Forum:Gallery Templates lack uniformity

The problems
First of all, I would like to note a few problems concerning the Gallery Templates. They are not uniform, random, some of them are different from each other and it seems like there is no model from which each of them can be derived and so there is no uniformity.

Template:Alvidapirates and Template:Arlongcrewmembers for example. In the Alvida Pirates, Coby is only marked as a former member with "(former)" whilst in the Arlong Pirates, Nami, Mohmoo and Hatchan are under a section that shows they are former members! Also, just like in the case of the Alvida Pirates, Template:Bountyhuntersmembers also has former characters of that occupation marked with "former" and nothing else. It should either be a whole section or all characters should just have tags like those beside their name.

Then there is the problem of the Arlong Pirates and Alvida Pirates being crews that basically don't exist anymore. The Template:Rogercrewmembers is also a template for a former crew and so is Template:Sunpirates. In the sun pirates, it says nothing about Hatchan being a former member, although it says that in the Arlong Pirates template. So the problem is how we define someone to be a former member.

There is the filler and movie problem. The bounty hunter template has a section for that called "Anime Only" and so does Template:Foxycrewmembers, but Template:Marinemembers has "Non-canon" as the name of the section. It should be one of those two and not different section names for each different template. That way it can even be "Filler" and there would be no uniformity, each template would be different from another. Template:Slaves is a place where the first note I have made appears and also there's even the word filler there. So we have 3 versions on how to define the non-canon characters, but that is basically the problem.

I would like to also note the existence of the unnamed characters appearing in groups. In Template:Bonneypirates there are way too many unnamed characters. The same goes for some other supernova crews and groups that appear in One Piece. I understand that because we don't know their names yet, but they are clearly part of the group, they should be added, but that is ridiculous. In Template:Nobles, the amount of unnamed characters is reasonable, but in other places, it's simply too much. There is a need of a method to decide which unnamed characters are allowed to appear in the templates and which are not.

I would also question on the order of which characters are shown in the templates, but that would be way too complicated for a generality. This would mean that there is no uniformity to a certain extent in this situation as well.

The solutions that I came up with
I would like to see the existence of certain sections and subsections in the gallery templates. I would like to see an order like this --Group Name--

--Canon characters--

[Characters]

--Former--

[Former characters with reason why they are not part of that group anymore tagged beside their names]

--Non-canon characters--

[Non-canon characters]

--Former--

[Former non-canon characters with the reason tagged] '''This is a solution to the 1st and 3rd problems I have mentioned. I believe that there should exist sections in that basic order. There should be two main sections of Canon and Non-canon if necessary. For both sections there should be former subsection, again, if needed.'''

My suggestion comes from the structure of Template:Marinemembers. It is the best example for how I believe the structure of all gallery templates should be like.

'''Also, I believe that the most fitting term for the non-canon, anime only or filler characters is non-canon. It says it all. It's the most general term and it allows 100% uniformity for every gallery template.'''

'''My suggestion on how to define former members is by taking a case. The Arlong Pirates case is the most fitting. The moment the group was disbanded/captured it ceased to exist, so the template should portray the group as it was just before it was disbanded or ceased to exist. Template:Tom'sWorkers is a great example, it portrays the group as it was before it stopped being active.'''

'''Regarding the character that are unnamed, I believe that the best solution for them to be kept or not is to search if they had at least a dialogue line in the whole canon series. If they said at least one thing in the whole series, they are good enough to add, if not, then they should not be added at all.'''

Final note
'''You should be careful when discussing these problems, as there are 114 gallery templates and I was only able to give some of them as examples, you should think about certain cases and then formulate your opinion. So you should do your best to give out examples for your arguments.'''

'''In the end, do you agree or not to the solutions I have come up with or not? If you have something else to suggest, please do so.'''

Discussion
I totally support Rici's initiative and the solutions he proposed. It's likely that there be special cases where these principles cannot be applied, but well, special cases are not a big deal. I'm in favor of writing some sort of simple guidelines for these templates.

(On a related note, I once wrote a parent template designed to ease the creation and maintenance of gallery templates. Here's the code for the Alvida pirates gallery using this parent template: Compare with the current code of the template… Other examples of the parent template's use can be found here.)

A parent template such as that is brilliant! It will ensure a basic uniformity for all other templates. I was thinking of asking Levi or trying myself to create such a template since it would make things much easier. The possible changes from this forum will be much easier to be achieved. We're talking about more than 100 templates with lots of complicated code to check so thanks a lot Sff!

Well, some of the inconsistencies you mentioned are necessary. Like Coby. One person does not merit their own section on a template. Think about how much empty space that creates. It only makes sense if there are multiple people who belong in a section like former (I'd say 3-4 minimum). As for unnamed characters, it's all or none, and we like to be thorough with them. If they're identified as part of the crew and are close enough to the foreground with a good facial shot, then they're in the template. Some crews simply will have a lot of unnamed crew members for a while, like the Bonney or Firetank Pirates. Question marks look a lot better than a blank space, and there is no rational way to decide who gets put in and who doesn't. I realize there are inconsistencies, but sometimes there just have to be. 20:22, May 29, 2012 (UTC)