Morrowind talk:Merchants

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Services[edit]

This page is in the process of being split between the different Services. --DrPhoton 08:53, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

Merchant List[edit]

(This discussion has all been moved here from the [[Morrowind:Merchant List]] talk page. That page has now been merged into the Merchants article)

Given the size of this page and the number of entries on the page, it seems to me that this page cannot afford to have unnecessary templates. It already nearly crashes the server when edits are made to this page, presumably from the length of time that it takes to process expanding all the templates. And experience on early versions of this page and on other pages (i.e., Oblivion:Places) clearly shows that there is some number of templates past which the server just refuses to cooperate.

Therefore I've gone ahead and removed the templates that in my opinion are unnecessary. I've basically replaced some templates with the equivalent code: {{ID|...}} to <small>...</small>; {{FC|...}}} to <font>...</font>. And I've replaced {{M}} and {{F}} with plain old M and F; the pretty factor of the icons isn't worth the greater difficulty understanding the page and making it nearly impossible to edit the page. I've left the Faction templates in place because they provide useful extra functionality that cannot be simply replaced by some html code.

My other question about this page is why isn't it at Morrowind:Merchants? Is the plan to have this page replace Merchants? If so, why not just go ahead and do it now instead of having two duplicate pages? --NepheleTalk 01:50, 4 November 2007 (EDT)

Another idea for this page (since I'm kind of on a site-optimizing kick right now... not that this one page will make any real difference to overall site performance, though): create combined versions of the icons, at least for a few of the most common combinations. For example, create a CS_Icon_MercAll.png that is just pastes together all of the individual icons. It then gets used for any merchant who sells all types of items, allowing the long sequence of a dozen icons to be replaced with just [[Image:CS_Icon_MercAll.png|General Merchant (buys/sells all items)]]. Or for merchants who sell everything except Thieves Tools, use [[Image:CS_Icon_MercNoTool.png|General Merchant without Tools (buys/sells all items except Thieves Tools)]]. Even with long hover strings over the images, this approach seems far better overall for any merchant that has more than three or four icons. The size of the wiki file will be decreased drastically; the amount of server processing to save the file will be reduced; the size of the html file will be decreased dramatically; and, finally, it will be much easier for readers to understand the icons (right now figuring out which one or two icons are missing from a long sequence is really annoying; why not just have the page tell you "all except X").
Sound like a good idea? Any chance anyone is interested in implementing it? (Freeing up more of my time for trying to find ways to make the site less sluggish, for example ;) ) --NepheleTalk 14:13, 10 January 2008 (EST)
To be honest I think the page looks like an explosion in a paint factory. I've never seen the purpose of colouring the gold and merc values on merchant pages and in this case it seems doubly irrelevant given that there's a sortable table. And I've never liked the icons for wares. Removing the colours, the bold text and the icons takes the page down to about 70K from its current 124K and doesn't cause migraines when viewed. –RpehTCE 04:25, 11 January 2008 (EST)
Here's my latest attempt to make this page functional.
  • First: for the changes to work you probably need to make sure your browser is using the latest .js (Ctrl+F5). Otherwise sorting the table is likely to cause some chaos.
  • The most dramatic change is deleting nearly all of the icons and instead adding individual columns for each type of merchandise. I also added an "All" column, so you can sort to find merchants who sell everything.
    • I chose to use a single letter to identify each column so hopefully with a little bit of experience, readers can scan an individual merchant's row and interpret the merchandise. "A C W" for example would be "Armor Clothing Weapons". Other than the lack of hovertext, I personally don't think the letter mnemonics are any harder to interpret than the icons.
    • It's all being done using boring letters instead of fancy icons, because the icons were one of the most significant problems on the page. As we've learned in the past from pages using Daedric font, pages using lots of images (even if they're just the same twelve images over and over and over again) perform pretty horrendously on the wiki.
    • Each column is sortable, so if you're looking for merchants who buy ingredients, for example, you can just click on that column and all those merchants will be placed at the top of the table. The sortability is why I chose this new approach instead of my previous suggestion of combining the icons into standardized sets.
    • The sort order on the columns also happens to be descending by default, so the merchants who match are placed at the top instead of the bottom.
  • I cleared out nearly all of the colours on the gold and mercantile skill columns. Only particularly large values are still coloured red, to provide some emphasis for the notable values. Hopefully that's less explosive, and also provides better emphasis for the truly notable values.
  • I made some tweaks to the Faction template to hopefully make that template's performance marginally better.
The page seems more tractable now. Admittedly, the server is pretty quiet right now so it's not necessarily a full test. However, the lag saving the page was only moderate instead of extreme. If it turns out the page is still problematic when the site is busier, then I think the only remaining option is to get rid of all the Faction templates (replace each template with the displayed text instead of filling in the text dynamically).
So, is that acceptable (and functional!) for everyone? Sufficiently so that this page's contents can be posted into Morrowind:Merchants instead of maintaining two redundant pages? --NepheleTalk 02:55, 25 June 2008 (EDT)
Well, it's less pretty, but if that's what it takes to make it functional, I'd say it's a good change. One thing I might add would be to somehow alter the "All" column such that the many merchants who sell almost all get sorted directly below the only five (!) that actually trade in everything (two of whom are test-characters not seen in-game). Maybe with a hidden sortkey and just a number indicating how many item types they sell, or something like that, assuming that wouldn't end up with an un-loadable page again... --TheRealLurlock Talk 00:05, 26 June 2008 (EDT)