Why doesn't the wiki make use of templates more?

[Sylphony]

Is there any particular reason why the wiki doesn't make use of templates more inside the content pages (that is, transcluding the templates)?

[Maka]

I don't understand how to make them personally, but I think there's no real reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Sylphony]

It takes guts to rewrite (or copy and paste) markup each time, I'll say that.  Particularly when there are 3,350 content pages on the wiki already.

But it's also remarkable how inconsistent the pages are (for both layout/design and content) and I think that needs to be addressed.  Creating and using templates is easy and it would be more beneficial for the wiki in the long run.

[DeviantProtagonist]

A consistency for articles would be nice, but you should bear in mind the logistical issues -- 3350 pages is 3350.

That, and what time editors can afford. I think the better expectations in this instance is put in your own share.

[Sylphony]

I think the better expectations in this instance is put in your own share.

Yeah, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to start creating conflicts by suggesting something that involves changes on multiple content pages.  Moreover, I wanted to see how open the contributors were to the idea of using templates, considering the wiki does not use them often and there might have been a reason behind that.

[Yunabeco]

I remember creating some templates at the start, but yeah, creating the actual building blocks is the hard part, so copy-pasting became the norm at some point.

The endgame of templating is basically Semantic Mediawiki+Page Forms and becomes something like this which can basically be queried like a database.

I'd love to get there, but as previously mentioned, with existing content, that's a lot of pages to edit and probably something for a bot.

You can see all templates here. Templates specific to project-imas.com aren't categorized as such, so you can probably find them in Uncategorized templates. To begin with, we could slap a category to project-imas.com-specific, character and/or song templates to find them in the sea of imported Wikipedia templates.

Suffice to say you get my seal of approval if you want to factorize code and put in some order.

[Sylphony]

That's fantastic!  Thanks for the approval.

For now, I just plan to do more research on the wiki first so I have a better understanding of how everything is tied and placed.  Semantic Mediawiki would definitely be very interesting to see in the future indeed, after perhaps once the building blocks (properties, etc.) have been figured out.   Until then, I'll put in my own share whenever I can.

[Juanelric]

I created templates for use for ML and SM characters, and fixed the pre-existing CG one to match other CG character pages. I only didn't get around to the Original Series and DS because I forgot. lol
I guess I should have mentioned it to others, though, instead of just trying to add these templates to every page I could.

[Juanelric]

I finally got around to making a Original Series character infobox. I had to fix it multiple times until it had no problem, but as you can see, 4 empty boxes appear in the empty infobox. I didn't know how to make them invisible without breaking the template. >.<

[Juanelric]

(Sorry for the double post, I couldn't edit the previous one) I eventually managed make those four boxes in the Original Series character infobox appear only if they have info, but the infobox is still kinda broken. As you can see in Shika's article, the Autograph and Birthday Banner headers only appear in half if those boxes aren't used. Anyone knows how to fix it?