Forum:Modular userboxes

For those who aren't familiar, Userboxes are the small boxes that are used to decorate the userpage with a long list of miscellaneous stuff. They're attractive and colorful, and there are so many selections of userboxes to fill in the userpage.

Until now, I've never been a fan of several userboxes, such as userboxes for traits, favorite food, favorite music, and some miscellaneous userboxes. A trait userbox is made for every single trait that's in The Sims 3. The number of trait counts up to 99 in total, not including hidden and removed traits. This is an excessive number of templates we have made. And even though favorites don't have as many selections as traits, the case is just the same, with fewer numbers.

The point is not the excessive templates we have here, although personally, I feel inconvenient seeing that many similar templates for the same purpose. The problem is, every single userbox is a separate template. Even though userboxes like user schmoozer and user lucky practically have almost identical contents, they count as different templates. This makes the maintenance of the templates very difficult. It might still be maintainable for favorite music userboxes, but with that large number of trait userboxes, it's very inconvenient. That's why the large number of templates still matters.

There's no modularity in such userbox system, which is why I'd like to introduce better, modular templates to replace the older system. For instance,  and   have similar contents but with different icons, names, and border colors. I've created a modular template to change it, so  and   would produce the same result. See the difference? In the second instance, it uses the same source, but different input in the parameter produces different result. This makes it possible to add more selections for later purposes, and since it's in one template, changing the template will change all instances, thus making the maintenance easier.

I've taken a step forward for User food and User trait as well, and although it seems to lose its points since Into the Future is the last EP, this modular template system can still be used for other purposes. For example, there are many miscellaneous personal userboxes, and some of them are designed distinctly. However, this doesn't mean that some userboxes still have similar contents, which is why I'd created Misc template even earlier.

I don't intend to replace any existing usage of the userboxes. There are far too many usages to replace one by one, and I'm not sure if we could rely on bots, but at least, we could stop using the old userboxes and start using the modular ones. I want to know what anyone else thinks about this.

Honestly, this idea has been implemented for quite a while, but I've never publicly announced it nor discussed about it, so it's my fault to have taken action without anyone's knowledge. Hence the reason I started this discussion.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  12:50, November 18, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion
I agree with you, Nikel. There are too many templates that nobody uses. Modular userboxes are really good idea. At least for me...  Mate1234 ( Chatterbox...  ) 13:17, November 18, 2013 (UTC)
 * The only problem I've been thinking so much is that the usage of these particular userboxes has been too much, so it's nearly impossible to replace them one by one on each userpage. I'd say we just implement this modular userbox things into future designs as we would've been expecting something else that can be made (not to mention that TS4 might give us some inspiration). -- 13:24, November 18, 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Frostwalker... The sheer number of templates used on countless user pages would make it a very tall order to update all of them, even with the help of bots. It could eventually be done, though it would take a long period of time to do it. So I'd suggest that we implement this idea for future pages, perhaps redirect all the current separate templates to the new modular templates, then at some later date begin using bots to migrate the templates on individual userpages. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 02:16, November 19, 2013 (UTC)
 * In agreement with Frostwalker and LostinRiverview - there is a vast amount of templates used on almost every user page on the wiki and it would take a great amount of time to update them all to the modulars, especially with help from the bots on the wiki. I think it would be best if we started the change at a later time; I was thinking early 2014, but that's my thoughts on the date of moving. Beds (parlare - da leggere ) 15:45, November 19, 2013 (UTC)
 * I suppose the idea of replacing existing use of the older userboxes doesn't have much interest. I'm not fond of the idea either. If no one feels like the need to replace them, we could just leave them be.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  17:37, November 19, 2013 (UTC)

I feel this is a good idea and it keeps things clean template-wise. As for updating already existing templates, I can tell the bot to replace say User indie with indie on every page that the former is transcluded on but I understand it may be rather time consuming. If we do want to go ahead with updating the older userboxes then I don't think we need to rush things, so we could just make progressive changes if we wanted. 22:16, November 19, 2013 (UTC)


 * The idea of modular userboxes works for me, and I agree that there is no need to rush the change if we decide to implement it. IMO, it should be as transparent to users as possible. However, the modular userbox templates would need to be documented so users will know which options are available. That will take time, and would likely need to be done manually. Dharden (talk) 14:03, November 24, 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with what most people above me have already said: I really do like this idea of implementing modular userboxes, as I believe they will make things look a lot cleaner and even possibly be easier to use. However, this will take a lot of time to do, especially the manual work. So, I support the idea of changing templates that haven't been made yet (eg. those for TS4), and I for one would be willing to help in the changing of the previous userboxes, if or when that happens, because I would (eventually) like to see them changed. ~ Waikikamukow  ( Anyone wanna chat? )  05:48, November 27, 2013 (UTC)

It appears that the idea has received positive feedback. Any new templates that may be suitable for this concept should implement it in the future, and probably we can now create some that can substitute for existing templates / userboxes. But again, I apologize for taking a step ahead implementing it before discussing about it before.

As for the use of the existing templates, we can leave them as they are. I wasn't sure if replacing them all was possible. But of course, if Lab's bot Bawt can handle it, we may be able to rely on it. And like Lab said, we could go for progressive change.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  10:31, November 29, 2013 (UTC)

Conclusion
The consensus here seems in favor of using the new modular userboxes. As for replacing the old templates, that matter can be discussed in a future thread; at the present time the consensus seems to favor leaving the templates alone. -- 04:30, December 18, 2013 (UTC)