Forum:Additions in inventory tables

4 years ago, I opened this very legendary discussion and apart of making grammar mistake in every other word, I raised my concerns over the inclusion of the list of additions in inventory tables. However, the community saw it otherwise and the inventory table got many support votes. Later, I included the option to do "JE Beta" and add images in additions section, where it will be added before any addition, but since this is MCW, discussion died out and was archived in October 2020. And although we've "technically" passed the initial proposal, since all inventory tables additions were reverted, people forgot they even existed, and we rather did the image before item name.

Story time aside, they are back and after many complains on Discord it's time to address some flaws we didn't think of when we initially made them. Here are few issues we need to solve:

1. Should we align them to left or right?
2. Should we wrap them into a "fake image/thumb" or keep them standalone?
3. Should we group items based on their color [1] or their base item form [2] (i.e. should we rather document it as "White Bed, White Concrete,..." or as "White Bed, Orange Bed, Purple Bed...")?
4. Should we collapse them by default?
5. What should be the minimum number of additions to put the inventory table?

Additionally, I propose turning this type of inventory table into a template. --TreeIsLife (talk) 15:27, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

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 Support 1) aligning them to right, 2) keeping them standalone, 3) group items based on their base form, 👁 Image
 Oppose collapsing them, and the minimum number of additions should be 5 blocks/items. I also support creation of the template --TreeIsLife (talk) 15:27, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

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 Support having additions in inventory tables on update pages. They should be on the right so they don't make the page longer on desktop, and I think we should just list them in the same order we list features in the detailed list. They shouldn't be collapsed and I don't think an arbitrary minimum is needed. I was writing out a bigger proposal for this so I'll copy the list of reasons why we should do this and my arguments against the frequent arguments that have been made against the feature.

Why?

It is simply convenient and useful to have quick visualisations of updates like this in the game context of an inventory, therefore also providing quick links to the features.

Why not? And why why not?

"It can't display all features." Yes, the biggest issue with the boxes is that they can only display features that have an item form. I think this is, most of the time, fine actually. We avoid being misleading by stating "blocks and items" instead of "all features". We can still represent mobs clearly via spawn eggs, and while it's not perfect, something like the cherry grove is obviously represented via the various cherry blocks in the box. Same with trial chambers; you can't put trial chambers in the box, but you can show every single thing that they are made of, therefore clearly representing them. There are some extreme edge cases where the boxes really don't work though, so far the only example I've found of this is 1.18. The only thing you can show in the box is otherside, and obviously that does not represent the update in any way shape or form to the point of the box being actively useless. So for cases like 1.18, I would simply not show the box.

"They're redundant." This has been said a lot, and of course I disagree. Obviously, it's a simplified list compared to the longer one, so it has its own purpose, people have been finding them useful, but I also want to talk about how I'm viewing these boxes and their purpose. In my eyes, the boxes are like article introductions, they are one of the first things you see on the page and they give you an overview of what the article discusses while not including absolutely everything. So if the boxes are doing exactly thing as article introductions, giving a simplified overview before the longer and detailed article, why are boxes redundant while introductions aren't? Maybe the response to that is "version articles already have introductions", but then my response would be that the version article introduction is doing something to the box. The introduction is largely talking about outside factors of the update, such as its theme, its release, when the name got announced all that stuff. It talks about features, but only very very few of them, maybe three or four or five of them, and only the most notable of them. Therefore, the boxes fill a niche that nothing else is filling. The introduction is a simplistic overview, but not of the features, and the main article is about all the features, but is not a simple visualisation. If the boxes have a unique purpose, and if they are convenient, they aren't redundant. Perhaps someone could bend the definition of redundant to include the boxes, but if that's the case, I ask that you wonder if at that point it even matters if the boxes fit that bent definition. If the definition becomes so vague, does the word actually hold any weight?

"It makes the page longer on mobile." By one or two scrolls. I really don't think this is big enough of a deal to hold weight as an argument, but that's me.

There. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
15:57, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

The minimum is needed, because a single addition is just not worth the inclusion of the template. Keep in mind T:Inventory uses Lua, CSS and also JS, and these add their own performance stuff (which we don't need to care much about) but we also add 100 bytes of text, just to document a single inventory slot. This text should rather be the actual description of the addition in the changelog.

And speaking of changelog, if you can see the start of the additions and start of the changes section, what is the point to showing the same thing again? In this situation, redundancy and "makes page longer" arguments have way bigger weight, because what's the point to have an additions table with one addition when a line below you have that one addition, and 2 lines below starts the changes section. TreeIsLife (talk) 13:25, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

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 Support 1)The boxes are actually useful to show what the updates contain in a more visual way rather than a text form, at least in my opinion. Wafity (talk)Wafity

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 Oppose adding the additions list. I feel like their needs are already served well by the other elements on the update pages. The introduction already states the main new features of the update (for example, "... adds new copper blocks, trial chambers, and paintings" covers almost the entire list, but is much shorter), while the visual aspect is already served by the item icons in the main "additions" section. I also think that it doesn't really fit to the wiki's encyclopedic style in general, being a rather superficial summary of "new stuff", ignoring all subtlety.

> Perhaps someone could bend the definition of redundant to include the boxes, but if that's the case, I ask that you wonder if at that point it even matters if the boxes fit that bent definition. If the definition becomes so vague, does the word actually hold any weight?

I want to specifically reply to this, though. I believe the accusation of bending the definition of redundancy is aimed at me (fair, since I've opened the meta-discussion about it). However, I stand by that this is not the case. I think you are thinking of "redundant" and "useful" as opposite ends of a spectrum, but rather, I think they almost entirely separate and could be individual arguments. As I said, they are useful; so is the article introduction. But why add another summary to a page that already has one? Yes, they're in a different format, but the inventory box is just a list, and so is the main text of update articles, which already lists every block and item alongside their visual representation in a fairly compact form. -- mschae23 (M_S_72 | talk) 16:26, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

> (for example, "... adds new copper blocks, trial chambers, and paintings" covers almost the entire list, but is much shorter)

Simply stating "trial chambers" does not effectively represent all the features within it in my opinion. Even if it did, that's one update. 1.21 is an immensely rare case where 99% of its content is contained in one structure, you can't make this point about any other update that effectively.

> I think they almost entirely separate and could be individual arguments.

They could technically be, but meaningfully? I don't think so. In my eyes, if something is redundant, it could be removed without consequence. If something is useful, and you remove something that is useful, there is the natural consequence of making something worse. I think the simple fact that the box is useful is reason enough to keep it, but even so I won't agree that they're redundant. The introduction gives a brief overview of features, and the longer overview has images. But these are happening in two separate parts of the page, and the introduction overview and detailed overview and too brief to be useful and too detailed to make the box redundant respectively. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
16:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

> [...] if something is redundant, it could be removed without consequence.

It could be removed without loss of information. Every removal has a consequence. But if you remove it, the same information is still in the main article. Its usefulness does not remove the redundancy. The question is about how you weight these – if you weight its convenience higher (as you do), you could keep it, if you don't (as I do), you don't. -- mschae23 (M_S_72 | talk) 20:20, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Without negative consequence, then. If the introduction having a near non-existent overview of features to the point of uselessness and images existing on the page at all makes the boxes redundant, then I fail to see how redundancy could ever be a quality that matters or is worthwhile to consider in any sense. - Harristic / Talk 👁 Image
22:35, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

If the introduction has a near non-existent overview of features, then it should be improved. If it exists, it's not useless. If the introduction says "It includes several copper block variants and trial chambers. It also includes the new crafter, new tuff block variants, the new mace weapon, and new hostile mobs" (taken from 1.21) and one glance to the additions section already shows several copper blocks, that sufficiently summarizes the update, both visually and in text form. The item additions box doesn't tell you anything new, even without reading the rest of the article. -- mschae23 (M_S_72 | talk) 13:39, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

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 Weak oppose the inclusion of lists of additions in inventory tables.

Inventory tables suffer from the same issue as screenshots that attempt to showcase "all features added in 1.X" that you keep finding on social media and that are always controversial from what I've seen. This is excluding features that cannot be represented by an item AND giving the same weight to each feature, both being wrong for obious reasons. I know that they were renamed from "1.X additions" to "1.X block and item additions" for this reason, yet, these past few days, I've still seen them being heavily used on social media to criticize updates and mock Mojang. Do we really want to provide a biased list (especially considering that it is used for such purposes)?

About the "images are better than words"/"people don't want to read a long list" arguments:

1. Lists do have images, so I am not sure this point stands.
2. Are lists annoying to go through? I mostly agree. But has it ever been suggested to simply... focus them on the essentials and having them less bloated instead of having a second, redundant and incomplete list? Why would Java Edition 1.21#Additions not be as consise as Tricky Trials#Notable features? (Perhaps not actually AS consise, but you see my point.) I am genuinely wondering if most of the content we put here (recipe, mob health, loot table, etc.) is useful - I would assume that most readers go to update pages to see the list of additions and changes, and if they want to know more about a feature they go to its respective pages.

Though, to answer the questions initially asked here: 1) right; 2) standalone; 3) item form; 4) not collapsed (despite being opposed); 5) no thought on this. - Zamburger (talk) 17:31, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point. Reducing an entire update cycle to the arbitrary number of items added does not seem like a good idea when this is already something people unfairly criticize Mojang for. -- mschae23 (M_S_72 | talk) 20:20, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

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 Support 1) right; 2) standalone; 3) base item form; 4) no; 5) 1 is fine for me, even though it might be slightly redundant. 👁 Image
 Support template addition - ThreeEy (talk) 17:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

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 Support They are nice. Collapsing them or having a minimum will just cause confusion to readers and to new editors (who will certainly think that the update was simply missed) Mudscape (talk) 17:44, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

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 Weak oppose I don't like the idea of reducing an update down only to the blocks and items added. It makes updates like 1.18 look completely empty. There's more to an update than just blocks and items. But something like this, a quick overview floating on the right, would be beneficial to these pages.  Nixinova   T   C   03:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

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 strong oppose If a version adds too few items, listing them in a table like this doesn't make any sense, and it might even leave a large blank space on the screen of mobile readers.the minimum number of additions to put the inventory table should be five or above— Hoangminhle2011 — Shape our Wiki 09:02, 31 July 2024 (UTC)