Consistency regarding if-initializers

Go allows for the initialization of variables before `if` statements. For example, if we have a function `foo() (string, error)`, you could:

`if resultString, err := foo(); err != nil {...} else {...}`

Both resultString and err belong to the scope of the if/else statement here. This is a handy way to manage functions that return errors (almost all of them) but isn't generally used routinely due to scope; often if `err` *is* nil, you want to do something with `resultString`, but doing it in the `else` block is awkward, so instead code will usually read

```
resultString, err := foo()
if err != nil {...}
...
```

The project as it is now doesn't handle this consistently, so I'm setting a guideline and leaving it as an issue to be fixed:

- IF all values returned by the function are specifically related to the handling of an error returned by that function, then an initializer should be used.
- OTHERWISE, regular syntax should be used.

I will be digging around for this for the time being, but it's a good place to start if you're unfamiliar with Go and want to familiarize yourself with syntax.