[DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Summary:

Proposal for a shiny new page.

[DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Jerden 22 Dec 2021 10:32

A picture speaks a thousand words, and the new version has a lot of pictures, so I recommend you just check out the draft first then come back here for the commentary.

▷ Credit where its due

This has been a team effort by Azamo, EstrellaYoshte, HarryBlank, Jerden, L200, and Ralliston - of note is the fact that Ralliston brought this all together, I did most of the art but heavily based it on Harry's prior work for his Time After Time Password series, EstrallaYoshte coded the Site and Area divs and L200 made the maps for us.

▷ Additions

It's not that I dislike the current Secure Facilities Locations page, it's fine, but as the number of Sites and Areas increases it's becoming increasingly difficult to find anything in that big long list. Although we've actually added more Sites while making this, I think having a grid of Site and Area icons to select from will make it easier to find a specific site.

The insignia are mostly my fault, but I think it looks better than a grid of generic icons.

The other addition is the map - it seemed like an interesting and useful addition to the page. It emphasises the fact that we have a lot of US sites, which is why there's a popout for North America, but I do think it'll make it easier to find the site you're looking for if all you can remember is the location.

▷ Other Changes

We've kept the definitions from the old page with some minor changes, but we've moved it to the bottom since most of the terms are pretty obvious and the Site/Area distinction isn't really that important most of the time.

The only Site that doesn't meet the new requirements is Bio-Site-95 with 4 articles, but the description is very boring so it's not much of a loss.

▷ Edits and Adding New Entries

The sandbox page is set as a collab, so feel free to make minor edits to descriptions or to adjust Site locations is we haven't quite got them right, but I think the main objection will be that this is too difficult to add new entries to. I've tried to explain it as best as I can in the "Adding New Entries" tab at the bottom, do ask questions about that, but since the code is a little intimidating the default option for adding to the page will be to post in the discussion page and message a staff member to get them to do it. The page will be left unlocked though, since minor edits and additions to existing entries are very simple once you've found the right location.

I want to emphasise that like the MTF list the insignia are optional, a default image created by EstrallaYoshte will be displayed if you don't have one. However, I'm happy to make more and I intend on uploading templates so that anyone who knows how to edit .svg files can create one in future - it depends on how complex you want them to be but a simple one can be done in minutes. These are not intended to be "canon", alternative designs are great and I can totally understand if people don't like them - feel free to suggest improvements!

I have checked and this version should work fine with a screen reader, although it may not be as accessible as the old version of the page.

(I've removed the timer, I only put it up because I thought it was required but I don't want anyone to feel they have to comment before the ticking clock runs out - enjoy Christmas ect.)

O5 Post

Last edited on 23 Jan 2022 22:41 by Jerden Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Nats482 22 Dec 2021 12:40

Couldn't the 120 small logo be turned to be just White and Red? It looks now like a Polish-Ukrainian site.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Jerden 22 Dec 2021 13:16

I've tried to avoid using unaltered national flags to avoid the implication that there's only one Site in that Country - it's intended to evoke the colors of the Silesian Voivodeship, in a similar way to the use of US state flags. I have no idea how recognisable these are though.

I suppose I could go for an alternative design using the Ontokinetics Logo if it looks too Ukrainian, didn't really think too much about that because there's a pretty limited color palette that most flags use and so it's difficult to be truly distinctive.

Last edited on 22 Dec 2021 13:21 by Jerden Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Nats482 22 Dec 2021 14:46

Yeah, it urked my aestethic part of the brain, and also didn't look that good. What's there now is better.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

PhamtomGuy 22 Dec 2021 14:31

I don’t like the idea of using custom theming on official site pages — why can’t this be reformatted in Sigma-9?

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Ralliston 22 Dec 2021 14:43

It's a theme for Sigma-9, and baseline Sigma looks awful on the page. Trust me, we tried to make it work; you can't.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Jerden 22 Dec 2021 17:50

Admittedly, we didn't try that hard to make it work in Sigma-9 because Sigma-9 just doesn't work very well with the aesthetic.

Screenshot evidence

It works fine in Sigma-9, the problem is that it really makes Sigma-9 look bad.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Kothardarastrix 22 Dec 2021 17:48

Looks awesome! However, I’d put the informational tabs before the facilities themselves so that people can learn what “Armed Biological Containment Area” means before they read about ABCA-14 itself.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Jerden 22 Dec 2021 17:59

This is definitely something that's up for debate, but one of the things that I dislike about the current secure facilities dossier is that it makes you scroll through all the definitions before you get to the actually interesting part. Especially since most of them ("Containment", "Storage", "Research") are exactly what they sound like. The Site/Area distinction is perhaps the only one that requires explanation, but I really don't think it's actually that important and I strongly suspect most people just go with whatever sounds better rather than carefully considering the covert/clandestine distinction.

That information is all still there but it's in a tab at the bottom, because I honestly don't think you need to read the definitions of "Armed", "Biological", "Containment" and "Area" before you read the entry for ABCA-14 - it's either obvious or not particularly relevant. If I find ABCA-14 interesting I can scroll down to the list of definitions to find out a more about it, but there's nothing in the Description that requires you to have read those definitions first, so I personally think it makes more sense to list them after the facilities, not before.

Last edited on 22 Dec 2021 18:02 by Jerden Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Kothardarastrix 22 Dec 2021 20:38

You're right, never mind.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Ihp 22 Dec 2021 20:47

I am highly perturbed that Site-87 is clearly in Minnesota on the map.

I get that Site-41 is where Antimemetics Division takes place, but at the same time, making an icon that hard to see on the map is just going to screw with people.

Also, I know that there aren't blurbs for any of them yet, but I think it would be prudent to reach out to international sites (Particularly -PT, -JP, -FR and -DE) to get them to write blurbs about branches on their wikis to import over here because right now, everything south of Texas and east of Poland looks barren. At the very least, there has to be one Site in Egypt or South Africa or something.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Jerden 22 Dec 2021 23:15

Apologies on that first point, we had an issue with the CSS and making it compatible with certain mobile browsers shifted everything off location. It should be fixed now.

If enough people complain about 41 I'll just make it normal, I blame Ralliston. The intention was for it to be just visible enough, but screwing with people is the intended effect.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the last point - there are detailed and translated blurbs for all 4 of the branches you've mentioned, I have linked them all here and listed some untranslated ones in the comments - I actually translated DE Assets myself a couple of months ago, they have a better list of Sites than us right now. I'd be hesitant to start adding INT sites to this page though, since this is the EN list and not the INT list, and also it would be nice if more people went on INT rather than only looking on EN.

There are loads of occasional references to non-US sites, e.g. there's a Site-87 in Montevideo and another in Syria, but they're just not used as consistently as the US ones. Part of the motivation for making the map was to encourage people to branch out a bit more with their Sites, obviously this site is mostly English speaking but we apparently have more facilities on the moon than in Mexico

Last edited on 23 Dec 2021 07:16 by Jerden Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Ihp 22 Dec 2021 23:54

I mean specifically that the map looks empty outside of Europe and the USA at the moment.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

DrGooday 22 Dec 2021 23:22

Seconding what IHP has said, adding more international sites to the list would be a huge plus.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Jerden 23 Dec 2021 07:10

It's not that I'm against this in principle, I'm very enthusiastic to add more Sites outside the USA, but this just reflects the fact that most of our users are American and so set the majority of their writings inside the USA. It's not that there aren't sites outside the USA, they're just not consistently used in 5 articles, and I need to set some sort of minimum bar so that this doesn't get unmanageably long and impossible to keep up to date.

I suppose in theory I could add INT sites with enough translations, but I think even then there wouldn't be many more that get added to the page, very few INT sites even have 5 translations on INT, or even 5 articles on their own branch, the communities are just a lot smaller.

Also, some other branches may dislike the idea of us claiming their sites to add to our list - generally there's a separate list for EN sites and then another list for their own branch, if we start including INT sites in the EN list it's going to get very confusing.

If we're talking about just adding them to the map, that is a project I might be interested in doing, but I see it as something longer term if I can get this to work on EN first.

Last edited on 26 Dec 2021 12:43 by Jerden Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Petrograd 14 Jan 2022 09:52

"If we're talking about just adding them to the map"

I like that.

Allternatively, what about adding some filler icons or pattern of some kind? Some unclickable visual metaphor for "Access Denied", or maybe some kind of "fog of war" effect?

I have 0 idea how the map works or how complicated those would be, just throwing out ideas.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

slurppp 03 Mar 2022 16:25

Dispute these dangers, Site-19 staff are notorious for their casual approach to low-risk anomalies.

Is this a typo?

Re: [DISCUSSION] Revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations Page

Ihp 07 Mar 2022 14:10

With the fact that this is going to be changed out soon, I'd like to note that the US/Canada Map currently appears to compress a lot of the midwest.