Forum:Merge Legends skin pages

The Legends namespace has a good few pages, namely a lot of skin pages. Good, right? All the skin pages are nice and complete. That should be good, yes?

No. Many of these pages are less than a thousand bytes. Just look at one of them. One sentence lead. Five infobox rows. One quote. A pretty unnecessary issues section. A small gallery. Let's be honest. These pages do not have enough content.

So we just expand them, right? Wrong. They have no more information to add! Let's be honest. These should be merged. A table with all of them, perhaps split by skin type, can fit all the useful information on one page, allowing much, much better accessibility. All this information that we're putting on different pages can be merged into a few short tables.

The current state of these pages also violates our notability guidelines, specifically the very first rule. These articles have almost no information, and certainly do not have enough to warrant a full page.

My proposal is simple. We put all the skins into a few tables on MCL:Skin. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  01:00, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

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 Strong support as proposer. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  01:00, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

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 Support. The Legends skin pages are WAY too numerous (speaking as somebody that clicks random page a lot). ☆《ShadowMilo》☆ (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

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 Neutral They are fairly small pages; although, I don't think you'll end up with a "few short tables" if you merge. I think I counted 122 skins on Legends:Skin. The infobox for each skin has entries for description, rarity, type, cost, obtained from, and variant of, and an image. If you combined all of these into a table entry for each, the page would probably end up looking fairly similar to Achievement or Advancement. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but be sure you're ok with a page that looks like that. Maybe you could do a mockup of one of the smaller tables on the Skin page, Brilliant Beetle for example, to gauge how the final product will look. Rampage455 (talk) 03:27, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Oh. I didn't realize that there were THAT many skin pages (and I am against long tables like Achievement and Advancement). Changing to 👁 Image
 Weak oppose. ☆《ShadowMilo》☆ (talk) 12:51, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

They'd be easily split by skin type, that is, what entity they are. Then it'd look a lot less like those pages and more like one with a few smaller tables. Perhaps "short" is a relative term here, but still, having one page with some large tables is much, much better than 122 tiny articles with little to no content. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  15:35, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

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 I strongly oppose this as these articles suit their purposes. They're informational, all in one place and very organised. They may be small for an article, but they are way too large for a table. If there was a mock-up for what a merged table would look like and think that would show the limitations of a table. It's really funny how you mention a small gallery, but where can you put that gallery in a table? And if you put it at the bottom mixed with other skins, it seems like a really bad kludge and less neatly organised.

These articles do have enough content, despite their small size, because they're too big for a table, and splitting them into sections is quite arbitrary. 👁 Image
Ayaan 19:21, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean, splitting them into sections is arbitrary? And besides. Like I gave said before, it's much, much more inconvenient to have information scattered across articles when it's really not hard to just put it into a table. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  20:24, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

We already have a compact table linking all articles together in MCL:Skin. 👁 Image
Ayaan 20:29, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, we have a navbox, essentially. But still. That table doesn't contain all the information about the skins. And let's not forget, minimizing links is always optimal. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  20:30, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

im not talking about the navbox :P check at MCL:Skin § Heroes 👁 Image
Ayaan 20:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, well, all that table does is, let's be honest, the same thing as a navbox.

Also, alright. Some of your points are valid. Let me clarify. We would have a total of ten tables, for each type of hero and each mount. Each table wouldn't be too large, with just six columns. Each. That way we don't have to click a million links to find the info, but we do have it not crammed into one large table. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  20:40, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

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 Oppose - I agree with Ayaan. In addition, having separate skin pages is consistent with the skin pages on the other namespaces.Drour1234 (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

To refute your additional argument, I say that the other namespace are very different. Especially the main namespace. Different namespace call for different levels of granularity. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  20:58, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I have created a mockup of this here. Seriously, the table will not be that enourmous and unusable. In it you can see, easily, information of not one, not two, but ten skins. Oh, you though you'd only be able t o see one at a time in the table? No. Much of the article information is redundant and when put like this, easily viewable, especially compared to the monstrosity we have currently. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  21:18, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

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 Comment; if this gets implemented, the images should be cropped so that they are vertical rectangles rather than horizontal rectangles, because tables on mobile don't do well with horizontal ones. 👁 Image
amethyst_hhh👁 Image
21:32, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Ok, sure. When this gets implemented someone will have to help with that. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  21:57, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I get that some don't like the idea of merging these, but a lot of there arguments are weak:

• "Consistent with other namespaces" -- the Legends namespace isn't the other namespaces. What works for one game might not work for another. It can even be argued that some of the other namespace pages should be merged. In other words, other namespaces are irrelevant to this.
• "All the information is in one place with these" -- blatantly untrue. The information is scattered over 100+ articles. I don't call that one place. Sure, the articles link to one another, but we should never have the reader be forced to click a hundred links to get the information they're looking for.
• "Too big for a table" -- nope! I've already made a mock-up that clearly chows a table working perfectly. If needed I can even make the table smaller!
• "Merged table would look like achievement or advancement page" -- sure, so? That's not bad, the tables will be plenty small, and plenty organized. It would be perfectly fine.
• "Make sure you're ok with the end product" -- cool, I am. What could even be worse than what we have now? Nothing much!

And if you're still for some reason not swayed by that, I advise you to click here and read the first guideline. Our policies dictate that we should merge articles that don't have enough content to warrant their own page. So why aren't we merging these pages? If anyone has a good reason, I'm listening. -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  21:57, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Some recent arguments have arisen from others. Here are my counterarguments:

• You say the articles have enough content. They do not. 700-1000 bytes is the average size of these pages. I get that that doesn't exactly mean a whole load, but still, most pages, even ones with {{WIP}} on them, are longer than that. You accuse me of continuing to cite the notability guidelines despite the fact that you have made it invalid. It has not been made invalid. These articles are very short, almost always less than a kilobyte in size, and hardly informational, apart from the quote and cost, both of which are included elegantly in the table. Can these articles be expanded? Hardly!
• You accuse me of "not daring" to link to my mockup. Look here, and read the comment. And tell me... if I didn't dare to link to the mockup, why would I have made it in the first place? I would not have.
• You say that not everything is included in the table, and so it's horrible. Is the current situation any better? No. Besides, all the required information can easily be added, if there is any missing. And so what if all gallery images aren't included? Not all of them are necessary. They restate what's already included in the article. I have no problem with keeping a few of the sort on MCL:skin but we really don't need each and every one of them.
• You say that you'd have to scroll to view the entire table. So? Without scrolling, most wiki pages, including the current skin pages, are inaccessible, and wiki pages are not built to fit on one screen. This is not a valid argument in the slightest.
• The opposition claims that a memorization of the table would be required. It is not. When the tables are done, they shall be split by variant and besides, this is the same case with many, many tables we already have. This would not be the worst case.
• It is claimed that to view the entire table of one variant it would be required to have multiple tabs open. Again, the whole table is not required by any rule to fit on one screen. It's not realistic to have every table to be like this. And I even have one more argument...

My argument, you ask? The current structure has more problems than it solves. You say you'd have to have multiple tabs open to view a table? Well, it's not exactly an issue solved by keeping things the same; you currently have to have more than a hundred tabs open. Lack of organization? Exactly what I was thinking about the current design! The information is scattered, scattered across a hundred pages.

In short, the current design has far more problems than my proposed one. No layout is perfect. If we hold out for one that's perfect, we will be waiting forever.

So far all opposing arguments have taken one slightly imperfect aspect of my design and said it to be a really bad thing. Does the current design have that problem? For many of these, it does! I have presented my proposal: merge each page into Legends:Skin. All of these 120+ pages can be in a concise table. Why aren't we doing this? And, answer me this, what advantage does the current layout have above the proposed one? -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  00:32, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

While I am 👁 Image
 Neutral, I'd like to 👁 Image
 Comment some points that I think needs to be said here and may or may not counter some arguments above.

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 Comment. "Enough information to warrant a full page" is really relative. Enough information doesn't need to be mega long pages like creeper. These skin pages are nearly in the same length as Mentioned features/Sand Layer. These mentioned feature subpages were split off because their parent page is too long and splitting them off will help in their discoverability

Also, I think we should present a more valid reasoning for why things should be handled differently in this namespace. Simply saying something like "it's not the other namespace, this is different" is not enough. Instead, we should look at why the other namespaces follow that specific practice in the first place, and whether that reazon is good and applicable here. 👁 Image
QwertyLilley ^[talk] 00:30, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

It has been three days since my latest comment. No new comments have arisen, here or on discord. I still completely welcome new comments. However, since no substantial argument has fully proven that the current layout should be kept, and I still retain my own guideline-based points, consensus, which is after all how things are decided on wikis, leans toward the merge based on the discussion so far, since votes do not count as points.

There are two arguments left:

"When I search X, I get information for X."

This does not demonstrate the current version to be better than the proposed version. In the mockup there is a row for each individual skin. I plan to add anchors to each row to aid redirectability. When searching for "Merchant adventurer", one would get the row for merchant adventurer.

"The current pages do their job."

True. Very true. However... a wooden pickaxe in Minecraft does its job, it mines blocks. So why does the usual progression involve upgrading from that? Because there are other pickaxes that do the job better. This is familiar to most of us; after all, we all help the wiki that documents Minecraft, and most of us have played and enjoyed the game before. We all know how it goes. This very same concept applies on wiki too. Every edit defined as "constructive" is an edit that helps the wiki do its job better. If we stopped when we reached at a solution that worked, we would have a single admin and bureaucrat, a main page with no styling, and pages with no infoboxes or navboxes or tables, since plain text and links can do that job of presenting information and linking to related articles. Stopping at a solution that works goes against the spirit of the wiki.

The arguments against the proposal have shown that the proposed version has flaws. However, going against anything with flaws will end up with an even worse situation than the one I just described, that is, the one involving not improving anything that works. That would result in the wiki not being published until every last typo and every last page had been fixed, created, and polished. In simple terms, striving for perfection will always be in vain. What we can do, however, is improve where we can.

No argument so far has demonstrated the proposed version to be substantially and objectively worse than the current version. Because of this, I will start drafting the tables in my userspace. I will not, however, publish them prematurely. I will give this discussion one week, that is, until the 12th, to allow comments to be put forward.

In the meantime, I again ask this: What advantage does the current structure offer that the proposed structure doesn't which would fully justify keeping it? -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  01:30, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Not been on the wiki for 3 days, that's why 😔 Before we begin, I would recommend not to be too full of yourself when speaking about your and other people's points and try to have a neutral/unbiased approach to it. Try and see why people might not like the table.

The reason why your table does not work for me is because it removes information about the skin. You have proclaimed that you can make it "smaller", but how? By only keeping the name, icon and price? Already, your table displays the ineffectiveness of being encyclopaedic by because it doesn't show: history (update name and what has been added), being a variant of, developer and pictures! And it's won't be possible to add these because the table is already so noisy with information compared to the simple articles we already have.

The reason why tables work so well for achievements is because it's not so wordy that is completely overpowers what you are trying to find and the pictures are so high quality that they are still distinguishable at a smaller resolution. These tables do not. They significantly worsen the user experience because you can barely see what the skin looks like without clicking on the image, which isn't a problem for an article. You might be thinking this is nit-picking, but when you want the wiki to actively substitute to a worse option, then obviously it has to be mentioned.

There are already three ways to obtain a list of every skin:

• On MCL:Skin,
• The Template:Navbox Legends skins navbox;
• and on each individual hero e.g. MCL:Ranger

We don't need more! and these pages do perfectly well displaying any skin you want to find out; all of them or for just one hero.

Another limitation is that these skin pages are actually fully complete, as @Dour has mentioned, there's still trivia and lore needed to be added to those pages which obviously cannot be done within a table.

So the current pages do their job... and much better too than a table. 👁 Image
Ayaan 08:17, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

• You ask me to have a neutral point of view. I have consistently tried to do this, and I ask the same of you in return.
• You mention that the table removes information. You say it only keeps name, icon, and price. The mockup addresses this problem. Being a variant of? Well, that's because it'll be under a section header with the base skin's name. History? Well, not all the articles even have it. Developer? Can be added in a notes section. Pictures? Both versions of the mockup have pictures. And besides, the extra pictures not included in the mockup are not necessary to the articles. They restate information from the article, or in the proposed case, row. The second version of the mockup does not have that noisy of a layout; if you revisit the mockup, you may see this.
• You say achievements are less noisy. This doesn't appear to be applicable, since the achievement tables have several more rows and many more columns than the proposed table, many of which have a lot of text.
• You state that the pictures are too high-quality. They are not. I reiterate, the mockup has addressed this issue.
• You mention that the proposed version is worse. That has not been demonstrated to be true. Each point has identified small flaws in the proposed version and identified some small pros in the current version. Additionally, points have been raised against the table that could be applied just as reasonably against the current version, for instance, the argument that you'd have to scroll to get all the information.
• You say there are already lists of skins. I acknowledge this; there are! But do they provide information about each and every skin? They do not. They list skins. The table describes them.
• You reiterate that these pages work with doing their job. As I said, a wooden pickaxe does its job. Yet we upgrade to something that does its job better. If we stopped at what works we would not have many of the things we do have on-wiki, including central discussion pages, templates, extensions, and archives, all of whose jobs can be done with plain text and links, which would work, but not work well.

I would like specific evidence and reasoning about why, specifically, it is worse than the current version before anyone calls the proposed version "worse". If there is actual evidence towards this, I would welcome it. I also point you to my point in my argument above regarding perfection. These tables are not perfect, and the articles do their job. But! The tables can do it better than the articles. What does the current layout have which the proposed version does not that makes it, the current version, objectively better than the proposed version, and so why should it be kept? -~- Nerdyguy2000   Talk   Edits  15:25, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

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 Oppose. A table could be useful, but the pages are also useful. If someone wants to search for a specific skin, or just click on the one skin they want to know about on a page such as MCL:Ranger, they should just get the page for that skin. No harm is caused by the existence of these pages. A page that is tiny is not a bad page if it has all the information it needs, which is why that style guide point can never be applied universally. A main screenshot, price, rarity, quote, what mob the skin is for, the preview screenshots, and potentially a different obtaining method that needs more detailed explanation is all a healthy amount of unique information for every skin. A table can document that pretty well, but unique pages are also doing it well.

The table can exist alongside the pages. I'd create it on a seperate page though, like Legends:List of skins. - Harri / Talk 👁 Image
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 Agreed, merging all skin pages would be too extreme. Realshow19 (talk) 18:18, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

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 Oppose - For all the reasons others have brought up.Drour1234 (talk) 23:16, 27 February 2026 (UTC)