Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2011-06-20. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: One case comes to a close; initiator of a new case blocked as sockpuppet (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-06-20/Arbitration report

Featured content: The best of the week (13,965 bytes · 💬)

Portal:Hudson Valley has been promoted to featured status, if there's still time to add that. Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Hudson Valley is the discussion, diff of Cirt (talk · contribs) (a FPo Director) promoting it. Bencherlite ^Talk 08:35, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Thx: Sunday–Saturday windows, so this one is for the next edition. Tony (talk) 08:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

That's fine. Bencherlite ^Talk 08:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

1. It looks like you can show big pictures. ;)

2. I think you should always show all the FPs.

TCO (talk) 17:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Big pictures seem to be very effective here; it's just about the only place in which they can be showcased. Showing all FPs would mean galleries of thumbnails, which I don't think are effective. Not all newly promoted FPs are as good as each other, and they certainly need to be selected on the basis of how they fit with the others. We provide links to medium-sized FP displays. Tony (talk) 18:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I love you and this little newspaper too much to argue. Take this more as me sharing what is my head...not a typical TCO troll. Just what was going on in mind was that we could cull the pictures related to lists and FAs (it's really confusing what is an FP and what is an illo for an FA/FL now). If you want to cover the FA/Ls more (not saying you have to), make short blurbs. The page can easily go longer. Also, we don't need to use the ugly automated gallery, but do something prettier like in a RexxS table or the like. I think the pics also generally look better when not captioned underneath, get that border and all. So just have a text section above or below the FPs (sorta like we do know) that lists their name and link. Then have pics without captions. They looks sooo much better without the border you get when thumbing. For instance, check out this user page: [1] Or even this page: [2]. (Peace.) TCO (talk) 19:14, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

If my memory is correct, the original delisted version of the bison skull pile was much, much smaller than the newly promoted one, which was part of the reason it got delisted in the first place. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

TCO, thank you. I like the no-borders look (but not the way they seemlessly jam together at the first of y our links. But I do want to continue to take opportunities, where presented, to highlight FAs, FLs, FTs, FSs, and FPortals with a pic or two; and that means captions, as now, to distinguish them. Anyway, sometimes there are insufficient new FPs, as this week. The bison skulls I had as a pic originally, but removed it because it just didn't have a good feel; the res is still a problem, and the historical documentation insufficient. Tony (talk) 04:03, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Sven is correct. That image has a long history at FPC. Jujutacular ^talk 04:06, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, Tony. I get ya on wanting to have the FAs and such illoed. Perhaps if you kind of clearly differentiated the sections though? Just had the FPs at the very end or something and then could put all the pictures? Would allow going no borders with them. Also, I think more clearly segregating the FPs from picture illo-ing an FA/FL would be nice structure for the reader. No biggies. P.s. I inserted images into the MOS talk thread on left images. My new thing is centering. Just sorta saying to heck with text wrapping at times...TCO (talk) 04:10, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Reponses. Now, Juju will correct me if I'm wrong. The problem—much under-recognised on en.WP—is to optimise for a range of permutations of the following factors:

the relationship between pic numbers, sizes, and locations;
the way the pics interact with the text and with each other;
readers' display settings in their site prefs, and their choice of and settings within their browser, OS, and platform (involving monitor size, and chosen monitor resolution, window width, font-size, and font).

To this juggling act need to be added—here, not in order of importance—the push and pull of (i) the overall character-length of the page; (ii) whether there are bullets, and thus a narrower column width to compete for real-estate with side images and issues for screen-readers where left-side images are used; (iii) the character-length of captions; (iv) the desirability of keeping pics close to their associated main text/section; (v) the desirability of presenting a close succession of images with a justified horizontal left-edge; and (vi) how detail-rich each image is.

The baddies to minimise are (i) text sandwiching; (ii) pic overlap; and (iii) acres of white space.

My hunch is that manipulating pic numbers, sizes, and locations is the most straightforward way for editors to optimise the display in this forest of variables. The wikimedia software makes our job very difficult (memo to developers for long-term strategies, perhaps treated together with the mobile device program?).

This is how the image strategy at "Featured content" has evolved. (Co-author Dabomb87 is not around at the moment, which is a pity.)

Put a very big wide image at the top, centred (or two paired vertically oriented images, if two can be found to go together). It's striking, doesn't disrupt the flow, and has zero interaction with the text.
Use right-side pics alongside the text, usually all 240 or 250px depending on size, shape, and general detail-richness on average. I don't use the "upright" function.
Place the syntax for all side pics immediately under the top section-heading.
Adjust the number of side pics to the length of the text each week, so the disjuncture between the total vertical reach of text and images is minimised.
Put up with section-headings lying to the left of the continuous succession of images, and the fact that images will not be exactly beside their associated text (or section)—but hey, these issues arise no matter how you arrange the images, because people's window widths and monitor sizes and resolutions vary incredibly.

The big bottom pic is something of a problem: for users who view the page on a 27" monitor at high res, with the window width occupying the whole screen (many WPians), it's hard.

Comments? Tony (talk) 05:24, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

TCO Comments

Caveat for Tony: (1) I'm not smart enough to write short. (2) Sometimes when I'm being analytical, it comes across as harsh, but really...it's more that trying to express things, helps me think them through.

1. The issues integrating pictures into article text and here are somewhat different. This is a low "writing page". you've got pics and bulleted lists of links here. Also, this is NOT a page that "anyone can edit" (so something that might be unstable in article space, would not be here). In addition, you basically can blow off some of the "rules" of article space land, as this is a weekly newspaper and people cut you slack to be a little different. While there are some general long-discussed issues with layout in articles that match here, I would not conflate the two discussions.

2. Also, rather than worrying about fixes that require technology, I would just concentrate on what you want your little page to look like, given the tools right at your fingertips. Systemic changes in the code, need to be driven from article layout discussions and needs, not this particular page anyway.

2.5. You said something above about "this is the only place you can show a large picture", but it's certainly possible and appropriate at times to show things full screen (or centered and big) in article land. Peope do it with medical diagrams, maps, panoramas, etc. all the time. Not everything has to be an "illo" with text wrapping around it. When someone pushes "page down" to hit a new screen, it is a lot like flipping a page in a book. And books have full page pictures at times.

2.75. People reading on very small devices are going to have issues all over the net. I would not sweat that too much. they get a scroll bar, big deal. People reading text on 27 inch monitors have much bigger problems in article land then here...but then why are they subjecting themselves to that. this would be an easier page to read anyway on 27" text as it has the bullets and all creating less long runs of text. other than that, would not worry more about the 27 inchers.

3. For this page, specifically: To me, having pictures scattered in the wrong section is much more distracting than what side you put them on or the like. Somewhat similarly, it's distracting that some FA/FT/FLs (and even some PICTURES) "have a picture" and others don't. I have to wander around to figure it out. I have to read the caption to see if it is an FP or an illo for an FA. And then this page seems to have a different layout every week. I would organize and segregate the content, and have the same order every week. I can live with blank space way better than stuff in the wrong section. This would also have the advantage of not as much head scratching on layout each week.

4. I would put featured pictures in their own area, either at the top of the page or the bottom. And have them all in a (non-thumbed) wallpapery gallery. Then have a separate section of text (bulleted list) above or below the gallery, so that people can click to the link of the featuring discussion (I don't think clicking to the link of the article of an FP has any value...many are very crappy articles...or then there are multiple articles the pic is in.) But clicking to the discussion is valuable. And is in the spirit of featuredness. And maybe even draws people into participating in the FP process (which we need). If you want to do the work to write a sentence on the topic of each FP, that's fine too, especially if the object was hard to figure out. And since I advocated deep-sixing the captions.

5. Yeah, the big picture at the top is nice. Probably that argues for putting FPs first in the order of the page. (you could do FL or FA, but then which one do you pick?)

6. If you want to have pictures for the FA/FLs, etc. that is fine, but I would keep them next to blurb instead of littering the right side. Maybe make them more like DYK blurb pictures. Or just have a gallery section for each category.

7. Blurb for Scott Zolack seems out of place with the others. All the others have an objective description. This one shifts voice to the nominator. think it is better to have parallel structure.

8. FL looks like a blue haze. not sure what to do about it. Is the rationale not to have blurbs like for FA, as the lists are usually more self explanatory than our (often very obscure) FAs? I guess you could get rid of user credit...but then that seems like it might be demotivating.

9. Actually it might even be interesting to have a table for all this stuff. (Like at the bottom of State reptile). But tables on wiki are sooo painful. Excel or MS Word are so easy.

10. Not sure we need blurbs for FPs as much as a bulleted list of links. Seems strange we have blurbs for FPs, but not for FLs. Also, in the two FPs, there's again a non parallel approach (one describes the process of getting approved, the other describes the picture). And then, the blurb on the space shuttle is duplicative of a caption. But I guess if you cut all the captions, these blurbs could be the caption substititues.

11. Seems like in previous weeks, we've had a "none promoted" statement. Not sure which I like better, but like it standard.

TCO (talk) 06:42, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for comments. If you sectionalise the pics, you get large globs of white space between each section. I find it neater, more organised, to have a stream of pics down one side. The captions clearly state which type of featured content the pic is related to, and usually they're in the same order as the text. The format tends to change from week to week only inasmuch as there are or are not promotions in each section; occasionally there's another reason to vary the order, such as last week, when featured lists were the headline news for the page. I quite like shifting the order occasionally; it makes the readers sit up and notice. No blurbs for FLs? You'll need to ask Dabomb. Tony (talk) 07:39, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

In the news: Wikipedia could become trusted medical resource; neologism controversy; news in brief (4,586 bytes · 💬)

I had assumed that the CD Baby article would simply discuss shady ways to circumvent our various checks and balances (meatpuppetry comes to mind), but I was happy to see that it was actually a very solid, factual, logical article. The fact that it explicitly advises musicians to wait until they have some serious news coverage made me really happy. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The BMJ editorial has been discussed at the WikiProject Medicine talk page, where Wikipedians noted several small inaccuracies. Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:00, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the specific feature available only to editors who register for it, which the BMJ refers to, is the user interface gadget "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article", documented at User:Pyrospirit/metadata.-gadfium 21:13, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The Register

C'mon, this is dismissive - "In keeping with its tradition of being highly critical of Wikipedia ...". Would you ever precede mention of a favorable article with "In keeping with its tradition of being highly promotional of Wikipedia ..." ? -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Cade Metz is, however, rather infamously critical of Wikipedia. But I agree that the current phrasing is poor. /ƒETCH COMMS / 17:02, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Of course. And other people are infamously promotional of Wikipedia. The point is not that the article was critical. Instead, the phrasing seems to deride the criticism simply because it came from a critic. I contend that is unjustified here, especially since high-status Wikipedians have made similar criticisms of this situation -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:50, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I think our readers are smart enough to understand that the WMF blog will have a pro wikipedia bais. In terms of commenting on media reaction background is sometimes useful and we can't yet expect everyone to know that the register has a pretty consistent negative and sensationalist take on wikipedia.©Geni 03:15, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of the WMF blog. There's a whole politics of Wikipedia promotion, and I do not see the same zeal to note it in prefatory comments. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:20, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

There really isn't a media source I can think of off hand that takes an inverse if the register's line. Some of the indian media perhaps but they tend not to do the same sensationalism. it's the shear consistency and sensationalism of the register's POV that makes it unusal.©Geni 03:24, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

One doesn't need exact inverse. Consider "In another puff-piece on CEO's ..." or "In another flogging of net-hype ..." or "In another regurgitation of a press-release for clicks ...". Those genres are quite common. An implicit argument is being made here, and the dismissiveness is unjustified in this case. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I too often re-iterate my points, it's a weakness. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 04:09, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually I was unaware that Reg was habitually critical of WP until relatively recently, having stopped reading it round about when I left the telecomms industry. Most outlets are looking for news, good or bad, they mainly want a story (at least as far as WP is concerned). Being informed of a major bias like this is useful. Rich Farmbrough, 11:37, 24 June 2011 (UTC).

News and notes: WMF Board election results; Indian campus ambassadors gear up; Wikimedia UK plans; Malayalam Wikisource CD; brief news (1,707 bytes · 💬)

The crucial task, it seems to me, in regard to both ambassadors and new university editors is that they are rapidly integrated into the wider wikipedia community, and that their editing and involvement extends beyond the compulsory engagements of their courses. Given the expansion of the program despite the dubious achievements of the first trial, I worry as to what the success rate will be. Ajbpearce (talk) 22:09, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually I don't think it's a given that people have to be permanently integrated into the community as volunteers. If a student writes a GA or FA, that article continues to be extremely valuable whether they leave or not. Of course it's the ideal situation that these students become fully-fledged Wikipedians, but that doesn't mean just writing high quality content once and then leaving it to the community to continue to nourish is not helpful. These students have done a great job of helping grow the encyclopedia, especially considering they were totally new to it. Steven Walling at work 22:37, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Good news about the 'Simple' language Wikipedias. Encyclopedias have existed at two levels , adult and children , for over a century and there is no reason on line encyclopedias should be any different. I've always found print children's encyclopedias a good way to engage with a new subject, even as an adult. Lumos3 (talk) 09:41, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Technology report: Engineering department restructured; "break MediaWiki and be reverted"; news in brief (965 bytes · 💬)

As far as i know, the parser Tests never were (And still aren't) considered broken. It was the automated system that ran them and uploaded the results to mw:special:code that was broken. Of course, the newer Phpunit test's of course have more scope then the plain old parser tests. Bawolff (talk) 04:32, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, AFAIK, it was the system of parser tests that was broken, rather than the tests themselves. (I have reworded the article to make this clearer.)Parser tests obviously serve a very useful function :) The fact that a full range of unit tests is now available is a good thing nonetheless. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 10:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject report: The Elemental WikiProject (904 bytes · 💬)

And a year later, although the burst has slowed down (but not stopped), and nobody really seems to care about the importance ratings (well, nobody did care even last year), the pictures sector has died (because the last two elements are really hard to find pictures for), and I don't know what happened to the triple crowns, the group is as cohesive as ever, the big yellow island is receding, and the Internet is sucking less. Double sharp (talk) 07:19, 7 June 2012 (UTC) (formerly Lanthanum-138)

Glad to hear the project is still going strong a year later. Keep up the good work! -Mabeenot (talk) 21:37, 7 June 2012 (UTC)