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About a year ago, we decided to move our weapons pages to separate pages according to the games they appeared in. For example, if a weapon appeared in The Last Stand: Union City and The Last Stand: Dead Zone, it would get three articles: an article about the TLS:UC version, an article about the TLS:DZ version, and an overview page that linked to both versions. (More details here)
We've had this system for some time now, and we've been looking at the pros and the cons of doing this. The pros? Pages are now shorter and a bit more organized. The cons? Too much redundancy, with the "real life images" for the weapon appearing on multiple pages, and it may be a bit more difficult for readers to find the page they're looking for (since I recall seeing some misplaced comments here and there).
To reduce redundancy and to make it a bit easier for people to find the pages they're looking for, we have decided to go back to having only one page for each weapon in the game, instead of splitting the pages up. For example, instead of things like Sawn Off (overview), Sawn Off (TLS1), Sawn Off (TLS2), etc., we will only have one article - Sawn Off.
The difference, though, is that, instead of mashing it all together like we did before the change, we want to use tabs to divide the page up instead.
Tabbers, as they are called, look a bit like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam vel mauris vitae magna efficitur congue. Morbi elementum nulla eget elit ornare, in egestas elit finibus. Phasellus at placerat quam, non dapibus justo. Sed pretium, justo sed eleifend rhoncus, enim purus interdum enim, nec semper turpis lacus non justo. Nullam sodales ullamcorper nisi vel dapibus. Morbi eu nunc vitae arcu fringilla fringilla sit amet fermentum dolor. Quisque laoreet urna porttitor, rhoncus justo aliquet, mattis nunc. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nulla luctus sollicitudin ex id molestie. Suspendisse ultrices nisi auctor sem posuere ultricies. Quisque bibendum eget sem id scelerisque. Mauris volutpat, sapien pellentesque facilisis accumsan, lacus velit porta nisi, ac interdum odio urna in metus. Sed vitae dolor mattis, commodo augue nec, imperdiet purus. Vestibulum tristique ultrices tristique.
Sed tincidunt tortor sit amet sem lobortis, id semper turpis finibus. Fusce leo lacus, dapibus nec varius et, faucibus non justo. Quisque enim sem, pulvinar eget turpis semper, vulputate ornare turpis. Quisque pulvinar ligula id aliquam molestie. Nulla finibus a justo sed facilisis. Nullam non erat est. Suspendisse eu nisl quis diam euismod ornare. Cras tincidunt diam mi, ac mattis urna mattis vel. In nunc mauris, aliquam ut lorem in, scelerisque venenatis massa. Maecenas ut convallis turpis. Mauris mollis mauris elit, non rhoncus ex congue quis. Proin faucibus molestie suscipit. Nulla volutpat dolor sapien, in gravida turpis molestie at. Pellentesque faucibus magna vel purus tristique hendrerit. Vivamus ultrices diam in fringilla laoreet. Vestibulum enim quam, auctor vel feugiat et, varius sed lectus.
Nam mi orci, laoreet placerat ex nec, ultricies pulvinar justo. Duis mattis posuere dapibus. Aliquam efficitur urna ut velit placerat malesuada. Mauris vehicula malesuada est. Maecenas vitae eleifend sapien. Sed malesuada, lacus in tincidunt mollis, lectus lectus placerat sem, nec volutpat ipsum odio in urna. Maecenas eget magna molestie, pellentesque quam nec, bibendum tortor. Mauris tempus elit viverra, elementum tortor aliquet, dignissim ante. Fusce vel nibh in leo pellentesque mollis.
Pellentesque mattis tellus ac urna aliquet, at blandit libero molestie. Morbi lacinia massa orci. Ut dictum felis sed arcu dignissim porttitor. Nullam ac odio libero. Fusce neque neque, accumsan a tempor a, ullamcorper sed ipsum. Suspendisse potenti. Phasellus convallis sem ex, ut placerat lacus iaculis sed. Morbi eu odio venenatis velit porttitor condimentum ac vel dui. Ut finibus tempor eros, vitae porttitor turpis sollicitudin imperdiet. Praesent ac faucibus libero, ornare luctus leo. Curabitur augue orci, ultricies ac arcu non, ultricies interdum nulla.
Phasellus non imperdiet nisi, et gravida magna. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Donec semper sodales ex, ac eleifend lacus viverra in. Praesent fermentum porttitor quam, elementum dapibus sem luctus id. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Cras eu imperdiet dolor, id posuere magna. Cras mattis, massa quis ultrices consectetur, sapien neque blandit neque, ut mollis quam mauris nec orci.The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog 1234567890 times
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We're looking to use those tabs to divide the page up instead. This technique has been used on many larger wikis, and we hope that it will be effective here as well. Using tabs will reduce redundancy, allow for better organization, and will make it easier for people to find the page they are looking for.
This technique can also be used to split the other pages as well, such as gear and clothing pages, which are a mess when they try to cover two different games.
To see a preview on what this might look like, you can see what the M9 article will look like with tabs here. As you can see, the intro and background is shared, while the infobox and information on each individual game is separated by tabs, as well as the gallery and the navigation boxes at the bottom.
The initial proposal can be found here.
Please leave your thoughts and comments below on this change. This is a big and daunting change but we hope that it will pay off in the end. As such, we really need your feedback! --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 14:47, April 17, 2015 (UTC)
EDIT 23/04/2015: The "Edit section" links within the tabbers have now been removed, since they were causing problems when clicked. --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 22:22, April 24, 2015 (UTC)
EDIT 16/06/2015: After a bit of a hiatus, I've finally decided to touch this again. I've made two notable changes:
- The "Notes" and "References" section will exist outside of the tabbers. Footnotes don't play too nicely inside tabbers so this is the best solution I could find.
<span style="display:none;"></span>tags have been placed just under the title of each tab. It won't show up in desktop view, but you'll be able to see it if you're browsing the page on a mobile device. This is to help mobile viewers organize the page, considering tabbers don't work in mobile.
--I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 02:13, June 16, 2015 (UTC)
EDIT 12/12/2015: I've been procrastinating lately but as the Christmas holiday comes in I'm going to look towards getting this monster out of the way and out of my mind.
You can look at User:K6ka/New weapons pages/Death Adder for what I think is the *best* example so far. If you have any feedback, please leave it here. Of course, there are plenty of drawbacks, like section links being useless, which is why I prefer having some community input. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 22:25, December 23, 2015 (UTC)