User talk:FishTank

Portable Infobox Migration on The Sims Wiki

Hello Isaac, I am LostInRiverview, one of the bureaucrats here on The Sims Wiki. I'm reaching out to you because a member of the wiki spoke to JoePlay about "migrating" our new infobox design (here is an example of the new design) to Portable Infobox markup. JoePlay responded to this question and said that you all are "deep into development" of portable infoboxes for the wiki already, and I see that this is indeed the case. I do want you to know, however, that the wiki is currently in the process of updating the visual design of the infoboxes, whereas your migrated infoboxes are based on the current (i.e. "old") design. There is currently a long-running community discussion regarding the change-over from old to new design, which I'd encourage you to read over and participate in. Right now, the transition from old to new is on an unplanned hiatus due to mostly real-life distractions, but a widespread implementation of the new design is still planned.

That said, there has been some skepticism from some in the community about using the Portable Infobox markup for the new infoboxes, or even for our current infoboxes. A part of the previously-mentioned discussion addresses the question of whether the community wants to migrate the template. I will say, as one of the primary people leading the push towards the new design, my intent was always to create the visual design for the infoboxes, and then write them in PI markup, while working to preserve the visual appearance of the infoboxes for non-mobile users. Other users have shared my concern that migrating to PI markup might result in a sacrifice of style. It has been generally agreed, informally, that many of us, if forced to choose between a portable infobox or an infobox that is styled as we'd like for desktop users, would choose to forego PI entirely if it can't provide what we're looking for as far as visual design. My hope, however, is that we can bridge the gap.

Ultimately, I'm reaching out to you because I want to make a good faith attempt to convert the new infoboxes to the markup. I personally am not in the position to make the conversions myself; I am not a strong "coder" and previous attempts to learn or understand PI markup haven't turned out well for me. We as a community would need active assistance to make the conversions, but we'd also need to ensure that the converted infoboxes retain the same visual style as their pre-conversion counterparts.

I understand that there's a lot to unpack here, so if you have any questions or are unsure about things, I'd encourage you to reach out to me and I'll do my best to clear up any confusion. I also should stress that I can't speak for everyone else on the wiki, I can only speak for myself and relay some of the concerns that I and others have had regarding portable infoboxes. Ultimately, the decision to convert or not convert belongs to the community itself, not to me or any other admin here. That said, I feel we should try to work together to create an end product that is PI-compliant while still adhering to the wiki's broader visual style.

Let me know if there's any way that I can help in this process. Also, as I mentioned before, I'd strongly recommend reading and participating in the forum discussion regarding this transition.

Thanks! -- LostInRiverview ^{talk · blog · contribs} 04:01, June 9, 2018 (UTC)