Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SirHoneyBadger]

More irritating than a big floating colored box?

I think that once people got used to it, it would end up a great deal more flexible, and a lot less obtrusive. Not to mention, subtler. It's not like magenta and lime green would necessarily be the colors of choice, afterall.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Frankly, I agree that colored words/sentences is likely to be confusing and irritating. Especially since you seem to advocate mixing it with the normal text, which forces everyone to take note of the additional information, even if they are not interested.

Deathworks

[Footkerchief]

Yeah, if we're talking about color-coding the text itself, I'm 100% against that.  The only legit uses of colored text are hypertext and Time Cube.

[Mason11987]

As far as suggestions go, I've made several already in this thread, but how about giving some kind of timeframe as to when the empty articles are going to be filled? Is there any kind of ETA on that? It makes sense to me that, if you've already gone ahead and made this level of change to the Wiki, that you ought to have some kind of idea of when those changes will be more fully realized.

That's like asking when will wikipedia be done.

It's a matter of the users willing to work on it.  Asking us for an ETA on when the wiki will be more useful then it currently is, isn't a suggestion.  It's a question.

So how about some kind of progress report? That should make it more obvious that the Wiki is going through a period of major change to any casual visitor, and it would also help potential Wiki editors find what the current focus is on, and what needs more attention.

I think most readers would prefer us to spend effort improving the wiki instead of developing some sort of frequent report on how "done it is".

The red text on the main page points out that it is not complete, there are a lot of pages still empty.  If you'd like a count we could do that I guess.

There are: 699 articles considered "elven" which we're rating as "worst".

 http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Category:Elven_Quality_Articles

102 are human
0 are dwarven (best)

that's a "progress report" I don't know how much sharing that improves the wiki though.

For that matter, how about listing the date any given article was last modified? That way, it would be easier to see how up to date an article was, just by looking at it.

Later: You're right. I must have missed that. In that case (in the interest of it being more useful), could it please be moved to a more prominent location?

Bottom of every page "last modified on"

It can't, it's part of the mediawiki software.  You can click the "history" link at the top of any page though to see previous versions though

Also, how about putting the "green box" on the main Wiki page? As an example, if nothing else, since it's referenced. That would go a long way towards reducing confusion, I would think.

Done, the first link on the main page now goes there.  Putting the same box doesn't look very good, but it's about as easy as it could be now.


One reason (I think) that we have the real world text in the sidebar is so that the text is intentionally short

[Draco18s]

Ahh, makes sense. Though there's always the (very extremely tiny) risk that you get in trouble for what others say.

Toady and ThreeToe are smarter than that.

[Mason11987]

Ahh, makes sense. Though there's always the (very extremely tiny) risk that you get in trouble for what others say.

Toady and ThreeToe are smarter than that.

I don't really know what here is worth reporting.  People are having a discussion, and I for one think it's valuable to have improvements to the wiki discussed and visible frequently.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I don't think the colored text should be randomly interspersed. That's not what I'm saying. It should still be clearly separated, as the boxes are, only without the big clunky box to take up space.

Real life information can be easily and safely placed in a less distracting area, whereas a big colored box is automatically going to be a distraction, no matter where you try to hide it.

In other words, the benefits of a "box", without the disadvantage of it taking up additional space, forcing a specific shape, and the jarringness of an object on the page, interrupting the flow of text.

[Tarran]

That colored text is also distracting. believe it or not. And considering that will be placed on a white background with black normal text, it will be even more distracting.

[SirHoneyBadger]

That colored text is also distracting. believe it or not. And considering that will be placed on a white background with black normal text, it will be even more distracting.

You really can't get around the fact that no matter what is done, it's going to be distracting. Boxes aren't any better for that, and in my opinion (and I've stated some of the advantages of colored text over boxes), significantly worse.

[SIGVARDR]

like somebody else said,Hypertext and timecube are the only legit uses of colored text.Seriously,look up timecube.

On a more serious note:will register with the wiki to help with filling in some of those articles.Without the wiki back in the day,i probably would have passed DF over because of the starting complexity.

Also,colored text,well,it's not as bad as colored boxes,but neither sound like attractive solutions.

[Tarran]

Well, we would have to have a vote on which is better. As it stands I don't really care about colored text, but I'd rather have boxes instead.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Also,colored text,well,it's not as bad as colored boxes,but neither sound like attractive solutions.

In a perfect world, we'd all intuitively know what an author had in mind, and be able to instantly tell what's pertinent to the game, and what's a joke, or a real-life statement, etc. Unfortunately, we're not psychic, and therefore other means must be found.

I don't think colored text is perfect. I do think that it's easy for everyone to use, while being both more flexible, and not nearly as intrusive, as the boxes.

[SirHoneyBadger]

If we're going to have a vote, let's make it Forum-wide, and in another thread, since the Wiki's there for everyone to use.

[SIGVARDR]

Couldn't you just have a separate header and add non-game related info in there? example:

*title of article here*
*insert info here as it already is in the wiki*

In real life
*insert a paragraph of real life info here*

[SirHoneyBadger]

That's a possibility too, SIGVARDR.

One objection I'd have to that is that the colored text/boxes both would give immediate sight-recognition as to what's what. Even if you label something explicitly, we all know that some people are going to miss or ignore the label.

Not that that's a "good excuse", but it is a facet of human nature.

The use of different colors is a pretty straightforward and universal sign that "this portion of the text is different".

Bolding the text (and/or using italics, slashes, underlines) is another (but unfortunately, limited) possibility.

Slashes might be used for joke text, for instance, while bold might be used for real world info. Still distracting, and somewhat annoying to me, but something for the anti-color crowd.