User blog:Ahiijny/On the usage of tabs in character pages

Hi all, I wish to have a discussion on the usage of tabs on character pages. Personally, I'd rather not have them.

I noticed that many wikias that I come across tend to split up character pages into multiple tabs. For example, on this wikia, pages are typically divided into "Main Article", "Relationships", and "Media".

Currently, it looks like we're using the Tabber extension to create these tabs. One advantage of this over the separate-pages tabbing template that other wikias tend to use is that the page doesn't need to reload every time you change tabs. On the other hand, one downside is that the Edit section links don't work. For example, if you go to Nano Shinonome and click "Edit" next to the Hakase section, it just brings up an empty edit screen.

In my opinion, tabs also make the article reading order somewhat unintuitive. When I was first getting into wikias years ago, it took me a long time before I realized that there was other content hidden away in those other tabs. I think this is because the reading order doesn't flow well: To read an entire page, you have to scroll down through each tab's content and then remember to scroll all the way up to change to the next tab. Sort of like 4-koma, I guess, except longer (゜-゜);;

Since I like to look at what other people are doing, here is an analysis of how a random subset of other fan wikias/wikis (i.e. the ones I know about) handle character pages:
 * Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge wikia (62 pages): Template:Tabs
 * "Profile", "Relationship", "Galley", "Quotes"
 * City Manga wikia (63 pages): No tabs
 * But on the main page, the subsections are usually "Background", "Appearance", "Personality", "Relationships", "Story", "Trivia"
 * Kagerou Project wikia (273 pages): Template:Parent Tab
 * "Information", "Relationships", "History", "Gallery"
 * Nichijou wikia (373 pages): Tabber extension
 * "Main Article", "Relationships", "Media"
 * Saki wikia (516 pages): No tabs
 * But on the main page, the subsections are usually "Appearance", "Personality", "Playing Style / Abilities", "History", "Plot", "Relationships", "Trivia"
 * Puella Magi wiki (806 pages): No tabs
 * But on the main page, the subsections are usually "General Info", "Personality", "History", "Powers and Abilities", "Observations", "Etymology", "Trivia", "Gallery", "See Also"
 * Toaru Majutsu no Index wikia (2703 pages): No tabs
 * But on the main character page, the subsections are usually "Appearance", "Personality", "Background", "Chronology", "Other appearances", "Non in-universe appearances", "Abilities", "Relationships", "Character Art Designs", "Trivia", "Quotes"
 * Touhou wiki (21641 pages): No tabs
 * But on the main character page, the subsections are usually "General Information", "Character Design", "Story", "Relationships", "Gallery", "Skills", "Spell Cards", "Additional Information", "Fandom", "Official Profiles", "Official Sources"

So to me it seems like as a fan community gets larger, they converge to no tabs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In any case, are there any downsides to inlining all tab content into the main article of a character page? I wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page (ha) before I go on a massive editing spree to remove tabs.