Template talk:Place Link

Icon in Place Link

I noticed recently that our many place pages (small ones such as SR:Caves, and larger ones such as SR:Places) now have an overabundance of map icons, and found that the change which caused this was made to this template here. While I can see how adding these on certain pages could be useful (such as SR:Cities or OB:Yellow Road), I think it looks redundant, and is generally unneeded on most of the pages I've seen it on. I'm wondering what others have to say about this, since it's a change that affects so many pages.

Also, is it possible to add a new parameter to the template which allows us to choose whether or not the icon is added? If this is possible (I'm not good with the technical stuff, so someone else would have to figure that out), I'd prefer that the default is no map icon, and pages which we decide look better with the icons can have the option added with something like icon=yes. Thoughts? — ABCface^◥ 22:11, 18 January 2013 (GMT)

I like the icons on many pages, but there are pages such as the Caves page you mentioned where it's really redundant. If we keep them, we'll probably also want to add blank space for those that have no icons, just so that everything aligns. And yes, it's entirely possible to add some kind of icons or maybe showicons parameter. In this particular case, it would be as easy as pie. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 22:29, 18 January 2013 (GMT)

Personally I don't like those icons. They add graphics that aren't particular useful and distract from information like the place name. But especially at those summary place pages they just feel overly redundant to me. --Alfwyn (talk) 22:49, 18 January 2013 (GMT)

Namespace parameter

I did some experimenting, and it appears that the parameters "game" and "ns_base" do the same thing, but "ns_base" is not listed as a parameter in this article. Am I correct, and should this be added to the list of parameters for this template? --Xyzzy ^Talk 17:00, 12 March 2013 (GMT)

Ns_base is the param defaulted to when you don't define game. It looks like it isn't intended to be used ever, except internally in the template to link to the current namespace. Jeancey (talk) 17:16, 12 March 2013 (GMT)

The original template was designed before Metatemplate had been installed, so we didn't have a consistent way of doing this. Some templates use ns, others use game, and there are probably a couple of others out there as well. Since Metatemplate essentially implements this internally, it's one of my goals to standardize this to ns_base and then use the Metatemplate's functions wherever possible.

In this particular case, the only difference between ns_base and game is that ns_base can be inherited from other templates or defined page-wide, where game can't. I don't know if this is ever actually used for Place Link, but I assume it's written that way for a good reason. :) – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 19:13, 12 March 2013 (GMT)