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Threads older than 2 months may be archived by MiszaBot II. |
Contents
- 1 Use of mirror-image placement to reverse position of flags and country names in side-by-side comparisons of national stats
- 2 Use of icons instead of text in table headers
- 3 RfC on expanded use of quote templates with "giant quotation marks" icons in them
- 4 Flags of non-state actors in military conflict infoboxes
- 5 Flags in international school infoboxes
Use of mirror-image placement to reverse position of flags and country names in side-by-side comparisons of national stats
Please comment at Template talk:FlagIOCathlete#Option to move flag. The discussion is about adding template parameters to enable displays like the following, which in the second column reverse the position of the flag and country, simply for the sake of a mirrored visual effect:
Jane Smith | United States | vs. | France | Jeanne Deaux | ||
Xian Chen | China | vs. | Honduras | Juana Perez |
There may (or may not) be information architecture, usability, and accessibility concerns with this.
— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:20, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Use of icons instead of text in table headers
Some editors are using icons instead of text for table headers in gymnastics articles. Compare:
- Gymnastics at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Women's artistic individual all-around#Qualification
- Gymnastics at the 2000 Summer Olympics – Women's artistic individual all-around#Final
Personally, I find this confusing and unnecessary. It also makes the content inaccessible for people using screen readers as the alt tags for those images are the names of the files (and they aren't even in English). Does this seem like a violation of the WP:ICON guidelines? Kaldari (talk) 06:57, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
- @Kaldari: Yes, it's clearly against this guideline, and it also raises MOS:ACCESS, MOS:TABLE, and WP:ENC concerns. Kill it with fire. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:29, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
RfC on expanded use of quote templates with "giant quotation marks" icons in them
The RfC at Template talk:Pull quote#Request for comments on use and documentation is relevant to the central concerns of MOS:ICONS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:08, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Flags of non-state actors in military conflict infoboxes
The title says it all, do we or do we not use flags for non-state actors in the infoboxes of military conflicts? I have long seen inconsistency between articles on this subject. Take for example Hezbollah's role in the Syrian Civil War, they are listed with flag in the (rather crowded) infobox on the main article, but I often see their flag being removed from smaller articles such as the most recent case I witnessed here: [1]. I'd like to hear from the people in this project what their thoughts on this are. Perhaps this issue has been raised before, I tried to look through the archives real quick but didn't find it then. Your comments would be appreciated!
Jurryaany (talk) 07:49, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Flags in international school infoboxes
When I wrote the international school infoboxes (such as Template:International schools in the United Arab Emirates, Template:International schools in Germany, or Template:International schools in Thailand) I used flags to indicate the country of origin/country of allegiance/country of educational system of the international schools.
Some editors think they are unnecessary, so they were removed from Template:International schools in Pakistan and Template:International schools in the United Kingdom. I think the flags are a good idea since it can help readers quickly locate the designated (country of origin) schools of a certain host country's template (such as the French/German/Italian/Japanese/Korean/American/British/etc school(s) in a given country). However in some cases country of allegiance/affiliation may be disputed (in some cases schools switched to the International Baccalaureate system and/or renamed themselves from "American" to "International")
In some city templates I added school flags on purpose (such as Template:Kigali and Template:Bujumbura) because the "International schools in ---" template redirects to the city template and the city template itself has the country's flag (since all of the international schools are in that city, the city template itself becomes the "international school template")
- "Template:International schools in Rwanda" redirects to Template:Kigali, and "Template:International schools in Burundi" redirects to Template:Bujumbura)
WhisperToMe (talk) 10:00, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
- Per WP:MOSFLAG these should not be included as the schools do not represent the country in the terms of the guideline. However, even if this were the case, we should treat navboxes the same as infoboxes with regards to this - per WP:INFOBOXFLAG, they should not be used because they are unnecessarily distracting and give undue prominence to one field among many. This is evident in your examples above. Flags should be removed from all navboxes. Also, they look awful! --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:34, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
- Indeed. Flagicons are slower, not faster, for readers to identify, unless they're familiar with a flag. One of the problems with flags-as-symbols is that (1) most of them are not familiar to most people, and (2) many of them are very similar to each other (ever tried squinting to see the difference betweent the New Zealand and Australian flags?). There are further issues. Some people will object to the emphasis on nationality/nation states embodies by flags. Most readers will not be aware that you can hover your mouse over the icon ... but even if they are, it will take them longer than simply reading a country-name. And although I concede that they can on occasion look pretty, they can also look gaudy, and in some places are hard to arrange well. I encourage editors to minimise their use. Tony (talk) 10:54, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
- On one hand in most templates one would only see flags of well-known countries (United States, United Kingdom, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan are the most common international school affiliations) but on on the other hand lesser known ones do appear (particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia). As for Australia and New Zealand Indonesia does have schools from both countries (see Template:International schools in Indonesia) but I don't know any other country with a New Zealand school.
- I do think concerns about clutter need to be addressed. I do believe, in regards to prominence, that country affiliation and/or educational system style is an important attribute in international schools. Many are established to provide a particular education style (whether French, Japanese, German, North American, British, etc.) in a region.
- WhisperToMe (talk) 13:53, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
- Indeed. Flagicons are slower, not faster, for readers to identify, unless they're familiar with a flag. One of the problems with flags-as-symbols is that (1) most of them are not familiar to most people, and (2) many of them are very similar to each other (ever tried squinting to see the difference betweent the New Zealand and Australian flags?). There are further issues. Some people will object to the emphasis on nationality/nation states embodies by flags. Most readers will not be aware that you can hover your mouse over the icon ... but even if they are, it will take them longer than simply reading a country-name. And although I concede that they can on occasion look pretty, they can also look gaudy, and in some places are hard to arrange well. I encourage editors to minimise their use. Tony (talk) 10:54, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
- Per Robsinden, the main templates seem way too cluttered with the flags. It was a nice good faith addition though, and took some work to set up, so thanks for that good energy and thought-process. Randy Kryn 13:47, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
- You're welcome :) - I have often used the flags to "group" schools by affiliation (for instance American schools are together under the same flag, British schools are together, etc.) and this is seen in Template:International schools in Spain and Template:International schools in Japan - Do you support replacing them with text indicators such as "Brazil:" ? WhisperToMe (talk) 13:53, 22 September 2016 (UTC)