Thread:Justvisitin/@comment-1536121-20120825184333/@comment-5222017-20120826192316

Yes, Template:ListDA is exactly what I mean. (It’s basically the same as User:Justvisitin/ad, only with prettier formatting and slightly more verbose parameter names for the tier. Good job!)

Is it something I can use or are you going to remove it again?

As to the template’s usefulness, that’s really Software Engineering 101. We’re essentially talking about a function: activespecies = f(biome, tier) — where f is Template:ListDA. We use this function — implicitly so far — in multiple places: Template:TableDA, but also other fusion-related pages, incl. RobinCarr’s experimental blog pages. It therefore makes perfect sense to explicitly implement it — so you don’t have to do the calculation in your head every time you change a page where it is used — and that’s what the template does.

For illustration, check out the table below, which uses Template:ListDA. It took me about a minute to write it start to finish. Without the template, I’d have had to go back and forth with some other list of currently active dinos and the whole thing would have taken much longer not to mention been much more error-prone. The icing on the cake: when active dinos change, it will still be up to date, provided someone changes the template — which will happen without a second though to this page as long as the template is used in any important place.

The source of the table shown above
Template:BiomeColor is also very cool and exactly what I had in mind. Thanks!