Template talk:Pathfinder contributors navbox

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Further Modifications?

The second section of this template is rather full. I was thinking of separating it into further divisions, such as RPG Superstar finalists, Open Call Winners, and Werecabbages. Are these divisions worthwhile? Also, Phillip Larwood has not contributed to Pathfinder itself, but did official PF content in KQ. Should he be listed among the others? And what should we do of the authors of OGL material used in PF books? They have pages, but aren't listed as Authors in categories or this template. -- Yoda8myhead 21:42, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Overwhelming & unwieldy

This template is getting huge. At some point it stops being helpful. Anyone have any ideas on how to make it less clunky? I'd also like to look into making these footer templates standardized with a single parent template they can all use so we can change them across the board without needing to alter each one individually.—yoda8myhead 04:55, February 18, 2010 (UTC)

With the release of the GameMastery Guide and the dozens of new names credited as authors in it, this template will officially overload. I was thinking of hiding the contents (as I started to do with other navboxes) and divide them up into the current "Paizo Staff" and two new categories, "Fiction Contributors," and "Major Contributors" for people like Greg A. Vaughan, Tim Hitchcock, and Jason Nelson, who have all contributed to a large number of articles and books. The other option is to make a different expandable section for different letter ranges, so that "Freelance Contributors" would have an A-I, J-R, and S-Z section. Anyone have any other ideas before I tackle these changes on the flight to Seattle Thursday afternoon? —yoda8myhead 06:40, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
I think breaking them down into alphabetical groups is a better idea. That way they'll be easier to find. --brandingopportunity 11:47, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
I agree, breaking it down into groups is prolly best, and separating out fiction authors, paizo staff, and freelance authors is a good thing. There will be some with both fiction and freelance credit though, especially with the journals in the AP for Eando Kline and the current series having a different author for each part. Cpt kirstov 16:06, June 15, 2010 (UTC)

Three years later it seemed unwieldy to me again. I pulled out a special section just for the comic and separated the fiction into three categories. I'm not sure if I'm sold on the fiction changes yet. Some authors have written for all three types, so they appear multiple times close to each other. Thoughts? Also, the sourcebook contributors list could still be tackled, but needs some thought first. Separating by AP, setting, companion, module, other, etc. would lead to gross overlap, probably even worse than the fiction authors. I thought about creating a separate section by year, only listing the author by the first year they contributed. While that would keep the list manageable, that probably dampens the list's usefulness. I'm open to other ideas. -- FoiledAgain (talk) 10:58, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

If you take a look at my sandbox, you can see that I was in the process of revamping this myself. I think one way to manage it is to treat each individual list as a unique template the same way we do with the various product line lists. I also think we may just need to set a threshold of credited titles for each genre that warrants an author or artist's inclusion in the list. For Sourcebooks, maybe we make it a cover or solo credit or 5 individual credits. For artists maybe we automatically include anyone with a cover under their belt and anyone else with artwork we can show on the wiki under the CUP. For fiction, I'd say writing a novel or 3 other titles is probably a good threshold given the size of the line at this time.—Paizo Publishing, LLC.png Yoda8myhead (talk) 19:06, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
Further, I think we need to break the entire template in two, one for authors and one for artists. We're not going to have any overlap between them anyway, and this will keep the whole thing from bulging more than it already will. —Paizo Publishing, LLC.png Yoda8myhead (talk) 19:08, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
New templates made for comics and contributing artists. Applying the comics template should be easy enough. Applying the contributing artists may be a job for a bot. I could do it in an hour, but the recent changes list would get bloated. I'm holding off editing the main navbox in case others want to chime in. -- FoiledAgain (talk) 21:59, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
Replacing the templates is an easy task for YodaBot. I just need to know the category of pages or list of articles that need to have the change made on them and I can get it done really quickly. You can post those direction on YodaBot's talk page.—Paizo Publishing, LLC.png Yoda8myhead (talk) 22:09, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Missing Persons

Chaps

Looking at, say, just the left hand column of p2 of Battle of Bloodmarch Hill the list of Paizo staff and others in this template seems to have some obvious omissions. I have added in a few from the art department but then stopped, as I know some may not Paizo staff as such but freelancers. Still, Logan Bonner is still missing - is he staff, I thought so? His page does not have this template either. Then Joe Homes is missing completely; is he staff? I feel unqualified in this area and am reluctant to slap a 'Cleanup' flag on it, as I can see from the history this page does get a lot of love. Plus there is the conversation above about completely transforming the template, but getting it accurate is a good thing. Can someone with a good knowledge of the people associated with Paizo (and this is not code for a busy User:Yoda8myhead) have a look and spring clean here please? --Fleanetha (talk) 09:54, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Added Logan, Brian Campbell and Joe Homes (recent editors), and Jessica Price (credited since at least Inner Sea Gods). All of them are on the Paizo staff list on the Paizo Inc. page. The non-staff contributors list in this navbox is also likely out of date. --Oznogon (talk) 21:32, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Oznogon - I am surprised as this looked like a well-curated template. I'll have a look at the fiction section now. --Fleanetha (talk) 08:19, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Fiction sections updated and I think now correct - I add my vote to this template being split into 4 separate templates as that may make it easier to update. If someone else can double check the other 2 sections: freelancers and artists, that'd be useful please. --Fleanetha (talk) 08:58, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Should Chris A. Jackson be added to the "Sourcebook Contributors" list since he contributed to Ships of the Inner Sea? --Midwesternmermaid (talk) 16:28, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
He should and I did. --Brandingopportunity (talk) 17:12, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Thank you much! -- --Midwesternmermaid (talk) 14:29, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

2019 Spring Clean

What is really needed is a wholesale reconsideration of this Template:Pathfinder contributors navbox as per the discussion above, especially as we also have the nearly forgotten Template:Comic contributors navbox and Template:Pathfinder contributors navbox all out of sync and also not aligned with the latest info or the respective category listings. Adding Category:Discussions to revisit so we can get this sorted this year, as it was requested in 2010. Comments appreciated. -Fleanetha (talk) 15:29, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Suggested tasks

  • ☐ Get agreement on way forward but, assuming comments above are accepted, do the following:
  • ☐ Break this template into its component parts that are more manageable, say, Paizo staff, authors, fiction, artists, composers, plus add actors
  • Agree. We should have separate navboxes by the listed types, and update the existing comic contributors navbox. -Oznogon (talk) 23:43, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
  • ☑ Are there other options like those suggested above we could also adopt, like the list by year, or break into alphabetical ranges ("an A-I, J-R, and S-Z section"), or type of sourcebook?
  • Alphabetical ranges seems most plausible for the contributing authors and artists navboxes, which will have the longest lists. Year and sourcebook type would require research, and sourcebook type would have considerable overlap. Fiction is already divided by product line, with some overlap—should we consolidate and break into alphabetic groups, or maintain the existing segmentation? -Oznogon (talk) 23:43, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Oznogon performed this update --Fleanetha (talk) 13:42, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Co-opt others. -Oznogon (talk) 23:43, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
  • ☐ Ensure we have no duplication / overlap of material - we don't want to have to update more than one template for each new contributor, except in special cases where they have more than one type of contribution
  • ☐ Add the appropriate new template to the relevant pages to replace this monolith
  • ☐ Align the contents of each template with its corresponding category page, which is likely more up to date
  • ☐ Delete this beast
  • ☐ Try to keep them up to date thereafter, though this should now be easier with the more automated navboxes creating the categories when a new book, etc. is added
See Template:Pathfinder contributors navbox for an example of segmenting alphabetically and restyling to use columns instead of the headache-inducing horizontal list at that scale. Less efficient on space as a whole, but more readable and collapses by segment. -Oznogon (talk) 02:18, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
I think that looks very smart, Oznogon, and I really like it. It looks pretty straightforward to maintain too, which is good. Re your comments above, thanks and I agree with all of them: separate navboxes, alphabetical ranges, co-opt others. Re the second, I didn't want to exclude possibilities straight away, but my preference would also be for the broken out alphabetical listings (as you've now demonstrated) for ease of updating if nothing else. Finally, I am comfortable with the style and breakdown of the fiction lists as they stand as adding value over a raw alphabetical list; duplication is not an issue for me here. Maybe we could adopt the columns to make it consistent with its sister naboxes as a small improvement? I'll await more comments before ticking boxes but boxes 2, 3, & 4 look close. --Fleanetha (talk) 10:58, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
I just did it. -Oznogon (talk) 04:35, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
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