Template talk:Xt

Why is this needed?

Extensive discussion is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_107#Using_color_and_typeface_to_set_off_example_text_on_MOS_and_MOSNUM so I do hope we don't need to re-invent the wheel and debate the reasons all over again. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 21:12, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Could you please explain how and where you would use such a template here? Note that an overwhelming amount of Wikipedia:Manual of Style is dedicated to grammatical issues with explicit good and bad examples and a great deal of inline text, whereas the only two of our manuals that use such formatting are currency and time and date; significant revision of the formatting of such articles should be discussed, as a separate matter, on their respective talk pages or talk:mos. -- D. Guillaume (talk) 02:37, 28 August 2013 (UTC).

In the great scheme of things, wrongly writing

"{{!xt|In [Sao Paulo], expect to pay 17 USD for just one night's wifi access in Avenue Colon on December 14, 2012 but you'll get it for free transiting any US airport after Decem., 23 2012 and, after arriving in [[Saint Lucia]], it may be as cheap as $5 (or just £1.18368)}}" rather than

"{{xt|In [[São Paulo]], expect to pay USD17 for just one night of Wi-Fi access in Ave Colon on 14 Dec 2012 but you'll get it for free transiting any U.S. airport after 23 Dec 2012 and, after arriving in [[Saint Lucia]], it may be as cheap as XCD5 (or just GBP1.20)}}" is no big deal.

However, if a new contributor finds that his well meant contribution is simply reverted (rather than corrected with an explanatory edit summary of something like "edited to conform to our MoS, see TDF, $ and Abbrev") he may become dispirited or even angry that his efforts have just been summarily removed (with some robotic comment such as "Undo revision 2053021 by Banda44").

If our editors then do take the time and effort to read some of our style manuals, it's helpful to editors old and new if they find the clearest possible exposition of what we regard as good practice, and this template (and its sister, {{!xt}} makes things just that little bit clearer when discussing {{xt|good}} and {{!xt|bad}} examples.

You have, indeed, already found more than one example of where this template could be used to assist clarity of exposition. However, my understanding of experimental templates is that they can only be added to ONE low profile article outside of user namespace. This is what our $ page would currently look like if the two experimental templates were used there. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 14:05, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, we don't have any consensus for using colored text and even if we did, I do not think the potential use for this template is widespread enough to warrant its existence. Texugo (talk) 14:21, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Do you understand that this is explicitly NOT for use in articles?

Can you point me to a previous consensus NOT to use coloured text or NOT to use font changes outside of main (article) namespace to assist clarity of exposition?

A template does not have to have very widespread use to have a utility where it is used. If we are serious about not using HTML then this template has its (restricted) uses. Template:Israel trail mark is never going to be very widely used, but where it is used it has the same general benefits of obscuring HTML and making edits quicker and easier to track (eg: if the symbols actually marked on the ground in Israel changed).

Have you actually read the whole use rationale in Wikipedia (no point in going over it all again)?

You also seem to be bringing up the same "minority use" objection that was defeated to allow the "experimental" use of templates. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 14:59, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I can't point to a consensus not to use hot pink text boxes either, but that doesn't mean they should automatically be allowed. Get a consensus for making your desired changes on the policy page in question first, worry about codifying it into a template afterward. Personally I think having a mixture of black, light blue, dark blue, red, and green all on the same line is pretty ugly, and I don't know why we would need to use a font that never appears in the wild. Texugo (talk) 15:08, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

One of the reasons for changing how templates are introduced and reviewed was the recognition that discussion may be difficult and/or premature until and unless there is at least one concrete experimental example to discuss. The coding of this template has now been done and the documentation written. I would prefer to build consensus for some more important and substantive MoS changes (such as allowing "Sq" to be used as a recognised abbreviation for "Square", and "dbl" for "double occupancy" and "sgl" for "sgl occupancy" in listings) before trying to make a limited number of pages as user-friendly as possible. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 15:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I think you need to slow down and take the time to actually read what has been written by me on this page and by others at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_107#Using_color_and_typeface_to_set_off_example_text_on_MOS_and_MOSNUM so we don't need to re-invent the wheel.

In a style manual we are not that concerned about prettiness. Black (with the default skin) is normal text. Blue signifies hypertext (it may be bolded or italicised, of course), and maroon and dark green text is not intended to uglify (or ornament or prettify the text) but rather to carry the clear semantic connotations of {{xt| a good ''or'' suggested style}} and {{!xt|a bad ''or'' deprecated}} example. --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 15:41, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Again, we have not established here whether the need or usefulness of that approach outweighs any incidental ugly effects it may produce. I do not think I should be required to read discussions on other sites before objecting here. What I see on your example page is that we have short lines of text, now in a jumble of six colors and I think it appears more confusing than without. The text already clearly indicates which is right and which is wrong. Texugo (talk) 16:05, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

How does the addition of two additional colours give six colours? --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 16:12, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, five. Texugo (talk) 16:13, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

On my "example page" of User:W. Frank/$1 I still only count 4 colours (if emphasis of boldening or italics or underlining is added it doesn't change the colour):

1) Black for normal text

2) Blue for hyperlinked normal text

3) {{xt|Dark green}} for a good or suggested style and

4) {{!xt|Maroon}} for a bad or deprecated example

However, I don't think that on this example MoS page I need to hyperlink the countries (that is a semantic distraction) so this is my example of what I would hope to eventually (after discussion and consensus building) end up with: User:W. Frank/$2

Is three, rather than 4 colours an improvement? --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 16:45, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

On your example page, I actually find that use of these templates significantly reduces clarity, in part because of the color jumble, in part because the templates are being used absolutely everywhere (far beyond what en.WP does, leading to the effect of emphasizing the "bad" examples from sheer volume alone), in part because switching between typefaces several times in a line is harder to read, and also because using a typeface that displays numbers in a very different style from our usual trusty Ariel looks terrible for a page that has lots of numbers: €150 and {{xt|€150}} are far different, and the latter is not visually representative of what it should look like on a page. Trying to represent "good" formatting using both a typeface and color that will never be used on a mainspace page seems backwards! -- D. Guillaume (talk) 17:58, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

In use on many talk and discussion pages where its removal would cause ambiguity. Personally, I find it useful on Wikipedia and here for reducing the amount of typing needed to make a colour change. It does no harm and has an obvious use. Remove the experimental tag. This whole idea of "template clutter" is problematical in a project like this where server space becomes cheaper every year and the maintenance cost of this kind of template is pretty well zero. --118.93nzp (talk) 01:40, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Avoiding template clutter has never been about server space, but rather about keeping our mental space organized and not cluttered with idiosyncratic and/or unpopular ways to do things, so that the user can more easily familiarize themselves with what works and what is encouraged. The question here is whether having text in a different color and font is something we actually want to facilitate and encourage, which, from the discussion above, is not something that has consensus. If we don't want to encourage its use, we don't need a template to make it easier. The solution to it being in use is to substitute it, which I will gladly take the 10 minutes it would take to do personally. Texugo (talk) 10:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that point. My answer would be that I don't see the necessity for every editor to know and be familiar with every template.

Let's dissect the most recent time I used this template:

On a purely technical level, if the "undo" button is reserved for vandalism and bad faith efforts, it often means that - in the process of physically having to edit text you may at first blush find objectionable - you may discover some merit in the words or general meaning after all.

Of course if I had been writing these words as original text, I would not have included Greenwich in the "What do all these numbers mean?" section of wv:How_to_use_dynamic_maps. However, in the context of the pre-existing text of {{!xt| Longitude specifies east-west, from -180.0 to 180.0 with the Prime Meridian in England being the zero reference point.}} being changed by me to {{xt| Longitude specifies east-west, from -180.0 to 180.0 with the Prime Meridian passing through [[Greenwich]], England being the zero reference point.}} I do think that my text both corrected the impression that a line of longitude was a relatively short line found only in England (rather than reaching from pole to pole and, in the case of the prime meridian, only passing through England before then passing through the lands of France, Spain, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Ghana again before finally reaching landfall again in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica on its way to the South Pole) and might have jogged readers memories about it's forebear the Greenwich Meridian. Now that I've examined this text again, I think I'll change it again since, of course, it's not a "point" at all...

What is the alternative template that I could/should have used to compare and contrast the two pieces of differing text? --118.93nzp (talk) 11:37, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

The standard things we've always used: quotes, italics, bolding, line breaks, indentation, or some combination thereof. There's nothing special or critical here which calls for a novel way of making your post stand out. Texugo (talk) 11:50, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

It's not my post that needs to stand out but the differing texts. Have you read the discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_107#Using_color_and_typeface_to_set_off_example_text_on_MOS_and_MOSNUM  ?? --118.93nzp (talk) 11:54, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

We are not bound to follow WP's consensus. There are a number of unaddressed concerns above and only you/W. Frank seem to be for it. I actually think you and I should shut up now and let other people express their opinions too. Texugo (talk) 12:03, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm actually quite astonished to notice that our anti-template editor didn't even bothered to comment in here nevertheless this experimental template is being used very firmly in our policy pages. --Saqib (talk) 13:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I've now removed the template from the policy page where it has being used. The experimental template says "Until there is a consensus to keep the template it should not be added to more than one low-visibility article (as an example of usage)." but the templates is already being used on various talk pages and everyone knowns now how it looks and whats it purpose so I don't think we still need them as examples on a policy page anymore. Frankly speaking, I'm not a anti-template user and I love to see and support when there's a template that actually can be useful on this wiki but I find this template really very futile or if I can be at a loose end. Furthermore, its been months now and no support so far in favour of this template so I'll repeat what Texugo said somewhere "There is no reason to keep shelved experiments which have failed to catch on, sitting around for years at a time." --Saqib (talk) 13:34, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

By the way, in response to some stuff way up above, there are already four colors used: bright red for non-existent links, bright blue for unvisited links, purplish blue for visited links, and black for everything else. Adding green for xt and dark red for !xt does indeed increase it to an unnecessary jumble of 6 colors and two fonts, in addition to the already existing distinctions of bold, italics, underline and strikethrough and the formatting possibilities of indentation, line breaks, bullets, and tables. I have never once seen a situation where there weren't already plenty of tools available to express ideas clearly. Texugo (talk) 14:33, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Personally I find the transition to serif font and the dark shade of the colors used makes them wholly unsuitable for inline use. If these templates are kept, their use should be restricted to separate bullet points, and some additional method (beyond just color) must always be used to distinguish "good" and "bad" (for accessibility reasons). Powers ^(talk) 00:54, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The accessibility point is a good one; the font change to a serif font was intended for that very reason, but I do agree there needs to be difference in font between {{xt}} and {{!xt}}. What font would you suggest for {{!xt}}? --118.93nzp (talk) 02:15, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Answering that question would imply I see a need for this template in the first place. My argument is for dropping these templates, for fewer colors and fonts resulting in a less jumbled look, and I certainly would not want to add yet another font. Texugo (talk) 10:28, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

118 totally missed my point. Powers ^(talk) 18:22, 6 February 2014 (UTC)