Forum:SH:Creating a Film Template for Appearance Sections

Hi everyone. I've been kicking an idea around for awhile that I wanted to gauge interest in, so we can hopefully move ahead with it. The genesis of this idea comes from looking at appearance lists such as on character pages, particularly ones like Anakin Skywalker/Canon. The stories that the majority of readers are most familiar with are the films, and the films often get buried in appearance lists&mdash;particularly once you factor in the untold number of novelizations, junior novelizations, adaptations, etc of the films.

I think there should be a way to easily and visually identify where the films appear in a subject's appearance list. Not only does it immediately draw people's eyes to the films when they are looking at the list, but they also help to group the appearance list in a better way by more-easily showing where the films are and where other stories fit in.

To that end, I have mocked up a new template that we can use for the films in a subject's appearance list, much like how we have TCW for The Clone Wars and Rebels for Star Wars Rebels. The template would be called Template:Saga (though I'm not married to it if other people have alternate ideas) and would display the film names like this:


 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode I The Phantom Menace
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode II Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode III Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode IV A New Hope
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode V The Empire Strikes Back
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode VI Return of the Jedi
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode VI The Force Awakens
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode VIII
 * Star Wars logo one line.png Episode IX

The image is a work in progress; it's a bit big right now and the color could probably be improved, but Darth Culator put this image together as a quick test just to see what the logo would look like on one line.

Here is what this would look like in the appearance section for Anakin Skywalker/Canon:

A comparison was made on IRC to WEGCite, which apparently some people don't like because it (apparently) exists just to make those titles appear fancier rather than serving any sort of functional need (i.e. wanting to add the series name in front of episode names, like on TCW and Rebels). Template:Saga wouldn't solve any major need either, but it does improve the reader experience a bit. Even if you do think that this is just to make something look a bit fancier, these are the films we're talking about, and I think it would be a worthwhile exception from any reluctance people may have towards prettying up the appearance lists.

But wait&mdash;there's more! You know how annoying it is to type out the formatting for the film names? If you want to type the full name of Episode VII, for example, you need to type it twice and include formatting, like so: Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens. Wouldn't it be a lot nicer, though, and a time saver, to simply type:

and it produces:

Episode VII The Force Awakens

This template, if and when created, would do that for you. So all you have to do is type the Roman numeral into the template like,  , etc and the full formatting will appear with this template.

So, this is something I think would be really cool. It's beneficial to readers for the way it more effectively shows the films on the appearance list, and it's beneficial to editors who can save a lot of time by using this template rather than typing out all of the film formatting.

What do you think? - Brandon Rhea (talk) 17:58, November 17, 2015 (UTC)