Requested feature overview description.

Wikipedia and other wikis have "templates," where pages can automatically embed the content of other pages.

Templates would just be regular wiki pages, perhaps named with a template: prefix by convention. Embedding a page might use DText syntax like [[[this]]].

For a concrete example of where this would be useful, see the "Muscular Scale" here, which also appears in about a dozen other pages. Updating it involves finding each of those pages and editing them individually.

Why would it be useful?

• Wiki editors can keep information centralized, which is necessary for maintaining correct, up-to-date information as the site's tagging practices evolve.
• Wiki readers get to see more relevant information on a single page, without having to follow too many links or consult a separate tag group page.

In other words, it would make it feasible to create richer wiki pages, which in turn would improve tagging quality.

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?

Wiki page rendering and DText parsing.

Not sure how I feel about this, since templates could be easily overused. It feels like a lot of editors already forget the 'keep it short and concise, a sentence or two is usually more than enough to tag by' guideline.

The wiki is intended to be a tagging aid, not an encyclopedia. Copying info from wikipedia (or other places such as bulbapedia) is at cross-purposes, which is demonstrated by pages such as experiment_(species): too much fluff, nearly worthless for its intended use.

Genjar said:
Not sure how I feel about this, since templates could be easily overused. It feels like a lot of editors already forget the 'keep it short and concise, a sentence or two is usually more than enough to tag by' guideline.

The wiki is intended to be a tagging aid, not an encyclopedia. Copying info from wikipedia (or other places such as bulbapedia) is at cross-purposes, which is demonstrated by pages such as experiment_(species): too much fluff, nearly worthless for its intended use.

I like the idea.

One shouldn't ever pad the wiki with unneeded information ("Muscles are formed by the amino acids of the tendons forming ganglionic chains with preneural fibers. ") ... and definitely NOT copy paste from wikipedia, but I don't see any harm in giving more information, as long as you keep it sweet and simple.

The real benefit of templates would be in places where, say, there's a large list of related tags, or "see also" tags.

For example: Most of the muscle-y tags have the following:

• Muscles
• Torso: pecs / abs / back_muscles
• Arm: biceps / triceps
• Leg: quads

If that's >>template:muscles<< than, boom, less work for everyone, and if they decide to, I dunno, add tail muscles in later, that's a lot less work for everyone.

It'd be really easy to keep large groups organized like that too... for example...

Fur. Right now, every 'color_fur' page has a list of fur colors.. 11 common, 3 uncommon, and 8 "addons" I would imagine that feathers, scales and skin are similar.

if we decide to add a new color--or remove one (the great teal/cyan debate!) then we only need to edit one page, not... 15x5+"addons"

the biggest problem we have is people don't know about tags we have. I look at "eyes," and there's a list of eye colors, as well as blind, eyes_closed, glowing, half-closed, one_eye_closed and soul devouring eyes, but there's no mention of: bedroom_eyes, eyeshadow, big_eyes <3_eyes, spiral_eyes, dot_eyes, eyes_visible_through_hair, button_eyes, covering eyes, or multiple eyes or... well, there's a lot of *_eye tags.

this could really help with that. template:eye_colors, template:eye_positions, template:eye_styles... They don't need to go on every page, and bloat each page size. (For example, the blue_eyes page should probably just have template:eye_colors in it), but you should always be able to work your way to a page that DOES have all of this listed.

I mean.. sex positions. clothing! Species and their distinctive features! And if you add in a new tag--I dunno... venom spitting.. you can add that to any templates where its' relevant.. and you don't have to worry about editing cobra to mention that some cobras can spit venom, it's already there. Boom.

SnowWolf said:
One shouldn't ever pad the wiki with unneeded information ("Muscles are formed by the amino acids of the tendons forming ganglionic chains with preneural fibers. ")

I have to admit that I have no idea how to use some of those muscle tags, because of the use of words such as 'hypertrophic', 'supinal', etc.

There's a lot of wiki entries that would benefit from being rewritten in plain English.

Fur. Right now, every 'color_fur' page has a list of fur colors.. 11 common, 3 uncommon, and 8 "addons" I would imagine that feathers, scales and skin are similar.

Okay, no need to say more. The colors were a good example.
There's plenty of old color tags that never got cleaned from the wiki, and someone always ends up trying to use them simply because they're there and therefore 'valid'. If templates would help keep such things organized in the future, then sure, it's a good suggestion.

Genjar said:
I have to admit that I have no idea how to use some of those muscle tags, because of the use of words such as 'hypertrophic', 'supinal', etc.

There's a lot of wiki entries that would benefit from being rewritten in plain English.

This 150% :)

I like information (if you look at any of the wiki pages I've written from scratch, I put plenty of extra info in there because I figure, hey, if someone's gonna look at the page for Hyacinth Macaw, I may as well toss some funfacts in there about how they're the largest parrot in the world, or describing how the grizzly bear is different than a black bear. But i try to keep the english plain and simple and easy for everyone to understand. We have people from all over the world who come here--and if *I* don't know what "supinal" means, they certainly won't.

(Sometimes you gotta use big words -- like anisodactyl and zygodactyl but that's why we have post #1504929 )

*hops off of soapbox*

Okay, no need to say more. The colors were a good example.
There's plenty of old color tags that never got cleaned from the wiki, and someone always ends up trying to use them simply because they're there and therefore 'valid'. If templates would help keep such things organized in the future, then sure, it's a good suggestion.

Yay, exactly :)

Nothing has come of this initiative..? 🤔 Is it on some todo-list?