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Flag alt text

While reviewing alt text on an FAC, I noticed that the flag icons used in lists have the name of the country as alt text (http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/altviewer.py?page=Magdalena_Neuner). The presence of this alt text does serve a purpose, as it indicates the country of each event in Magdalena Neuner#World Championships, information which otherwise would not be available when the images are not displayed. Do you think this is a legitimate use of alt text? Ucucha 22:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like you already fixed much of that—apologies for not noticing your earlier edit. I assume the alt text in the remaining flags is OK with you? Ucucha 00:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, because it's not redundant with the adjacent text. Eubulides (talk) 03:04, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense. But another editor has now reverted your edits. Perhaps the solution should be in fixing the templates, but there is quite a complicated mess of nested sub-templates and I haven't yet figured out where the alt text is actually inserted. Ucucha 03:12, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Just checking

Is it correct to have the image in {{Sacramento RT}} marked as purely decorative? Dabomb87 (talk) 04:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Navboxes are for navigating to other parts of Misplaced Pages, and this navbox image is just a nice picture to look at on the way; it has no function and is purely decorative. Eubulides (talk) 04:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, have you considered requesting rollbacker rights? It looks like the tool may come in handy now and then. Dabomb87 (talk) 04:06, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I didn't know about rollbacker rights. Perhaps I'll ask for them someday. Thanks for the heads-up. Eubulides (talk) 04:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Flag of Japan

Since you mentioned that templates will slow things down, can you help me with the citation templates here? I am trying to take some suggestions from a few users and articles, especially Dief. I just want to make sure that, with all of this stuff going around about page loading and templates, I am ahead of the curb when it comes to FAC's. User:Zscout370 08:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

If you wish to help with the citations with this article, keep on doing stuff like this so I do not have to do it all by hand. This will eliminate any use of the vancite for books. User:Zscout370 07:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

cite template effect on load times

Hi Eubulides. Have you considered, or tried, making a small edit to each of your versions of the Israel article, and comparing preview times? I tried this, and the vcite version won, with a time of about 18.5 s, compared to 31.5 for the cite version. The times were quite variable, however, over the course of my experimenting, and not all were such a clear victory for the new template... possibly because it's a busy time of day for the servers. I do think you folks are onto something here—it is rather painful previewing or (presumably) saving a long article, but I had always thought "that's just the way it is"—and notably, this experience applies equally to IP editors, who may be put off by fixing a typo in Israel and waiting 30 seconds for the page to save. I also did a naive deletion of all cite templates, by replacing "{{cite" with null (the references remained intact but the remainder of the template became plain, unparsed text), and got a preview time of about 7.6 seconds. In all cases I'm referring to the time given in the HTML comment. Feel free to reply here; I'm essentially inactive and have a talk page full of silly stuff. Outrigger (talk) 05:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The various Wikimedia servers are of different speeds, and if you run the slow templates on a fast server it can be more competitive with the fast templates on a slow server. I typically repeat the same experiment several times, and take the median of the results. Or, for some of the off-Misplaced Pages benchmarks, we can use the same server for all the tests: this yields more-repeatable results. Eubulides (talk) 17:33, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

More alt text help

I'm trying to improve the alt text in Template:Largest Metropolitan Areas of Canada and the infobox of Manitoba. Would you have time to help or offer suggestions? Any insight you could give would be much appreciated. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 17:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

My kneejerk reaction is that the images aren't that helpful in the template (regardless of whether the reader is sighted or visually impaired) and should be removed entirely. Another possibility is to switch to purely decorative images, which don't need alt text and shouldn't have captions. Template:Infobox province or territory of Canada needs updating for Manitoba's sake; I'll take a look at that if you don't get to it first. Or perhaps the Canadian provinces should switch to {{Geobox}}? Eubulides (talk) 17:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've removed the images from the template. As for the infobox, I'm not quite sure how to go about doing that...would you mind? Thanks very much! Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 13:26, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I've added |FlagAlt=, |MapAlt=, and |CoatOfArmsAlt= parameters to Template:Infobox province or territory of Canada. Eubulides (talk) 18:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

DYK nomination of BDTH2

Hello Eubulides. I have reviewed your latest nomination at DYK... and just have a question regarding the wording. Thanks in advance and believe this hook to receive big hits. Kindly Calmer Waters 16:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, it's a great story, no? I followed up there. Eubulides (talk) 20:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Timelines and accessibility

You said at the Dragon Quest FAC that the timeline was inaccessible because of some HTML problems and because it lacks alt text. Do timelines at Timeline of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season#Timeline of events and similar hurricane season timeline articles have similar problems, and if so, what should be done to fix them? Dabomb87 (talk) 15:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

If you can comment at Misplaced Pages:Featured list candidates/Timeline of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season/archive1 about this, that would be appreciated, thanks. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Re Misplaced Pages:ENDASH#En_dashes

Looking at that section of the MoS and the MoS talk page, I do not think there is consensus yet on spacing of em dashes. Perhaps we could hold off on those changes until consensus is better established? ---kilbad (talk) 14:33, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, we do categorize some dermatology-related redirects as per WP:DERM:CAT. ---kilbad (talk) 14:40, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry about the categories: I misunderstood the convention. I see now that I put you to some work to clean up: I'd have been happy to do that for you, since it was my fault.
• The endash spacing issue is something that's bugged me for a long time: I was the one who introduced spaces around endashes in this area, contrary to scholarly-journal practice. It was only after I looked into the matter that I realized that the MoS prescription disagreed with what reliable sources do. In the unlikely event that consensus in the MoS changes back to spaced endashes I'll (gulp) take it upon myself to change this all back; no sense making you do the work.

Eubulides (talk) 19:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, I think all the cutaneous condition now use unspaced em dashes. So, since this is consistent, we could just leave it how it is at this point? Also, I have replied to you on the list talk page. Thanks again for your help! ---kilbad (talk) 20:50, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Template width

Can you work your magic with the pro surfer infobox like you did for the alt med infobox?--Travis Thurston+ 04:45, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, sorry, not easily, since (on the surface at least) they're different technologies. Eubulides (talk) 04:53, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Screen reader question

I wonder how screen reader will deal with the symbolic character codes like these █ ● ◆. If the screen reader will pronounce these symbal like rectangular, circle, dianmond anyway, how can we make the screen reader to ignore the character code which is plain decorative and meaningless to visually impaired reader? Thx. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 11:40, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I think screen readers read such characters aloud, and I don't know any easy and portable way to suppress that. One can of course work around the problem by using purely decorative images, but that would bloat the HTML. Perhaps it's better to avoid the use of "purely-decorative text". Eubulides (talk) 17:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Element category colors

After looking at WP:ACCESSIBLE I noticed wording about access for color blind people. So I ran periodic table at http://www.accesskeys.org/tools/color-contrast.html and saw a lot of errors. Do you have any suggestions on minor color changes that won't look like crap to sighted users? I ask b/c I plan to get screen captures of each little periodic table in each element infobox and create image maps of them. The table code and layout of that part of the template is a bear to maintain and renders badly in older versions of IE. BTW, once that is done, there won't be any more unreadable text in the shell part. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 01:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

That AccessColor tool uses WCAG 1.0; W3C has changed to WCAG 2.0 which uses a different algorithm. I don't know of a convenient way to check a page online for WCAG 2.0, but the Juicy Studio Luminosity Colour Contrast Ratio Analyser says that the black on #ff6666 text is OK. It agrees that the red on #ffff99 doesn't have enough contrast. How about #b00000 on #ffff99 instead?

None of the alkali metals are gases at standard temperature and pressure, so that shouldn't ever be an issue. I was worried that color blind people might not be able to differentiate between different element categories as colored on the periodic table itself. If that is not an issue, then cool. If it is an issue, then it would be great to know what small changes can be made to make the coloring more accessible w/o making the table ugly to people who are not color blind. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 13:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem is not distinguishing one color from that of an adjacent block: the problem is not being able to read the text in the given background color. Yes, it is an issue. I suggested one such small change above. Eubulides (talk) 07:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Italian Orders of Knighthood

You contributed to the first FLC; would you mind saying whether you support or oppose the re-nomination at Misplaced Pages:Featured list candidates/Italian orders of knighthood/archive2? Chrisieboy (talk) 19:18, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

DYK for BDTH2

On February 20, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article BDTH2, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Ucucha 18:10, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Noronha skink

You edited the headings in Noronha skink some time ago to fix invalid HTML. It's now come up again at the FAC (Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/Noronha skink/archive1, near the bottom); you may want to comment. Ucucha 22:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

That's closed now. Those headers are silly and arbitrary, regardless of whether they have "The" in front of them, but I'm a bit low on energy right now so I'll let it pass. Eubulides (talk) 07:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:ACCESSIBILITY and Template:Inappropriate comment

I am wondering if you have the time if you might be willing to take a look at Template:Inappropriate comment, especially with an eye to accessibility issues. The template places an inappropriate comment under a semi-transparent floating divbox. I cannot myself see where it would go wrong, but this seems like the sort of thing that might cause difficulties. Discussion at Template talk:Inappropriate comment. Many thanks, - 2/0 (cont.) 22:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you could ask at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Accessibility? The people there know more about accessibility in general than I do. Eubulides (talk) 07:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I should have figured we would have such a thing - thank you. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:49, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

alt attribute for text?

Recently I'm dealing with the problem about indicating the livery color of the MTR Hong Kong metro system route. Of course the consensus is highly against coloring the text per wp:using colour. Then there're 2 options I can go for. 1 is creating a set of plain color icon image for each line. But because MTR does not use number to identify each line, making such set of image to be superfluous IMO. Option 2 is {{colorbox}} (Lorem   East Rail Line Ipsum), I personally prefer this solution. My question is if it's possible to give the (textual) color baord an alt attribute so it will output the color name of the metro line. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 04:08, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

An alt attribute wouldn't suffice for colorblind readers: they don't see the alt text, and wouldn't be able to determine the color simply by seeing the box. How about something like " Blue" instead?

The problem of your suggestion is that the template is being used in the prose and template of station article as well (albeit in the restrained manner). Stating the color name in these situation certainly doesn't feel right:

Kowloon Tong Station is an MTR interchange station of  Light blue East Rail Line and  Green Kwun Tong Line (...)

Of course other railway system templates also suffer from similar problem in which their color indicator isn't helpful to colorblind reader. So I hope to search for a resonable solution to satisfy the visually impaired readers but preventing the viewable material to be too redundant. I find that the title attribute works just fine, but I want to hear your opinion before putting it into practice.

Kowloon Tong Station is an MTR interchange station of   East Rail Line and   Kwun Tong Line (...)

I also wanna know if the alt attribute works in the span tag. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 08:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the span element doesn't have an alt attribute. But if I'm understanding correctly, is any of this needed? If the East Rail Line's color is light blue, just say this:

''']''' is an ] interchange station of {{colorbox|#{{HK-MTR color|East Rail}}}}] and {{colorbox|#{{HK-MTR color|Kwun Tong}}}}] (...)

Kowloon Tong Station is an MTR interchange station of  East Rail Line and  Kwun Tong Line (...)

A screen reader will simply skip over the color blocks, which is fine. Don't use span with a title element, as that will cause some screen readers (but not all) to read the titles aloud, which will simply slow things down with not-that-useful info. The color blocks are purely decorative and should be skipped by screen readers. Eubulides (talk) 08:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I guess so. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 09:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

NaF

A recent set of edits on sodium fluoride lists a series of older articles on toxicology of fluoride. Some of these articles are quite old, and I worry that they are not representative of the best scholarship. One appear is in what I am guessing is a minor journal, e.g. Complementary Medical Research, but some cite Journal of Dental Research, which might be high-level. In any case it would be helpful if you would look them over and if you can recommend a more modern comprehensive (see WP:secondary) source that could replace these primary older sources.--Smokefoot (talk) 15:40, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

ref=harv

Would adding support for ref=harv add an unacceptable performance hit to {{vcite book}} and the other members of the family? ref=CITEREFSmith2005 is fast (for the server, at least), but it's ugly.

If ref=harv is unacceptable, what about cref=Smith2005 which would yield the same result as ref=CITEREFSmith2005? — John Cardinal (talk) 22:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm afraid the performance hit for ref=harv would be too much. It wouldn't be a factor of two for the whole article, but I'm pretty sure it'd be noticeable. The problem is not ref=harv itself; it's decoding all those last1=, first1=, last2=, etc. parameters.

I like the idea of |cref=; that would be simple and cheap. The name "cref" might be problematic, though, as {{cref}} means something else. How about |harvid= instead (short for Harvard citation ID)? The idea would be that |harvid=SmithJones2005 is equivalent to |ref={{harvid|Smith|Jones|2005}}. These things are really IDs, not references, so I've always disliked calling them "refs" anyway. Eubulides (talk) 00:19, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree cref is not a good name, and |harvid=SmithJones2005 is OK with me. — John Cardinal (talk) 01:16, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, how about this edit to {{vcite book}}? If it works for you, I'll document it and install it in the other vcite templates. Eubulides (talk) 17:46, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

BDTH2

Hi there

I was wondering about your expansion of the "preparation" section - it seems a little too detailed? At WP:CHEM/CHEMISTRY, we've been trying to move away from cookbook-style instructions. That's why I phrased it the way I did: the use of cysteamine as the hydrochloride, the choice of solvents is probably due to convenience than chemical considerations. The isolation is also routine, and does not deserve such elaboration. My point is, with a little less detail, the gist is still there. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 10:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to simplify the preparation section, but also please bear in mind that the audience for this particular page includes parents of autistic children, who can't be expected to know what would be routine to a chemist. Eubulides (talk) 17:45, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

But we're not expecting them to use our WP article to go prepare their own BDTH2? Unlike the experimental section in a paper, which is written in sufficient detail that experiments are reproducible, we're simply trying to outline what reactants you need to get the desired product here. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 23:45, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course not. Even the longer version of BDTH2#Preparation doesn't give them enough detail to do that. For example, it doesn't advise people to use a separatory funnel. The point is not to give every detail; it's to give even a non-expert enough detail to see what's typically involved. It's helpful, for example, to show to a non-expert that the compound is relatively easy to make, but not something you'd be able to make at home. Eubulides (talk) 23:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

PS. I am copying this discussion to Talk:BDTH2 #Preparation section, since it's entirely about BDTH2. Eubulides (talk) 23:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Hennekam syndrome

Would you review the dash type used with the synonyms for the above syndrome?? I am not sure, but should an em dash be used? ---kilbad (talk) 03:06, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Definitely endash, since they're disjunctions. Also, I tried to improve the citation quality. I used Diberri's tool, which is really handy, along with {{vcite journal}}. Eubulides (talk) 04:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Also

Perhaps I could get your thoughts on my first feature picture nomination at Misplaced Pages:Featured picture candidates/Pyogenic granuloma 1.jpg? ---kilbad (talk) 00:35, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox UK Legislation

What do you think should be done with the alt text in this template? The image appears purely decorative, so |link=|alt= should be used, but that erases the necessary attribution for the CC-BY-SA image. Ucucha 21:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The SVG image itself is CC-BY-SA, but the underlying work (the actual UK coat of arms) is not. Any protectible details of the SVG image are lost when rendered into a few pixels, so it's OK to use |link= in that particular case. Other possibilities include using a different image, or omitting the decorative image entirely. Eubulides (talk) 21:23, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Template needs alt text?

Does Template:DentalFormula, which uses some form of math syntax, need alt text? Dabomb87 (talk) 22:31, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

It's helpful that it generates alt text automatically, yes. Not being an expert in dental formulas, I don't know whether one would want to be able to override the alt text that it generates by default: was that the question? Eubulides (talk) 00:03, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

DQ FAC Timeline-to-table conversion

I posted a reply with the issue i have with the attempted conversion. The current version loses its visual separation from the article that the timeline has. It is also much larger text that can take up a huge chunk of the page displayed because of the long titles.陣内_Jinnai 02:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)