller resolution rather than loading the full size individual icons. This would make it significantly faster to load. I however have no idea how to do this in wiki syntax. If you guys want to give it a try, please give it a shot, as I think B looks the best.

If the majority thinks C is nice but it breaking is the disadvantage, then if someone wants to perfect or rewrite the tab template, that is also welcome.

I ordered these skills by Skill Tab, rather than element type, talent type, etc. I call Skill Tabs type organization '1'. (Hence why they are named 1-A, 1-B, 1-C.) If you want to make your own organization that you think would be better, name it 2. Likewise, if you want to make a new table type, rename it E, F, G, etc.

Thoughts?

Edit: I forgot to mention that in all three tables, they are also listed in alphabetical order.

I'm pretty sure Mikaya (and formerly anemki?) were assigned the task of dealing with the wiki navigation by Kadalyn (either that, or they volunteered). Just saying.

That aside, A and C are just plain bad. A is too cluttered and messy, while C defeats the purpose of having a navigation box to begin with since you'd have to navigate through the nav box. For B, there really is no reason to be using images for a wiki nav. Keep in mind that certain devices have an option to disable images, so that'd screw with it. The hover boxes are also redundant for all 3. You also have to ask yourself if it's necessary to list all the skills, or only the skills that'd be in the same tab as the skill page you're looking at (i.e. combat, music, bard, alch, etc).

Mikaya's version is the most developed/refined right now. The only issue I have with hers is that I don't think it's necessary to categorize by elements since removing those categorizations would remove the duplicates, but that only applies to the talent style. The standard style versions are fine.

I was not aware they were working on it. I like her concept, but I do have some criticism to offer:

• What of skills that overlap two talents, such as Magic Mastery and Shockwave, which occupy both talents, yet are currently listed as just under Mage. (Speaking of which, Shockwave is currently listed as Lightning when it should be Support like Blaze is.)
• In addition to the above, most if not all hero skills are in regular talents. For example, all three Diva skills get 2x training from the Music talent.
• I personally would like links to the other skill tab types. Perhaps making all tabs' navigations on all pages, but make them all collapsed except for the type that is currently important.
• I don't think we should use both tab type and talent type, that will cause issues. In particular in the example of Lexis's NavBox, First Aid ends up in the Magic Skills box. . . But what I'm moreso concerned about is the Life Skills box, it would include way too many talents with overlapping skills in some like Production Mastery. It will get way too messy if we use both Talents and Skill Tabs. I'd rather use one or the other.

@Yinato

• Just because some devices cannot show images doesn't mean we shouldn't use them. There could be reasons to not use them, but I don't see this as one of them particularly because nothing else on the wiki is tailored to be perfect for mobiles. Besides, it should show up as text if not an image, right? I'm not sure on that.
• Images are far easier to recognize than words in my opinion.

B is absurdly slow to load, and a sprite map would be annoying to keep up to date. B also is super easy to bug out just by having your mouse in the menu area while scrolling through, at least on my current workstation.

Images might be easier to recognize, but they aren't necessarily easier to remember. I'm pretty sure people think "blacksmithing", not "that skill with the hammer making a bang on the anvil" (implying I also think the icons on A aren't very useful). Images are not browser searchable. At the very least, the alt text must be changed on images to be more navigation friendly for screen readers. B is not easy to read, because you have to continually move and hover to actually have anything to read. I would also say "click this icon for the page on ___" adds no value. Maybe a skill summary would be nicer there, but also much more difficult.

General critique: I think it would be better if the skill categories were linked.

Sprite maps wouldn't be hard to keep up to date. At the moment, the game already has them as spritemaps, gui_icon_skill_00, 01, 02, and 03. 00, 01, and 02 will never be updated unless they redraw icons again like they did in G17 (which is unlikely). 03 would be the only one that would be needed to be updated. At this rate, NX is releasing skills once or twice a year and it is a simple task to data mine and reduce the resolution of the one image.

The thing that concerns me is how do I incorporate a spritemap into wiki syntax? My knowledge of CSS is already limited. Should that be possible, it will load a LOT faster. (That won't change how some people feel about images though. And personally, I think "Blacksmithing" will still be really easy to find given being in alphabetical order.)

The fact that you still have to hover over icons to search is bad. You need to quantify your advantages/disadvantages more objectively. "Easy to read" and "prettier" are neither.

Mikaya has 2 variations: a talents nav box (which is the one I'm against due to duplicates) and a standard nav box. Ignore the talent version (which there's only 1 of on mika's page) since that's the most problematic one of the two. That'd take care of the first 2 issues you have with it. Your 3rd point (not referring to your opinion on which skills to include, but the parts after it) would be counter-productive since it'd result in people having to navigate the navigation box, which is why I avoided mentioning tabs for the nav box to begin with.

As for the images show up on devices that have images disabled, it'd partly depend on the device. While it's true nothing else is really coded to be primarily mobile-friendly, there's also nothing else on the wiki that uses images instead of text for navigating pages at that level (look at the main page) aside from user templates, which are for personal use, and the skill tables (I only used icons for that since the icons are all the same size, while the names varied in length and would stretch the tables they were in). While it may be faster for you to recognize pictures, that's only because you're familiar with the images, and it depends on the person (I find it both easier and faster to read 1~2 words vs looking at a picture).

• My third bullet wasn't clear enough. I didn't mean the Tab template when I said tab, I meant the Skill Tabs. Like have all over the navigation boxes on all skill pages (without the headers for Combat, Fighter, Puppetry, etc) and keep all of them collapsed except the box that contains the skill the page is currently on. One-click wouldn't defeat the purpose of a skill nav box.
• What about the talent page? That is primarily sorted with skill icons.
• I think method B covers both visual-recognizers and word-recognizers because the skills are already in alphabetical order and hovering over the icon brings up a tooltip displaying the name. Wheras the Newmenu on the front page only appeals to word-recognizers and not visual-recognizers.
  • Does the alphabeticalism and word-tooltips still make it hard for you to sort through?

It'd be 2 clicks if it was using tabs template, which is what I thought you were referring to. The problem with B is that it can be distracting due to the all the different icons presented in a small area. With the talent pages (and other pages), it was at least spread out.

Um, the word you're looking for is alphabetizing, not "alphabeticalism" (you might want to google what that means, because it's not a real word in the dictionary, and wiktionary has a very different definition from alphabetizing). Having it in ABC order is fine, but the hoverbox will hide other skills most of the time.

Also going to add that Mikaya and Sakura have said that they're against all 3 of your proposed versions in the IRC when you originally made them. Most of the active contributors are asleep (I will be soon as well), so don't expect confirmation/discussion for the next few hours.

Sorry about that.

How about instead of a hoverbox I just make the name of the skill show up like this. That should work on almost every if not all internet browsers.

I'm still against using that many small images in such a small space for navigation, but in terms of hover, that's fine. I said not to use hover box due to how large the box itself would be, and because it would've covered the links to other skills regardless of whether words or images were used.

Yes, Anemki at one point was suppose to help. I'm pretty positive I posted the problems with each format I've come up with. I do not want images as Yinato stated plenty about images.

Anyways, I will have have the proper table, by default, open for that page. Say if it's a magic skill, the magic skill table will be open while others related to magic be closed. As far as implementation, I feel it can be further worked on to some degree and I don't think I ever gotten the approval for it.

What I'm not fond of Lexis' variation is how skills are grouped.

• In the Magic table for example, we have one box for Masteries. I'd rather each elemental mastery go into the Elemental Groups (if we are going to have Elemental Groups) and merge Miscellaneous with Magic Mastery and Magic Weapon Mastery.
• For Life Skills, Carpentry is both Gathering and Crafting, shouldn't it be listed in both? Some could argue that Commerce Mastery is also a Gathering skill.
• For Combat, separating into a list of Masteries would get confusing. Mainly because things like Shield and Armor Masteries are not in the Defensive section, and there is a debatable Mastery status to Critical Hit.
• For Alchemy, Hydra Transmutation should be Construct. After all, it gets 2x training from Transmutation Alchemy and not Combat Alchemy if I remember correctly. I mean, Summon Golem can also do damage, so why is it not in the same place as Hydra? I think Chain Cylinder, Elemental Wave, Golden Time, and Rain Casting should be moved to a Buff category whereas Sand Burst and Frozen Blast should be moved to a Debuff.
• For Fighter, if we're going to divide up the other skill tabs up like they are now, why isn't Fighter divided up by Chain type?
• For Music, why isn't Musical Knowledge in Music Playing? It's probably the most relevant to actual playing, rather than Instrument or Song. Also, Encore is a self-buffing skill and Dischord is a debuffing skil, why aren't they with the buffs/debuffs?
• Puppetry is fine as far as I can tell.
• If the other tabs are going to be divided, why isn't Dual Gun divided into Mastery, Buff (Reload and Way of the Gun), and Combat?
• Hidden skills are random by design, not your fault. That section looks fine given the circumstances.

1. I feel either way works. Elemental Grouping is fine, but the less vertical is better. Reorganization pending.
2. Carpentry is more geared towards crafting since you end up taking the wood to craft better wood and weapons. I stand by where Carpentry is placed.
3. I tried separating into 3 categories: offensive, defensive, and mastery. Offensive suddenly became too large, so I separated it into Melee and Ranged. I didn't want to overlap masteries with other skill, which makes it messier than it is now. Critical Hit is debatable.
4. I suppose. Hydra is an offensive construct, so I might move it later. Chain Cylinder is with Offensive since it only works with the skills in that category. I was tempted to move it to Miscellaneous at some point. Elemental Wave may be moved to Misc. as well. Sand still does damage and is considered offensive. Same with Frozen Blast.
5. The less vertical the better.
6. Debatable. Dischord is a melee skill. While yes is debuffs, it doesn't do much and not to mention it's kind of an oddball. Encore on the other hand only drops cooldown, not really a buff since cooldowns are zeroed out and doesn't affect anyone but the user.
7. Course it's fine.
8. Doesn't mesh with intended categories and like fighter, the less vertical the better. And why would 1 skill needs it's own obnoxious category. Reload, suddenly, becomes debatable whether it acts like a mastery then arguments pop up everywhere.
9. Again, same reason as Dual Guns.

As I stated before, none of it is final. Still thinking of ways to make it better. and the colors,if you're wondering about it, is to make the wiki a bit more colorful, and helps with categorization on what skill came from where.

1. Exactly, it would make it less vertical.
2. Why can't carpentry be listed under both Gathering and Production?
6. A self-only buff (like Final Hit, Invigorating Encore, etc) is still a buff.
5 and 8. If the verticle-ness of other sections are accepted, vertical-ness of those two sections shouldn't be considered too much. If anything would help people.

What about just making a navigation box with links to skill category pages? Do we even really need a navbox? Can we make a box that interacts with the skill category pages in some way? We probably came this far without one because it wasn't really needed. That's what I think anyway. I mean, I go to the smash skill page, and at the bottom, there is already links to melee skills and combat skills. Also, on lexis's navigation boxes, color coding is cool and all, but those colors are just way too strong for a white background. Even if they are the in game colors, It's sort of painful for me to look at. I think black, white, blue, and gray should be the only acceptable colors for an integral part of the wiki. Unless we want to look like some crazy wikia instead of an actual professional looking wiki. What about just having the skills link on the side navigation box, that we already have, be a drop down menu for magic and range and such? Then on the front page we just have picture links to skills and story and such. I like those picture links that other wikis use. Mabi just has too many skills, and even more are probably coming. If anything, I'd prefer something like kapra's "original" navbox, or "1-C" styled like "original" would be neat, too. I'm not really concerned with "Oh no! The wiki users will have to click more than once! Such a travesty!" Things should be neat and easy to find like the form it is taking now. That's all that should matter since they are already actively looking for information anyway. One more click that would make navigating a box much cleaner and easier should be fine. It would certainly be better than one huge box that has everything in it at once, and it becomes a chore to look through.

The original was Khenta's design, I do not take credit for it.

To be honest, what I would think is ideal is if we:

• If we add a button at the bottom left of every page, like Mikaya has on her page, but with the purpose of scrolling the page up all the way (essentially a home button for devices lacking that feature). If you're still not getting it, scroll down on MapleStory's website page.
• If we create an expanding option for the sidebar which would let you explore subcategories and perhaps individual skill pages from the menu.

Both of which are outside of my scope.

That's a bad idea as anyone who touches that can force the page to be uneditable. I accidentally did that once.

Not to mention it takes up unnecessary space.

Who said anything about unprotecting the page?