Forum:Phasing out Simbio templates

I am proposing that we discontinue use of the "Simbio" templates, and instead shift over to using the "Sim" templates exclusively on articles for Sims that appear in more than one game. This is something that has been brought up a couple times in the past, and it has even received what could be characterized as an "unofficial consensus," but it has never been formally addressed so far as I know.

For those unfamiliar with The Sims Wiki's setup regarding Sim articles, I'll give you a brief explanation. We do not create different articles for Sims that appear in multiple games; instead, we make use of a series of infoboxes (the colored table-like boxes that appear on the right side of Sim articles) to provide information relevant to that Sim in each of the games that he/she appears in. These infoboxes include information about the Sim's life/death status, life state, life stage (age), marital status, career, and physical appearance, along with a picture (usually a headshot) of the Sim. If a Sim appears in a single game only, the infobox we use is called a "Sim" infobox. For instance, for a Sim that appears only in The Sims 3 or one of its expansions, we would use Sim3 on that page. However, if a Sim appears in two or more games, it's different. For the sake of our example, we'll say we have a Sim that appears in both The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. In this case, we would start with Simbio-start, which lists the Sim's name, sex, family information, and marital information. We would then use Simbio2 and Simbio3 to list information relevant to those two games.

There are a few issues with this approach regarding multi-game Sims. First, information between two games can differ, and the Simbio model cannot accommodate for these differences. A good example of this is the well-known Goth family. In The Sims, The Sims 2 and The Sims 4, her last name/surname is 'Goth,' but in The Sims 3&mdash;where Bella appears as an unmarried child&mdash;her last name/surname is 'Bachelor'. However, individual Simbio templates do not allow you to list out the Sim's alternative name, as it relies on Simbio-start, which lists her name simply as Bella Goth. Another issue is that of parents and children. In The Sims, the Goth Family consists of Mortimer, Bella, and Cassandra. However, The Sims 2 and The Sims 4 (but not The Sims 3, since Mortimer and Bella were not married at that time) include a second child, Alexander. Despite the fact that Alexander Goth does not exist in two out of the four games where Bella exists, he is still included as her child on the simbio-start infobox. There are further examples of these discrepancies, which are only further confounded by the fact that The Sims 4 occupies a separate timeline from the earlier games, and The Sims Studio has already made changes to the timeline which result in differing information between games.

There are a few issues that we would encounter when moving from Simbio to Sim templates on some pages. The Sim templates have a few more parameters than Simbio templates, since the information not included is usually included in the Simbio-start template instead. This information would need to be moved from Simbio-start into the individual Sim templates, and this would most likely need to be done manually. What I have in mind, rather than simply deleting the Simbio templates outright, is to begin a process by which we gradually move off of Simbio template usage. First we would adjust our "frequently visited" articles to use Sim infoboxes exclusively, and then work on transitioning other Sim pages to utilizing Sim templates instead of Simbio templates. Part of this transition would also involve updating our support/help pages so that new users are no longer directed to use the Simbio templates. In fact, we should explicitly urge against the usage of Simbio templates, as it would run contrary to our attempt to phase them out of use. Finally, there are a few changes we could possibly make to the Sim templates to make the transition more automatic. One example would be to have the 'name' parameter on Sim templates auto-populate with the page name unless the parameter is specified.

This changeover would be significant, so I feel it should be discussed and consented to before it begins. Please let me know what you think. --  LiR talk • blog  •  contribs 18:48, October 22, 2015 (UTC)