Board Thread:Council of Arrowverse Wiki/@comment-27640688-20191018132855

Hey fellow Arrowverse fans!

As you may have noticed, we have an crisis regarding the amount of templates being added to a given page. Examples, Earth and Characters from the DC comics (scroll to the bottom of the page). The admins and I have been discussing different ways to combat this issue. As well are aware, the coming crisis in our shows will only mean that more episodes/series will be joining our ranks. This is not another thread to discuss this, but it is something to keep in mind because with each new episode title, our problem only grows. So in the near future, more and more pages will start to have this issue.

With the restrictions of a website just being a computer program, each page can only handle so many functions (called nodes). This is why those pages say that the node count is exceeded. One big template that causes this issue is the Ep template and the hovering feature. Since we have over 500 episodes in our system so far, each time we use the Ep template, it uses 8*500 nodes. So each and every time you use that template, you are using 8*500 of the nodes that the page can handle. So, each episode we add to Ep only escalates the problem.

One option to correct this would be to remove the hovering feature. The admins would like to keep this feature, as it is useful to those that use the actual website instead of a phone website. The only other option we can think of to correct this would be to have a different template for each episode. There is a downside to this idea, namely that it will be 500 more template pages on the wiki. Now this sounds like a lot, but to the average user, this will not affect anything. Ep will instead just call on that template instead of us needing to call on the specific template. All this to say, that in the background things will be different, but up front, no one will notice anything. We will still link to Ep the same way we have for years. One benefit to this would be that the page parameter could be removed. For example, instead of placing, one will just be able to put  and call it a day. The second parameter (mentioned, pictured, etc) would still not change. The only change would be in the background and that we could remove the use of the page parameter. Removing the page parameter from all existing Ep uses will simply just require the use of the bot.

Therefore, going forward with this option would really mean nothing for the average user. That said, it will take some time to get set up, so nothing really needs to change immediately and there will be another post letting users know that the change has taken effect (and therefore the page parameter is no longer necessary). However, this is still a big project and so we wanted to see what the community thinks. As we typically try to do this through these kind of posts, and really get no results because people don't stay on topic or it is the same users arguing their opposing sides, I have decided to place a poll on this post. You may still share your comments below on this (OR if you have a better idea, that would be helpful!). But please do vote.

Thanks, and I hope you're all as excited as I am about the coming crisis (in the shows, not on the wiki)!

Are you in favor of moving to this option to correct our crisis? In other words, do you think we should change Ep to this new option, keep it the way it is, or do you have another idea? Keep Ep the way it is Change Ep to have an Ep-like-template for each episode Other (please place comment below with your idea)  