Layout vote
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The purpose of the following votes is to determine whether or not to change certain aspects of the Wikipedia default skin. Most of the changes can be seen on the Wikipedia test server. The discussion about this has taken place on the Wikipedia-L mailing list (look out for all the postings with the subject "New stuff").
The borders separating the article from the top and left bars should be ...
- thinner: (0)
- as thick as they are now: (3) Timwi, Kpjas, Maveric149
There should be light dotted lines underneath a header line:
- yes: (3) Timwi, bdesham (I like it, how about an option?), Kpjas
- no: (2) Oliver P., Maveric149
There should be a box a round the footer:
- yes: (0)
- no: (5) Timwi, bdesham, Kpjas, Oliver P., Maveric149
The background colour for the non-article pages should be changed:
- yes, change it to something reddish/pink/purple: (0)
- yes, change it to something greenish/turquoise: (0)
- yes, change it to something blueish: (0)
- yes, change it to something yellowish: (0)
- yes, but I'm not sure what it should be changed to: (1) bdesham
- no, it should not be changed: (4) Timwi, Kpjas, Oliver P., Maveric149 (just make it a lighter version of the same color)
I think this vote is a waste of time. Better to work on a redesign as a whole than make small alterations -- that ishow this skin has come to be such a mess in the first place. See Paddington skin for proposed new version of this skin -- Tarquin 13:23 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- cette façon de se jeter sur le bulletin de vote dès que plus de deux personnes discutent...C'est terrible ! Ant
- Je tends à convenir mon cher. And what about those of us that override everything anyway? Huh? And why not use a background image to emulate paper texture? -- This is the real purpose of the gnarly yellow -- to look like paper and cut down on the whiteglare. I think Tarq is right -- all this silly talk about a final look seems silly. Its like your all Derek Zoolander clones trying to perfect the top secret "Magnum" look. Black text on white, fine -- green text on peach -- fine -- I still turn it to grey on black. %) Coders should stick to code, and leave the aesthetics/superficialities to the experts. --Stevertigo
I notice that Eloquence removed the vote on the "post comment feature", saying that it is "not open to discussion at this point". Could he please clarify that statement? -- Oliver P. 06:19 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- See my response on Wikipedia-l. It is very unlikely that I will remove that feature, given the strong arguments in support of it. I won't participate in this vote because it does not reflect the current status on test.wiki anyway. Furthermore, the only people likely to vote here are those who have expressed complaints -- those who have none won't bother with a vote on such minor issues. --Eloquence 08:53 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- You've given the arguments in favour of the feature, but that's not surprising, since I understand you invented it. But by saying that it is "not open to discussion", do you mean that no-one is allowed to put forward any arguments against it? That doesn't sound very democratic to me. Are you saying that there are certain matters which non-developers should not be allowed to have a say in? -- Oliver P. 09:53 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Why would an extra feature bother you? Just don't use it if you don't want to. -- Gutza 10:28 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Part of my argument was that the more features we have, the more complicated the user interface is, and that is likely to confuse and discourage newcomers. But since I ended up suggesting an even more complicated feature myself, I'm not sure I can use that argument any more... ;) -- Oliver P. 23:27 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- "Not open to discussion" was ill-phrased. Everything is open to discussion, I was just pissed off by the way this was immediately put here to vote on, without even giving me a chance to present the arguments in favor of that feature. Furthermore, I think that new features, unless they are totally destructive, should be given some time to run on the live site before a final decision is made -- it's much easier to see the pros and cons in real life than in a simulation, and you will get much more input from interested parties after doing so.
- For example, Brion originally objected to putting the "Go" button on the site, but he accidentally did so during a normal update. It turned out that many people loved it, especially after I implemented some improvements, and I now know that hundreds of people use it (because the Go URLs look different from the normal ones -- this is changed on test.wiki, but it allowed me to see how many people used the feature by looking at the URLs that were passed along). For some time we even turned off the normal search and only left the Go button active because it takes almost no performance and is still useful.
- Democracy only works if people make an informed choice. Hasty decisions are often ill-informed. For the reasons I have given, the feature is IMHO quite a logical way to improve discussions on talk pages. Let's give it a chance and see if people find it useful. --Eloquence 12:04 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Okay, I just got a bit paranoid there that you wanted to suppress criticism in order to get your own way. I'm glad to hear that everything is open to discussion really. :) And I agree that it's best not to make hasty decsisions. My criticisms of the features on the test wiki were a bit hasty, but I should point out that this was because your e-mail on the subject said that if there were no bugs or objections, "the current version of the code on test.wiki will replace the live version running all wikis soon". The word "soon" spurred me on to object, because I didn't think it was right (and still don't) to make significant changes without allowing time for people to consider them carefully first. You wouldn't have got such a negative reaction from me, and I don't think you would have got this impromptu vote springing up, if you'd just said, "I'm opening this up for discussion," rather than giving the impression that if we didn't pipe up pretty sharpish, the changes would be made before we knew what was happening. I think that when a change is implemented on the test wiki, there should be a minimum time that everyone is aware of (to be decided...) before those changes are implemented on the proper wiki, and that the changes should only be implemented if a consensus to do so is developed within that time. Yes, even if you consider the changes to be trivial or unobjectionable, because that is just a point of view. That sort of set-up would prevent any feeling that developers are trying to impose things on us against our will. Because to be honest, that's how I feel sometimes... My criticism of the new features was more a protest against developer power than about the features themselves, to be honest. If this were any other website, I wouldn't be saying this, but this being a wiki has implanted the idea in my head that we should all get an equal say in how things develop. -- Oliver P. 23:27 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think in future it might be an idea if changes which will substantially affect the English 'pedia, such as these ones, are announced on WikiEN-L or somewhere prominent on the Wikipedia itself before they're made. I read WikiEN-L and edit the Wikipedia most days, but wasn't aware that these changes were about to go live at all (I don't read Wikipedia-L). --Camembert