Template talk:Effect icon

inconsistent

This template is inconsistent with other "X icon" templates that can link to pages, see Template:Skill icon, Template:Item icon. To be consistent, it should produce a link by default. That's what Template:Effect had already been doing, so maybe that one should just have been moved. —Dr Ishmael 13:25, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, this naming is kind of confusing. Also, when would we want to display only the icon? poke | talk 00:19, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Primarily for skill facts that have generic effects where you don't want to generate a wikilink. However, the template simply generates an icon for an effect. Whether you use it to display the icon alone or next to a wikilink shouldn't matter. Maybe because I wasn't there when the community first designed the templates, but I found it confusing that a template named {{skill icon}} generated a skill icon and a wiki link instead of a skill icon. Instead, the wiki used the {{borderless}} template as a proxy for a generating the skill icon by itself. The template should be {{skill}} as that make more sense. It's the same reason the design for event entries went with naming {{event}} instead of {{event icon}}. Am I missing something?--Relyk ~ talk < 01:00, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The naming for 'skill icon'/'item icon' was carried forward from GuildWiki/GWW. The meaning is more like "link to a skill and include the icon"; naming the template "skill" would sound like it just produces a link to a skill, and if you just want a simple link, there's no need for a template. —Dr Ishmael 04:14, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe that's the intended meaning as an abbreviation of "skill and icon", but it sounds like the literal skill icon. Your second point is using circular logic: Needing a template named "skill" implies that you don't want a simple link to the skill and disagrees with the premise of the template sounding like it produces a simple link.--Relyk ~ talk < 05:04, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

A skill template would somehow imply that the skill’s details are shown as well. Like {{achievement box}} does.

And while “Skill icon”, “Item icon”, etc. may be chosen illogically, we have been using these names for almost eight years now, so its usage gets more important than the actual name. And even if you were to fix the names now, the original names probably can never be used for something else and would have to stay as redirects. poke | talk 06:55, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

The impression I get is that we want the templates as the inline representation of the details so to be lightweight and easily identifiable for the lists and such. Achievement wasn't the best name as it's heavyweight in showing the full details and not being used inline; it's meant to represent the achievement in place of a standard infobox. An inline version would have the name, icon of the achievement category, and maybe the total achievement points.

Being used for a long time is not necessarily a reason to avoid change. Are you saying we would redirect the original templates to the new names? The only changes required is running a bot through to change the template name and update our guidelines. By usage, editors aren't conditioned to use the template as most copypaste the code directly or from templates in the guidelines. At worst, it's a minor inconvenience to more experienced users.--Relyk ~ talk < 17:06, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

I tend to type template names from memory rather than copy pasting... and I don't really see the point of an icon template without text. And why would we need this when we already have {{tl|Skill icon tiny}}? -Chieftain Alex 19:37, 13 February 2015 (UTC)