Why is it there have been more changes in the past few months to the format of this site than in the past 15 years? and every change made makes the website actively worse?
Why is it there have been more changes in the past few months to the format of this site than in the past 15 years? and every change made makes the website actively worse?
Significant design changes have been implemented to the wiki since 2015; collapsible sections, highlighted map tooltips, item tooltips, item icons, table formats and a lot more.
Fandom recently changed the skin, which broke some of our more complex/outdated coding, but I thought we'd fixed it all.
Can I take a look at the armour drop-down table you've mentioned? I don't know what you're referring to, exactly.
The "auction house navigation" table that used to be on every item page
Each item page has an Auction House navigation line under its 'How to Obtain' section; that's not changed in forever.
I did make changes to some of the item category pages as I redesigned the category hierarchy a couple of months ago - a structure which should have been in-place since the start of the wiki, but the original admins weren't data-oriented enough to have understood why that was important... years later there are hundreds of categories and the necessary work became a time-consuming task which I only faced up to recently.
During that redesign, when I came across item category pages with the 'Auction House Navigation' table on it, I deleted it. It's useless info, and not even correct as e.g. Category:Swords contains all Weapons that are tagged [Sword] in their description, though half of them don't appear in that Auction House category because they're not available on the AH. This wasn't done arbitrarily; it was discussed and confirmed with other admins over the years.
Likewise, AH categories such as 'Misc. 2' are useless groupings for the wiki. It might contain upgrade items for a number of different events, and yet not all of them as some aren't listable on the AH.
I understand the importance of needing to know where to look on the AH for some items which aren't at all obvious, hence every individual item page having that How To Obtain AH line.
I hope that's a satisfactory explanation as to that change.
It's a very helpful table to have at the top of item pages. specifically the weapons and armor pages. please consider putting it back. deleting features people have used for years isn't a great practice.
I'm happy to ensure information is presented in a useful way to users. If you would explain to me what makes that AH map useful to you, it would help me understand the best way to show that info.
The previous table wasn't suitable to appear on item category pages; referring to the weapons and armors specifically, the majority of the items in the category aren't listed on the AH due to being (Ex). And it feels intuitive that you'd look for eg Swords on the AH under Weapons > Swords without the need of a misplaced table on a wiki to tell you that. The only categories that may leave you scratching your head are Fishing Gear and Pet Items, which I'm happy to put specific notes on their category pages for.
I'm presuming I'm missing what you're using it for though. Perhaps our play styles are so different that it hasn't occurred to me. Would be interested to hear and provide a solution.
What do you think?