One thing I've been thinking about a lot are infoboxes, which are boxes that can be displayed on an article that give a quick glance at some specific information about the topic. There's one in place on Kristy's Great Idea for an example (although obviously all the info isn't correct right now), or you can check out a ton of examples on the Wikipedia site here.
I really like them, and I was thinking we could have different infobox templates for book articles, for articles about BSC members, articles about sitting charges, articles about places that are mentioned in the books, etc.
The nice thing about using a template to make the infoboxes is that when the infobox is placed on an article, the article only has to include the variable information (for example, the specific book’s title, series, number, publication date, etc.). The template’s actual formatting is saved on a different page (in this case, Bookbox). The format can be totally changed on that page, as often or as drastically as we want it to, and it will automatically be changed on every article that includes that template, without affecting the information listed for the variables. So, for example, we could change the Bookbox template from pink to blue, and it would automatically change from pink to blue on the Kristy’s Great Idea article, but the information in the infobox wouldn’t change. (And I totally expect that the formatting WILL be changed from what it is now.)
I hope I’m explaining this all right. There will be a help page that explains how to use and modify the infobox templates. But before that point, I wanted to ask if people had ideas about what information should be listed in the infoboxes, for any of them. Here’s what I can come up with right now:
Book infobox:
Currently listed: title, cover image, series (meaning original, Super Special, Mystery, etc.), number, publication date, ghostwriter.
Other ideas: significant series events (like Mary Anne and Logan breaking up or Dawn moving to CA—the big milestones), BSC events (like a pet show or the Mother’s Day trip or the Mini-Olympics)
BSC member infobox:
Ideas: Name, BSC position, span of series in which they were a member, family status (parents’ marital status, number of siblings), personality niches (bossy tomboy, Jewish comedian, shy and sensitive, California Casual, sophisticated, bookish, black ballet dancer, scholastically underachieving artist), hometown, physical appearance?
Places:
Ideas: Name, location (downtown, Washington Mall, New York), type of location (clothes store, restaurant), books in which it appeared?
Other characters:
Ideas: Name, significance of character, books in which he or she appeared (“many” if more than a few)?
Any suggestions?
