User:MikeVitale/UserPage
{| id="userpage" align="center" style="text-align:center; border: {{{border-s|2}}}px solid {{{border-c|#FFDBDB}}}; background-color:{{{background|#ddcef2}}}" |- padding:13px;padding-top:0.5em;" |style="font-size: 85%"|'''This is a <span style="white-space: nowrap"><span>Wi<!-- Wikipedia -->ki</span><span>pedia</span></span> [[Wikipedia:User_page|user page]].''' This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than <span style="white-space: nowrap"><span>Wi<!-- Wikipedia -->ki</span><span>pedia</span>,</span> you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than <span style="white-space: nowrap"><span>Wi<!-- Wikipedia -->ki</span><span>pedia</span></span> itself. The original page is located at <span class="plainlinks" style="white-space: nowrap">[http://en.wiki<!---->pedia.org/wiki/{{FULLPAGENAMEE}} <span>http://en.wiki</span><!----><span>pedia.org/wi</span><span>ki/{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}</span>].</span> |}
Above is the "This is a User Page" code taken directly from ArielGold's User Page. This is not in any way a knock on ArielGold, as I have seen pretty much the exact same code on just about everyone else's User Page that includes this box.
My question concerns why are we obfuscating the text of "Wikipedia" by wrapping it in a couple of <span> tags that don't really do anything, and why we're using the HTML entities for the "Wikipedia" letters. Reference this page if you don't know what I'm referring to by entities.
It seems like the exact same thing could be accomplished by the following, and people would be able to read it to boot:
{| id="userpage" align="center" style="text-align:center; border: {{{border-s|2}}}px solid {{{border-c|#FFDBDB}}}; background-color:{{{background|#ddcef2}}}" |- padding:13px;padding-top:0.5em;" |style="font-size: 85%"|'''This is a <span style="white-space: nowrap">Wikipedia</span> [[Wikipedia:User_page|user page]].''' This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than <span style="white-space: nowrap">Wikipedia,</span> you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than <span style="white-space: nowrap">Wikipedia</span> itself. The original page is located at <span class="plainlinks" style="white-space: nowrap">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{{FULLPAGENAMEE}} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}].</span> |}
(Sorry, I tried putting those inside "pre" tags, but that causes much horizontal scrolling. Horizontal scrolling is bad.)
--MikeVitale 09:36, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
For reference, the first set of code looks like:
| This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeVitale/UserPage. |
And the second set of code looks like:
| This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MikeVitale/UserPage. |