Oblivion talk:Skingrad People

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I am aware this is a major change, I'm only going to alter just this. If it is not liked please alter it back. If it is liked I will change the rest of the pages on People I have standardised on 5 as it looks ok on a 800x600 screen Noone81 04:55, 7 September 2006 (EDT)

Personally, I'm not thrilled about it. First of all, you're wasting 5 times as much space on just headers, so the chart looks like nothing but headers now. And second, I find vertical lists easier to read than horizontal ones. As it is now, you've got all the information squeezed onto these narrow rows surrounded by giant headers and it's confusing to look at. About the only possible advantage I see here is the color change - though if I were going to change the colors, I'd pick a color with some meaning, like the color that's used for the primary school of the local Mages Guild. (I say this because the purple you chose looks like the same color that's used elsewhere on the site to signify Mysticism spells, which would belong in Leyawiin, not Skingrad. Skingrad should be Destruction-red if anything.) I'm not against a change to the format of these pages, but I don't think this is the best way to do it. --TheRealLurlock 09:14, 7 September 2006 (EDT)
I used that colour 'cause, it was easy to cut and paste.
The biggest issue I had with the previous system, was finding someone was very hard. Firsty, if had just been a 3 column, alphabetical list, it would have been a lot easier. It however was based on a miss-mash of (I assume) where the construction set said they were located and what role they played. Merchants & Guards being clasic examples. You could find those guys almost anywhere, including outside the city. I tried it this way to 1. Get comment, 2. See if it did what the original one did, just displaying it in a easier to read format (IMHO).
What do you suggest? Noone81 18:04, 7 September 2006 (EDT)
Question, though... How is it any easier to find someone now? They're still divided into the same categories. If you just want an uncategorized alphabetical list, maybe we can set that up somewhere else. Come to think of it, the NPC category page does a fairly good job of that, or at least will once every NPC has a page. There are also categories for all of the 10 races. (Provided people remember to put the category entries on the page - something which nobody but me seems to know how to do. I think about 99% of the currently existing NPC pages were either created by me, or fixed by me because the creator forgot the categories.) Anyhow, I don't see how your format makes it any easier to read. It just spreads the names out more so it's harder to see how they're grouped, and wastes literally half of the space on just headers. I know I'm biased because I created the original format of this page, so I'm willing to get other opinions on this, but I really don't see the advantage of your format. --TheRealLurlock 22:07, 7 September 2006 (EDT)
I didn't know you were the creator of the original format. Thank you for doing such a big job.
I was thinking what you first said and then your reply. You are right, it is no easier to find people (I think it looks nicer, but that's my opinion and it doesn't forfill the intention of making it easier to find people) I have a question; Why did you group the people the way you did? I find it difficult to find people. When I go to find info on people, it's usually because they are standing in front of me. I generally know what area/city I'm in and so I go to that section. I then look for the person. Usually I'm unclear exactly where I am (either I'm in a conversation or I'm too lazy to press TAB) and so a straight alphabetical list would work best for me (like you have sugested)
I'm wondering if either of the following works for you
* Three columns (newspaper style) of alphabetically aranged names (no grouping)
* A alphabetical list of the NPC's with a location summary next to them (I tryed to put an example in but couldn't get a table to work in here :-< ) Noone81 01:14, 8 September 2006 (EDT)
My two cents, written at the same time as Noone81's latest comments (in other words, I haven't tried to respond to those yet)
Overall, I think I prefer the old format more. I think it is harder, in this case at least, to read across the rows than down the columns. Also, trying to get five entries across is forcing some of the icons to wrap, which is annoying. I agree with Lurlock that I don't see how it's easier to find an NPC with the new format. Finding a particular NPC is indeed a problem right now, especially if you can't guess at their affiliation. But I don't see any easy way to fix that on these people pages. I'm not in favour of making the list completely alphabetical: I think in most situations that would make the page more difficult to use (for example, if I'm trying to remember who sells spells at the mage's guild, or see what merchants are available in town). Overall, I'd guess people are more likely to be searching by function than by name, if for no other reason than that remembering all of the NPC names in the game is impossible. Probably the category pages are the best option for how to provide an alphabetical list of all the NPCs.
On the other hand, there are some changes I like. Adding a splash of colour is nice (but I would also agree with Lurlock here that using the spell school colours would make sense... probably Lurlock and I are the only people who see this colour and think "mysticism", but having some rationale is better than just random colour selection). I think changing the NPC names from boldface to normal weight makes sense (it looks wrong to me when an entire page is boldface... kind of like all-caps would). So, basically, I like some of the more minor changes, but I don't think this particular major reorg works overall. --Nephele 01:41, 8 September 2006 (EDT)
It looks like I happened to address most of the latest comments already. As I said above, I don't think an alphabetical list will in general make it easier to look up any information you need. Also, if you already know the exact name of the person you're looking for, why even search through the People page? You could just go straight to their page. (OK, all the NPC pages don't exist yet, but eventually they will). --Nephele 03:10, 8 September 2006 (EDT)
All Changed back. On typing in a persons name, I'm bad at spelling and I have to go to another screen to type the name in. Any thoughts on colour? Any idea on how to make it NOT BOLD given the way it has been done is using a feature of WikiTables, One way is to do invisable cells, but thats a bit of work. Also I'm still interested in being able to glance at the table an get some general information about a NPC that is not what faction they are in. Noone81 03:47, 8 September 2006 (EDT)
Making the text not bold actually isn't hard; it's not actually using any table features, just the ";" symbol, which automatically bolds the following text. So I took those out, and replaced them with line breaks. Doing anything with the colour is trickier, though. There's no easy way to override the table's settings for background colour on headers. Which means I think the only options are either manually setting the background colour for each header, or setting up some new CSS table classes. --Nephele 12:42, 8 September 2006 (EDT)
Noone81: What kind of general information were you looking for? Already have indicators for all service providers, and their faction usually provides a pretty good clue about where they're most likely to be found. One other thing I was thinking of adding was some way to know who the heads of the factions are, maybe by making the name bold or italic. Another I suppose could be an icon to let you know who are quest (unkillable) characters - just use the crown-icon you see anyhow when you want to talk to them. I just think that could get a bit cluttered, as a surprising number of NPCs cannot be killed, and far more than half of them are in some way involved in a quest.
Nephele: Still not sure how I feel about the non-boldness, but I can let it go. I just think on a page which essentially just a big list, you expect the items on the list to be bold. I admit it'd be bad in a paragraph of text, much like all-caps. But whatever. As far as changing the color, it's not so bad, just make the headers not headers, and color them manually, we already do that on all the spell, scroll, potion, etc. pages. No big deal there. --TheRealLurlock 13:07, 8 September 2006 (EDT)
Sorry, I didn't know you guys were testing a new format, I thought somebody just forgot to make the names bold. But in my opinion, bold looks better. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at my talk page. -- Xbolt 03:31, 10 September 2006 (EDT)