Template talk:Article template toolbox

Missing and outdated object templates and article spawners

There are several issues with the "objects" section of the article template toolbox. Some item types, like apex items and oils are missing entirely, while other item infoboxes display their parameters in a confusing manner by not grouping them based on their edition. Some article spawners like the one for alchemical items and tech items also lack the comment guidance and parameter sorting available in the magic item article spawner, for example.

Additionally, for such a long list of different object types, there seems to be very little difference between the templates and their article spawners. Unless I'm mistaken, for most object types, only the "type" parameter offers any meaningful change.

I propose combining all of the object templates and their article spawners into as few as possible. Preferably, only one template and one article spawner to be used universally across all item types. Any extra templates and spawners could be reserved for more distinguished objects like spells and ships that have more variation than a single parameter, but they should also be updated with comments and parameter sorting to maintain consistency with other object templates.

I would also like all object infoboxes to align their sorting in articles with the 1E and 2E parameter grouping within the article spawners used while editing. --Rexert (talk) 13:37, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Bump due to recent relevance. --Rexert (talk) 02:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

There's a parallel discussion thread about User:Virenerus's toolbox/articlespawner renovations in the Discord. I'll repeat the point of what I said there.

I created the spawners largely for my own convenience years upon years more than a decade ago, when the wiki had fewer resources and less capacity to use more powerful structured data tools like Semantic MediaWiki; everything it's built on are essentially workarounds for past limitations in features and admin skill.

That's no longer the case. For most article uses of the spawners, I'd much much rather see that time invested in progress on the Semantic Data Initiative to replace heavily parameterized and redundant infobox templates with structured data/Facts pages, SMW forms for entering and updating data, and query-driven output for parameter-less infoboxes, such as what's already happened with real-world product articles.

Even barring that, I'd frankly rather see the implementation of TemplateData for all infoboxes to document and validate template editing in the Visual Editor. I did this on Template:Person/doc to triage new editors creating new articles for people with the Visual Editor, which by default outputs templates with all parameters crammed on one unreadable line and doesn't provide any guidance as to what goes in each field.

The Category-namespace spawners like "Artwork by source" are simple enough to remain valuable regardless, but all of the mechanical article infobox templates you're referring to should ideally be retired because spawners would no longer be necessary for them, when you can just fill out a self-validating form and get a consistently formatted infobox without worrying about wikitext syntax, parameter name typos, and template vagaries. -Oznogon (talk) 06:13, 28 March 2025 (UTC)