User blog:FargoneSeven/Request for composite navy pages

Hello All

''Before I start, I'd like to say this: IF THIS IS ACCEPTED, this DOES NOT mean you HAVE to follow suite. You like your page just the way it is? Good. Keep it like that.''

Many of you already know from chat that I am not satisfied with the current Navy information page setup. Having every bit of information on one page (even with tabbers[more on those later]) causes problems with well established or well documented Navies. The page becomes cluttered and overgrown, and reading it becomes a chore. Quickly finding information becomes impossible.

Tabbers do work, but only if you are familiar with (or patient enought to use) wiki text. I am not, and I'm sure other users are in the same boat.

Now, my original idea was to create wikis dedicated to individual navies. A quick reference sheet would be kept here while the majority of the information would be documented on the dedicated wiki. This was quickly shot down. Mace compared it to loading an iTunes card with three cents. While I don't completly agree, we moved on.

Tato then suggested reopening the forums and using navy dedicated subforums, however I did some research and concluded that the foum heirarchy is neither deep enough to do that effectively nor are the threads (which would act as individual pages) formatable enough.

My final suggestion, then, is to allow users to use multiple pages for various Navy related topics.

EXAMPLE NAVY MAIN PAGE

This page is listed under the 'Navies' Page as the 'Home' page of that navy. It would contain the description and other immediately important (but small volume) topics near the top where they could be easily accessed.

Contextually, users could then provide links to other pages containing more specific detailed content. For example, a page could be created that holds tables describing a fleets vessels. If a navy has many types of ships the page could be split in two, one for surface ships and the other for aerospace vessels. Two different links would need to be provided. Another page could be linked to further on, perhaps to a Research and Development themed page, listing and describing an Navies accumulated research and or current programs. These pages would not be listed anywhere else (unless, perhaps, we created, for example, a naval research category page, linking to all navies research pages).

To those who are concerned about these extra pages 'cluttering up' the wiki, I would like to point out that these pages are invisible unless you explicitly go looking for them.

I believe that allowing users the ability to create pages (reasonably) freely would add a layer of organization to our Navies pages. The ability to navigate quickly and efficiently would also make it more appealing to produce good looking, well thought out pages and/or Navies. Some rules would need to be made up (the rules page needs to be rewritten anyways) to keep the number of wiki pages reasonably low and to prevent spamming (accidental or not), however we're host to a wonderful group of admins that I'm sure could think of a few constraints.

BEFORE YOU FLATOUT DENY ME (looking at you Capt and CVN'''), THINK ABOUT IT. '''If you don't want do rewrite your page that's okay, just let those of us who want to to do it.