Thread:Bloodhit111/@comment-6034641-20131217085059/@comment-1394230-20140120010837

You mean converting those pages to simple links? I see why you might want to do that. It simplifies the pages considerably and still gives access to the information. The trade off is it means opening several pages when comparing weapons. I have a couple ideas I would like to propose and see what you think.

1) Add a Weapon/Stats sub-page for each weapon containing only raw information about the item. When calling a Template, specifying the Weapon to get details in will be all that is necessary, as the template can be configured to check the specified page's Stats sub-page for the data, given only the name.

The advantage method allows you, is to freely create various templates that can reuse the same data. That can include a standard WeaponInfobox style template, a cut down WeaponInfobox that excludes "Can Use" and "Empire" and a tabled format Template which can support multiple weapons being displayed simultaneously.

2) The other method I had considered involved adding additional tags to the Template:WeaponInfobox check for flags when it is called, to hide certain fields or change aspects of its display (such as left or right align). Then the indivudal weapon page stubs, with tags in them, can be called using  to display the infobox.

This method is programmatically more complex, but a little simpler in terms of pages involved and editing for other users.

Personally of the two however, I would prefer the first. It's a much cleaner format and only relies on calling the correct template with one or two parameters wherever the information is requested.

Regarding excessive use of #ifexists, yes I agree. They should be removed in all cases from both Template:WeaponInfobox and Template:Icon. If an incorrect parameter is provided, you'll get a broken image link. No big deal. Upload an image or remove the param. Is there a sandbox somewhere I can experiment with these changes or should I just test on a private wiki?