Template talk:Model info

Necessity of this template

Hello. While I haven't been too active on the Wiki directly, and solely focusing on doing something else outside of it (my GitHub HLMV Repo), it came to my attention of this template's existence by a friend of mine. First off, while I appreciate the new user who has been editing the files to include this template, and that I respect his contributions as a whole, I'd like to point out some of my opinions in regards of this template:

• The first thing is that, I don't see the reason as to why this template was made. The vast majority of regular readers will check a paint variant by clicking from the table, and the gallery viewer will show up (zoomed in). I'd assume that very little actually go to the "More details" button, that leads what would have this template on.
• The Rotations page already servers this function. It includes the camera related values on HLMV, as well the model path (including submodel, if it's loaded alongside a player model).
  • It's also a way better page as it includes extra details like _materials that need to be installed, styles as Skins (like the Tosslecap), and so on.
• Experienced image creators that would use HLMV would probably have a least some grasp of how items_game.txt work. Even if not, the Rotations page is mostly up to date, missing only a couple things here and there.
• The information presented on the table is not very helpful for most readers. A lot of people probably don't really care what is the model path for those items. Even if that was the case, why is the model path not included on the page itself instead of having to put this on an absurd amount of paint variants we have on the Wiki? Not that I would still agree upon, as I don't find much use on the model path in general for regular readers.
  • The inclusion of an item model path was previously suggested by another user, which got declined as it had too little use by most readers. The idea was that it would be included for modders, but modders in general would probably already have knowledge on how to find these file paths. Regular players don't need to know this information too.
    • In addition, while I hasn't been participating in Discussions on the Wiki, I was not made aware of a potential discussion related to this template and its implementation on pages. From what a friend of mine said, there was no discussion beforehand, and only a couple talks on the IRC about it. I believe that Discussions for projects like these should exist, before someone ends up editing thousands and thousands of image files for then to get reverted if the idea was rejected.
• While I appreciate the work and dedication of trying to make the Wiki more "living" (as in, not leaving summaries empty), there are some instances where this isn't exactly needed. While Wikipedia usually have summaries on images, here, I don't see much point. Yeah, sure it's cool, but it would get old very quick. Just imagine if every single infobox image had like "A RED Engineer wearing the Brainiac Hairpiece", "A RED Engineer wearing the Mining Light", "A RED Engineer wearing the Sheriff's Stetson", and so on. Same thing for paints. In fact, the name of the paints themselves are already on the table. If a user clicks to zoom in, is most likely that the user has already read the paint's name before.

I don't think every edit made so far related to this should be undo'd, but personally, I would pause these contributions, and only resume if it passes on a TFW:Discussion topic. Personally, I would vote No, as stated with my opinions above. - ▪ - 23:54, 2 October 2024 (UTC)