Template talk:Climate data

Justification

I created this template after visiting the Venice article during the course of the Collaboration of the Month for August 2019 and seeing that someone had copied the values for the English Wikipedia Weather box template into it, where they were accomplishing exactly nothing (save inflating the raw size of an already tragically bloated article). My first instinct was to highlight that whole big block of poopy and satisfyingly tap the Delete key, but luckily my curiosity took hold before I did.

Upon examining how the template rendered on Wikipedia, it struck me that there were indeed some parts of it that would probably be germane to trip planning, especially in light of global warming. Thus I fearlessly embarked on getting the template to work here on Wikivoyage, despite the fact that my only experience with the programming language Lua prior to this was the roughly 90 seconds I spent adding a few plugins to my CudaText settings file last year. After a few hours of fiddling with it, I can't say I'm at all displeased with how it ended up, though I certainly do intend to invest some more time later in the tweaking and polishing phase. I removed the fields that were obviously strictly encyclopedic in nature and since everything that remains is optional to include, I leave it to those brave souls who test it out to use their best judgment on which data points are relevant to the locale of the article. If anything fouls up don't hesitate to ping me here or on my talk page and I'll see what can be done to ameliorate the situation. Oh, and if anyone here possessing some actual facility with Lua is feeling squirrely and so inclined (insert several praying hands emojis here), please feel free to improve on what I've done; you won't be stepping on any toes. (Unless your contribution is to send all this to the "round file," in which case we're headed to the mattresses. #kiddingbutnotreally #dontyucksomeoneelsesyum #wikivoyage4lyfe)

Hopefully this template will be uncontroversial, but I'm starting this discussion to allow for feedback per WV:Using MediaWiki templates#New MediaWiki template proposals. — ⚞🐈ℛogueScholar🗨₨Talk⚟ (My recent mischief) 05:35, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

You are quite bold, I'll grant you that. I think before you go on a crusade and spread this to more articles, you should get support first (e.g. on Pub). The table you added is nice and all, but probably not for a travel guide. We discussed this a year ago, and graphs won over tables as being much more useful/clear for travellers, even if incomplete. Average relative humidity or #sunlight days are IMO pretty much useless (unless it's some extreme, which is not the case in Venice). Also, the table bloats the article 10x more than the original graph, and the colors don't really are too aesthetic either. -- andree.sk(talk) 06:35, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I, for one, would strongly support this option. Ypsilon (talk) 16:45, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Replacing the climate graph with Template:Climate data

Swept in from the pub

As everybody knows, a year ago the climate table was replaced with what most people here thought was the best thing since sliced bread: the current climate graph.

Myself I prefer to read the information from a table rather than the current graph setup. Not to mention that it often creates additional whitespace in the articles (or pushes down things like photos and dynamic maps below it), as mentioned in Template talk:Climate, and at that talk page some people also have found it not mobile friendly, not web browser friendly, sunlight and sea temperatures not showing up, and one commenter found it overall strange displaying temperatures and precipitation on the same chart. The concerns have gone unadressed.

Now I don't actually have a problem with the graph... as I've simply moved over to using the data in Wikipedia articles for climate information whenever I've needed it for working on climate sections in articles, looking for which months a destination would be suitable to feature on the Main Page and otherwise. In Wikipedia, as you probably know (example), the data is in a tidy table instead of along a set of rectangles going up and down. The colors, which according to some are not too aesthetic, actually show the information in a larger context (shades of red, orange, beige for temperature, different shades of blue for precipitation days etc.) so you can visually compare climate charts from different cities and regions. In the current version you can really only compare months in the same chart (same city) "at a glance". User-friendliness, information at a glance and such were the reasons to move over to the current table.

I've at a few occasions thought about opening a discussion to import the Wikipedia climate template, but never found time (also I know nothing about coding and the technical side of templates). But now, RogueScholar has started such a discussion and also implemented the WP climate table in a test article (Venice), plus it has previously existed in at least one other article (Las Palmas).

Granted, the whole thing is bigger but it can be collapsed (talking about collapsable templates, one thing that could be worth bringing over from Russian Wikivoyage is the collapsable dynamic map). Perhaps not all sections in the Wikipedia table are necessary to use here but I guess not all of them need to be used (also in the current climate table we have the options of adding sea water temperature and whatnot). But again, there are a lot of options in that template that a traveler could find useful like UV radiation (sunny locations), rainy days in each month (tropics and other rainy places), and sunshine hours (frequently overcast/foggy locations, far northern and southern places).

Thoughts? Ypsilon (talk) 18:23, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

The chart version also came from WP, from w:Template:Climate chart, which is used on over 1000 pages (although w:Template:Weather box is used on 16000).

Personally, after living with it for almost exactly a year, I still hate the chart. I strongly prefer the climate table that it used to be: it's much easier to read and interpret, and doesn't suffer from weird problems of not fitting properly on mobile devices, overlapping bars for temperature and precipitation, difficult problems scaling the Y-axis, etc. It even has horrible display problems on its own documentation page, FFS!

I would be very happy to return to any table-based format rather than the chart. Whether that's the old table, or a new one with colored backgrounds in each cell like Template:Climate data, I don't have a strong preference. I do think it's better as a sidebar item than a huge inline chart. The new one takes up a lot of space, even with text size reduced, so it should be trimmed down. Most places only have avg high and low temps (no mean) and rainfall height (not days), with some adding snowfall height, and I think the sets of data the old table supported are generally enough for a travel guide; anything else like UV index or days of rain can and should be conveyed in prose. Displaying converted temperatures in parentheses probably contributes significantly to the width; it would be better to use the abbr mouseover from the old incarnation, or use a "show conversion" link that either drops down to reveal the converted table like the current chart does, or simply a toggle for °C/°F that replaces the numbers in the table with the one you click. --Bigpeteb (talk) 18:59, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

In the end, the graph template can be fixed/extended too - just saying... Or you can even copy-paste the html code and adjust the few broken graphs. Or overlay them manually with additional 'facts'. -- andree.sk(talk) 19:12, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

• Graph for me, in the spirit of 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. Whatever you guys decide, just don't argue with "it often creates additional whitespace". The table pushes the whole article and visually completely splits the "article flow" (like the embassy table, that is now hidden in most articles)... I'm not sure what's to hate about the graph, but I may be skewed, because I look at such a graph every day in a weather forecast app. -- andree.sk(talk) 19:12, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
• Like User:Andree.sk, I prefer the graph. While I really like those tables you mean, Ypsilon, I don't think all the information is necessary for the traveler — in most cases. If a place has an exceptional weather statistic not revealed in the graph, then I think it would be OK to use the table. The graph wasn't perfect originally but nowadays I think it looks quite good, and modern, in our articles. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 20:11, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
• I much prefer the graph status quo, though certainly concede that they have issues that should be resolved. Going back to tables just because a relatively new template has some bugs seems a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:08, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. I think the graphs are connecting and will connect better with travellers than big, complex tables will. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 14:02, 4 September 2019 (UTC)