Template talk:Uncrewed ISS flights

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I've updated a some things in the template as it was getting to be a very long list.

• 1: I separated the missions by year to help readers navigate better. This way it is easier to see both how many missions there were in that year and when the mission occurred. This makes the navbox a bit bigger than I'd like but I think it worth it for the more organized look.
• 2: I added a future flights section. I understand there is already Template:Future spaceflights, but that gets removed from an article as soon as the mission an article is about happens. I went about one year into the future, as halfway through next year we start to lack mission names and numbers.

There are definitely some more things we could do to it. It may be appropriate to remove links to the missions with no articles yet to avoid dead links, but I won't make that call just yet. Wingtipvorte^X (talk) ∅ 22:06, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I think splitting by years makes the box too tall and gives it an ugly amount of whitespace; it looked neater as one long list. Could we split into blocks of years instead? I would strongly oppose removing redlinks, as having such links present encourages the creation of new articles. --W. D. Graham 17:46, 1 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

While I had removed the redlinks, I did revert my edit as per WP:REDLINK, with which I was not familiar with at the time I removed them. I also agree it is tall and there is a lot of whitespace. But I think this makes the navbox much more accessible, as it is easier to at-a-glance tell how many spaceflights there were each year, which flights took place each year, etc... It is worth the whitespace in my opinion, but does not mean I wouldn't like to see the whitespace gone. I had thought about putting in an image. I dunno about blocks of years. How many lumped together? --Wingtipvorte^X (talk) ∅ 14:07, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Providing statistics isn't really the navbox's job. It is there to facilitate navigation, useful facts and figures should be in the articles instead: for example a yearly count could be added to one of the "main" articles. --W. D. Graham 17:21, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

True. That is not the exact reason why I did that, but it is a good byproduct. One of the reasons was to enable readers to navigate to a flight in a specific year ("I want to go to the first resupply flight in 2007"), instead of clicking through trying to 'guess.' That is the main reason really. Assuming we leave as is, what would be your preferred way to deal with the whitespace? --Wingtipvorte^X (talk) ∅ 21:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I still think we need to do something about the number of rows. --W. D. Graham 15:47, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, I still agree. In my opinion the picture improved it a whole lot. The whitespace is much reduced, our main remaining problem is the height of the navbox. One train of through takes me to think that it can't be helped, there are all those years, it looks really clean as it is and if someone wants to use the navbox, they are done reading the article and just want to go somewhere, so it doesn't matter if the navbox takes up a significant portion of the screen. On the other hand, I really wish we could do columns for every year, but I don't think that would look good. You are more familiar wiht wikicode, can we do something like this:

File:TemplateUnmanned ISS resupply flights-Ideas.jpg

Something like that would both look good and solve our problems. --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 17:43, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've drafted a few ideas, let me know what you think. Template:Unmanned ISS resupply flights/drafts. --W. D. Graham 22:24, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Both Bold and Grouped have good aspects to them.

• Bold pros:

• Each year is clearly noted
• Nice and small

• Bold cons:

• Center alignment - It looks much cleaner aligned left.
• Uneven row distribution - Looks too cluttered with one line having so much info and the others not so much.
• Future section doesn't have years
• Separating character is the same between a mission and a year as mission and a mission - Maybe try the same as different separators version?

• Grouped pros:

• Left alignment - very clean looking
• Fairly evenly distributed rows
• Good separation between years by use of pipes

• Grouped cons:

• No specific year for each flight

Is there a way to do a different color background on Bold years for each year as I did in that ideas picture?

How about Grouped years, but you remove the dates on the left column and —leaving the pipes— add each year in bold as in Bold years? --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 23:49, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it would be practical to implement a coloured background, and by removing the left-hand column, the right column would automatically switch to centre alignment. I don't think the lack of specific years from the grouped format is a big problem, as there are only five per row and it is fairly easy to work out which one is which. --W. D. Graham 10:57, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I think about it, I agree on the colored background. I did some playing with another one in the draft, I called it Grouped years 2. I'm aligning it left with bullet characters, is there a blank character we could place there? As it is now, I like the row distribution and how readable it is. Just some ideas. --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 19:54, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  should do it. Although it doesn't really look right without text there. Also, with the future missions, could I suggest we do away with the years; they are subject to change, and there should never be more than a year or two in there anyway. --W. D. Graham 21:56, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  didn't do it. Agree on future missions years. --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 23:42, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed it, you left out the semicolon. --W. D. Graham 07:26, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I can't say I like how it looks with blank spaces. I don't dislike it, but it just looks like it is unfinished... Your thoughts? --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 18:25, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not too keen on that either. I prefer the original "grouped years" - while it does lack individual years, I don't think that is a problem because it is still easy to work out which year is which. --W. D. Graham 17:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is true. My main concern with the original grouped years is that the pipes can be hard to see. Maybe if we tried them in bold? | vs |. Or maybe 2 pipes? What do you think? --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 18:01, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Either is fine by me. There are also other symbols that could be used, such as ‡, ※, », etc. I still prefer some variant of the pipe though. --W. D. Graham 08:03, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree pipes are the cleanest and best way to go. Let's give double pipes a try. --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 20:29, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Grouped years now has double bold pipes. How does it look to you? --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 20:35, 10 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks quite reasonable. --W. D. Graham 20:22, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK then, if you have no objections, I will update the live template to reflect those changes in formatting. --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 15:49, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. --W. D. Graham 08:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

 Done --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 23:11, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]