Template talk:Virginia Tech

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Contents 1 Massacre 2 Traditions 3 Redesign 4 Content 5 Navbox

[edit] Massacre

I added the massacre to the campus section. It needs to be somewhere, but I don't know that there is a good place for it. --B 04:32, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I refrained from adding it because I wasn't sure it should be in the template. Maybe just a reference to the history of Virginia Tech would do and then they can go from there. But that is just a suggestion. Remember 14:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

As unfair as it may be, the massacre will always be a part university history, so it should be included in the template at some point. Perhaps instead of listing as 'Virginia Tech massacre', the link should simply be displayed in the campus section like this:

v • d • e Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Campus Virginia Tech campus • Hokie Stone • Hillcrest Honors Community • History • 04/16/07

-Gwguffey (talk) 03:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know ... we call it 4-16, but I don't know that the world outside of Tech would recognize that date. Maybe "2007 shootings" would be better. --B (talk) 03:03, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Traditions

Here are other traditions that should be added to the template once there are articles for them:

• Old Hokie cheer
• Skipper, the cannon
• Maroon & Orange

-Gwguffey (talk) 03:05, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Redesign

In an attempt to make the VT navbox a bit cleaner, more elegant, and generally nicer-lookin', I've retrofitted it using the {{Penn}} stylistic variation of my {{University of California}} navbox layout. I hope you like it. --Dynaflow babble 04:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I generally like the picture on the right side of the template but otherwise it looks good. Good work. Remember (talk) 13:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I, too, would prefer the image on the right. I think the over-all work is great, though. Gwguffey (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I kind of like how the subheadings match and almost seem to emanate from Burruss Hall. Looking at my image choice again today, I realized that it was too washed out, color-wise, to anchor the template's left-hand edge -- the contrast between the photo and the page behind it was way too low. I did a bit of color enhancement in GIMP, making the image's color balance harmonize more with the school's colors in the template header and generally making things brighter, and uploaded a new version that gives the template a much stronger, higher-contrast left-hand edge (if you do not see the new image, hold down [SHIFT] as you reload the template page to bypass your browser's cache). I personally like the effect of having a strong visual marker on the left and leaving the navbox open and spacious to the right. I think I can change that element of the design if needs be without knocking things too far out of alignment; it's just a matter of tinkering around with it to get everything in its right place. Let me know what you think of the current version of the template with the re-done image first, though. --Dynaflow babble 22:05, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm happy with the layout. Nice work. Gwguffey (talk) 00:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --Dynaflow babble 00:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Content

The redesign looks good. My issue now is with the content. Compare the amount of information contained in this template with Template:UCLA which has the same basic format. The VT template seems crowded. Do the individual football and basketball seasons need to be there? Those are reachable through the sport-specific links. Gwguffey (talk) 00:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

The athletics section is somewhat awkward and does seem to make the template seem "busier" than it needs to be. I didn't use line breaks within sections in {{UCLA}}, which resulted in a slimmer-looking template that also resizes well between different screen resolutions/configurations. I tried to preserve the link structure and content from the previous iteration of this template, however, and so I needed to use linebreaks in its athletics section to keep its sub-subheadings from linewrapping every which way and potentially confusing the reader. If the athletics section was treated as a catch-all category, without need for delineating things into "Football," "Basketball," etc., we wouldn't have to do any force-formatting with the sports links. If it could be just a continuous, wrapping list, it would greatly simplify that area in the heart of the template -- both in terms of underlying code and overall aesthetics. --Dynaflow babble 00:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Another thing we could do to simplify that section is to put the articles subcategorized under Athletics -> Facilities under the Campus subheading instead, and of course, the Athletics -> People articles would be more than germane under just People. --Dynaflow babble 01:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I just pulled out the specific links to see what it looks like. Gwguffey (talk) 02:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I've resized the image to minimize the template's height, now that we've eliminated/compacted some rows. --Dynaflow babble 03:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Well done. The balance is much better. Gwguffey (talk) 04:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Is the readability of the header font (currently Times New Roman) okay for everybody? I'm trying to approximate VT's official logo font. --Dynaflow babble 23:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

That does a nice job of implying the official font. Good choice. Gwguffey (talk) 04:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Navbox

Converted to navbox so that the template plays nicely with other templates. Also added 'nowrap begin'-based formatting. Thoughts? --Gwguffey (talk) 03:40, 11 May 2008 (UTC)