I believe I am done with the wiki templates, you can see the results of my experimentation here:
https://dig.wikia.com/wiki/Dig_Wiki:SandboxAs you can see from the text, fairly standard stuff. (Don't use the visual editor to view/edit the page's text, it's not very good at it. Press on the menu next to the edit button and switch to classic editor.)
While experimenting with the new module feature, I've seen that it is possible to maintain a database of sorts. You can see the dataset I created for my tests here:
https://dig.wikia.com/wiki/Module:Playershttps://dig.wikia.com/wiki/Module:Player_Kara(I may have put a bit too much information in there, but I wasn't sure which I was going to use.)
Having the data stored like that greatly simplifies template creation. You can see that for the final template in the sandbox, which uses this feature, I just had to type:
{{#invoke:Stats|byName|name=Kara}}
And the template found the necessary data and constructed the infobox out of them.
It also greatly increases flexibility, allowing templates to grow much more complicated (e.g. have a template that displays your entire inventory (or maybe only the pieces of your inventory that you consider important) simply by giving your name to a template).
It also enforces a
Single Source of Truth, meaning that you don't need to copy the same information over and over, worrying about discrepancies. (If you remember, we had to rely on the unwieldy transclusion mechanism in the ER wiki by using some hacks in the templates and some extra pages to end up with the player's stats getting copied from one page to others. This is a much easier way to solve that problem.)
However, it does present a slightly higher barrier of entry for people editing (then again, in the old ER wiki most edits were done by a small dedicated group that knew the ins and outs of the wiki, people who were willing to help new editors learn the ropes, so maybe that's not as important).
It also makes the wiki more inflexible (if something isn't accommodated by the data structures/templates, the templates and data structures will have to be edited or the information will have to be tacked on wherever necessary) and less robust (if I end up being the only one understanding the templates, then if I get hit by a bus we'll end up with nobody to edit the templates).
I just wanted to ask, is this something the people that would be updating the wiki would be willing to use? Should I keep developing/experimenting with it?
Or are the templates as they are now good enough and everything else can be taken care of by our editors?