User blog:Aranho/Reorganising NPC article of High Rollers

Introduction
"High Rollers D&D/NPCs" (the Article) contains more than 60 NPCs, and it will continue to grow as more NPCs are added every new session. Also, navigating the Article may tend to be difficult, especially if the reader wants to read all NPCs from a particular faction/organisation.

So far, the following has been implemented to the Article by several editors to shorten or provide easier navigation:
 * 1) Grouping NPCs in the Article (e.g. Council of Guilds, Dark Scar Clan, The Bucklands)
 * 2) Splitting NPC/factions/organisations from the Article to form its own page upon more than sufficient info (Adrick and Korak, Broken Sky, Granamyr).
 * 3) Replaced TOC with
 * 4) *"Quick Links" to factions/organisations
 * 5) *Short introduction with links to popular NPCs

While the implemented ideas do help, the Article remains difficult to navigate. Listed below are my views on reorganising the Article and possible ideas that we could implement.

Splitting the Article
ZakaSonza and I once discussed splitting the Article according to the NPC's role in the story.

The following was proposed:
 * By alphabet/session/campaign
 * Based on recurrence (Recurring, One-Time)
 * Based on role importance (Major Role, Minor Role)

The third option was eventually favoured.

I was going to begin to work on the third option, but hold on the idea first. It is only when I've created the Broken Sky (BS) page (splitting BS members into a new page) that I realise that the third option may create more issues, especially that the NPC's role importance can be subjective to the reader. For example, Riss, briefly mentioned in Session 10, is one of the members of BS and suspected killer of Vixanis (minor role), but is one of the sub-leaders, and person-in-charge of the BS operations in Feyden (major role). This realisation made me think that splitting the Article may not be a good idea overall.

As such, I propose to keep all NPCs into a single page only, and to only split if a particular NPC/faction/organisation have sufficient information to create its own page, just like what we did to BS splitting from the Article.

Categorising NPCs
In the DM Guide, factions and organisations is one of the key elements in designing a campaign, and we can see a lot of it in Mark's campaign.

Some NPCs in the Article has been categorised according to factions and organisations (e.g. Broken Sky, Dark Scar Clan, House of Kel). I believe this can make navigating the Article easier, so it may be expanded to cover all NPCs. However, this brings the problem of NPCs with no relation to any factions/organisations (e.g. Cenaria, Enoran, Green Hunter).

A possible solution is then to organised these NPCs according to the location its most associated with. However, this too brings the problem of NPCs that moved locations (e.g. Barris, Cune and Finny moved from Tallfield to Talis'Val).

As such, I'm proposing the categorising of NPCs based on the following guideline:

> Categorise NPC under a Faction/Organisation

>> If not, then under a Permanent Location

>>> If not, then under Last Known Location.

New TOC
The TOC in the Article has been hidden as it is extremely long, and there was once a discussion of replace it. It is noted that the TOC is still shown if viewed on mobile devices.

I've implemented "Quick Links" in the Article and adding links to popular NPCs in the Article's short introduction. Obviously, these do not solve the problem of navigation difficulty since lots of NPCs aren't "quick-linked".

One of the solution proposed by ZakaSonza in the discussion was to create Tabs (example). Generally, each tab will have its own page and these will link back to the Article as "Tabs". While it is a great idea that will ease the navigation, I feel that it may compromise on editing information on respective NPCs, especially if the editor does not know how Tabs work.

Another solution, that I propose, is having a Navbox as the TOC. I have created 3 possible options for this in my sandbox. Looking at other wikis, I found that Navboxes do not necessarily need to follow the template given, although it can result in inconsistent design throughout the wiki.

Both Option A and Option B are Navboxes designed as a table, with Option A coloured for easier navigation while Option B is set to default Yogscast Wiki colour. Option C is designed to be in-line with the YogsWiki's new Navbox template. These 3 options can be set at the top of the Article and inserted into pages that has been split from the Article (Adrick and Korak, Broken Sky, Granamyr). It could even be added to Portal:High Rollers! Although I personally prefer this idea, there are 2 issues: (1) not mobile friendly, and (2) some readers may find this Navbox TOC large.

In Summary
To summarise:
 * Proposing to retain all NPCs into the single Article
 * Splitting into multiple pages may not be a good idea
 * Only split if a particular NPC/faction/organisation have sufficient info
 * Proposing a guideline to categorise NPCs according to faction/organisation or location
 * In replacing the TOC, either having Tabs or a Navbox

So what do you guys think? How should we go about reorganising the NPCs article?