User talk:Butwhatdoiknow/Sandbox

Reaction to first draft - December 2011

I pretty much support your "WP:Related information" suggestion because there is a certain logic to it and it doesn't cause any problems with current layouts. This proposal, though, is a bad idea. On the web, you generally find navigation toolbars on the periphery of content. Putting them in the "see also" section moves them to a more "interior" placement. It just feels and looks wrong. And having two groups of navboxes, one interior and one at the end, would be even worse.
I guess part of the problem is that "see also" sections are kind of freeform navboxes, minus the box. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't mind the (mild) logical inconsistency of having a few high-relevance internal links immediately following an article and a bunch more in boxes at the end of the page because it's a highly functional approach, and functionality trumps consistency. What you're proposing here seems less functional than the current approach and even more inconsistent.
Them's my two cents.--Father Goose (talk) 06:55, 20 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, no, no, you're supposed to agree with me. You see, I don't really want your opinion, I want your support. You just aren't doing this right at all. (That said, thank you very much for your comments. If I can't get someone as open-minded as yourself to see the obvious (to me) benefits of this approach then it is probably dead on arrival.) Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 13:41, 25 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reaction to second draft - April 2012

Now this pitch is not half bad. One can make a pretty good case for a "Articles and topics related to Matt Flynn" navbox belonging in a See also section. And actually, with that "rate this page" visual noise now appearing everywhere, the value of having navboxes at the end of the article has dropped, since they're no longer actually at the end.

I don't think it's good to suggest "the option" of putting navboxes at the end or in the See also. I know why you're doing it -- to try to mollify the "No! I want it at the end!" crowd -- but since you're trying to reform a sitewide standard, the answer is not to suggest using two standards, but to truly convince people to embrace the reform. I think you'd do better to emphasize the new placement as a "trial experiment" or somesuch, and that the purpose of the experiment is to gauge editor response. If it gains acceptance (still a long shot), then a transition period between the two standards can be discussed.

However. I still don't like having both a bulleted list of links and a navbox group in the see also section -- the visual presentation would be very inconsistent. The obvious solution there would be to drop the bulleted list into its own navbox, or perhaps better still, as a header for the encapsulating navbox, something like:

There's still the question of where the succession boxes should go ("Sporting positions" in the Matt Flynn article). I'm not as ready to agree that that stuff belongs in "see also" -- whether within the navbox wrapper or not.

And moving the bulleted list into the navbox compromises the ability to add explanatory notes to list entries (such as the Kancho#See_also Boong-Ga entry)... but that's a rarely used technique anyway, and a short parenthetical explanation could still appear within the navbox.

So, there's two more cents, perhaps worth more to you this time ;-) --Father Goose (talk) 04:27, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. All good ideas; however, I worry that throwing in the idea of putting the bulleted list into a shell is a bridge too far. So I'm leaving that for another day. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Noleander

I've looked at the proposal, and it has some merit. What I see as pros & cons:

Pros

Makes related articles more visible to readers
Footer Navboxes are functionally similar to "See also" lists, so may as well be adjacent
Sidbar navboxes (e.g. "One in a series ..." navboxes) contain large lists of articles, and are at the top of the article (thus there is no rule that "navboxes must be at the bottom")

Cons

Footer Navboxes can be perceived as big and ugly, and arguably it is not aesthetic to put them in the midst of text (prose above & references below)
Even if the proposal were adopted, the old style would persist for years or decades or forever, leading to two alternative Layouts, which is not good for a multitude of reasons
If the point of the proposal is to help new readers find/notice the footer navboxes, perhaps there are other ways to achieve it, such as collapsing the Footnotes/References sections
Sidbar navboxes (e.g. "one of a series") already meets the goal of this proposal: For any footer navbox, a sidebar navbox can be created (including multiple collapse sections, e.g. {{Style}}) or {{Science}}, so articles can be plainly made visible to novices.

Notes

Personally, I like NavBoxes and think they are super useful to novice readers. "One in a series" or "project-oriented" sidebar navboxes (at the top of articles) are becoming more popular precisely because the notify the reader: "Hey, there are a bunch of related articles: take a look". The footer NavBoxes are probably missed by novices, especially if they are collapsed. The fact is, WP has huge inertia: changing something as fundamental as WP:LAYOUT is like making an oil tanker pull a U-turn. --Noleander (talk) 02:11, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from SchmuckyTheCat

Thanks for the invitation to comment.

Navboxes don't belong in See also. See also, External links, and References provide a hierarchy of information that is immediately relevant to the subject of the article. Internal (See also), External (links), and Index (references). Nav boxes are, by definition, navigation to other topics. Categories and interlanguage links are fixed by the style sheet to be outside the article content. If WP were being designed from scratch, or maybe changed in the future, nav box information should have some designated place similar to that. For now that place is in line with content and at the bottom. Keeping navigation at the bottom may not be the best place for first time users but as a UI designer would say, it's "discoverable" easily and quickly. Wikipedia pages are already busy looking and the information in navboxes really isn't that important to rank as a higher distraction. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

My thought, with which you seem to disagree, is that one collapsed navbox or one navbox shell would not add too much busy-ness. Please let me know if you have any suggestions that would make this proposal more palatable to you. Also, would you be willing to give the proposal a try on a trial basis to see whether other editors are not as adverse as you seem to be? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 12:05, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments regarding sidebox idea

I think the little box is inoffensive. I don't know if its necessary enough that I'd support it. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Indeed, the sidebox prototyped at User:Butwhatdoiknow/Sandbox1 is hard to object to.--Father Goose (talk) 06:43, 30 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]