Template talk:Aircontent

Sub-headings

This template currently adds a number of pseudo sub-headings by using both bolded text and the <big> font markup. To me eye, that creates an aesthetic problem that I'd like to resolve. Technically, the use of the <big> font markup is slightly problematic as well, for HTML standards reasons (we should be using CSS), although that's a fairly minor issue in my mind.

So, currently the template provides:

Example sub-heading

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3

My thinking is that, since the template is adding a bulleted list, we should be using the normal list heading/list item formatting, which means using the semi-colon/colon list format, which provides:

Example sub-heading

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

Alternatively, we could retain the bulleted items, which would look like:

Example sub-heading

• Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3

There are other formatting options available of course, but the somewhat standardized formatting that the semi-colon gives seems fine to me. Thoughts? Suggestions? Alternatives?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:13, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to see a mock-up in an article, but basically the last one looks okay to me. I have a minimum font size set on my browsers, so making it smaller isn't an issue for me. The template is locked for editing - only admins can edit it. - Ahunt (talk) 19:18, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Right, just gotta use {{editprotected}}, but we need to show some sort of consensus to move ahead for an uninvolved admin to come along and fulfill the request. I'll start a template sandbox (if there isn't one already) and create a proposed changed template. That makes it easier on the admin who comes to fulfill the edit request, regardless. ps.: The font sizes actually depend on the skin that you use. or, at least, they should. Using the semi-colon applies a CSS class to the text, which can be different for different skins. The <big> tag, on the other hand, is a constant (which is defined in CSS these days, but it's not easily changeable since it's not part of the skins CSS).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:30, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

True, the semicolon-plus-colon type of list actually creates a CSS definition list. You will find we have a couple of admins on the aircraft project who will probably help out when the time comes, but let's see te mock up in action first and get a consensus on that basis. - Ahunt (talk) 19:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

First stab at a change is visible at Template:Aircontent/testcases. I'm running off to take care of some stuff right at the moment, but I'll be back later.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:42, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

That looks fine to me, let's see if anyone else has any objections. - 20:04, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Please change the template to use what is in the sandbox, per discussion above. Regards,
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 11:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:33, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:27, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The "Comparable aircraft" subsection does not appear in the template on the articles. - BilCat (talk) 14:03, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Headlines

Is there any reason this does not use headlines?Curb Chain (talk) 06:15, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The template coding did produce Level 4 headers before the change above I believe, they were not intended to show in the table of contents though if that is what you mean. An apparent problem now is that the 'headers' are using a much smaller font size, rarely used in aircraft articles, and it looks very odd next to the other standard headers. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:17, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, Thanks. Well it seems like this change (above) went with out much discussion. If you feel that the font (size) is not standard/harmonized-with-the-other articles, I think we should change it. I also propose that the headlines be (re)introduced, at level 3 because ==See also== is a level 2 right? (And, of course, this would/should show up at the table of contents.)Curb Chain (talk) 06:38, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

The change came about after another suggestion on saving whitespace was rejected, I believe I disagreed with both suggested changes. I think the general feeling would be not to have 'see also' section sub-headers appear in the TOC if the change was reverted. OTOH some editors are 'de-headering' the 'notes' and 'bibliography' sub-sections of 'references' which makes it less easy to recycle sources for articles using the same books/weblinks. I don't think many people are watching this page, it may well be why the change went through so easily. If you feel strongly about it then a post at WT:AIR might attract more attention. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:52, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Let's analyze why sectioning should not be used in ==See also==. In comparison to ==References==, sectioning out ===Footnotes==- and ===Notations=== is not ideal because ideally, all sources should be inline, but I see no reason not to section ==See also==. I'll post it on the wikiproject's talk page to see if they have any reason not to section ==See also==.Curb Chain (talk) 10:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, could you point to the suggestion on saving whitespace?Curb Chain (talk) 10:56, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, i've noticed at this template's deletion discussion, the nom mentioned that "this template does not allow free editing of the "see also" section, which is needed to comply with the MOS. FA will not accept this.". I am proposing exactly and only the change to the template to allow free editing, or what I said previously, headlines. I've also noticed above in a section (Template_talk:Aircontent#Whitespace) that screenshots were taken of the alleged whitespace. I have no problem with the layout, or how the links should appear, but I reckon that being able to divide these links into sectionheadlines and then edit them would be very helpful.Curb Chain (talk) 11:02, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Use of the template is not compulsory although it does transclude to thousands of aircraft and aero engine articles. Anyone can make their own 'see also' section headers by entering them manually and not using the template. Ideally they should be the same as those suggested at Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/page content#See also (which is what this template produces). Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 14:19, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

To answer the first question - level 3 headers are superflous for the few entries you would expect in a see also. Subsectioning makes sense for navigating in a large (long) article (MoS says "Very short or very long sections and subsections in an article look cluttered and inhibit the flow of the prose" and "Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheading; in such circumstances, it may be preferable to use bullet points") but See also should be short and to the point. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:55, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

See also

Has anyone considered that this template encourages editors to list content in the See also section that may already be present in the body of the article? This conflicts with the guideline WP:SEEALSO, which encourages editors to avoid repeating links and strive for high-quality articles which typically do not have a See also section for that reason. I tried removing redundant links in the F-35 article, but those edits were reverted on the basis that this template is a standard used by WP:AIRCRAFT. Figured I'd bring it up here. --GoneIn60 (talk) 02:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

That is a good point. This template has also lead to nationalistic additions of not-very--comparable aircraft in the past and many of us are no longer adding it it to new aircraft type articles as they are created. - Ahunt (talk) 12:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I add it when I think it necessary, but I am circumspect about constitutes "similar", and knock out the nationalistic extras if I see them. The related development is not always touched on in the article outside the infobox and the List of.... are generally valid. But to bring the subject up here is to avoid the main debating ground at WP:Aircraft. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:08, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I agree, this really should be debated more widely at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft. - Ahunt (talk) 19:12, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The wording from WP:SEEALSO is; As a general rule the 'See also' section should not repeat links which appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes. It's not prohibited to repeat links and it's editorial judgement whether important links are repeated where they may be sometimes lost in a sea of text. Are we talking specifically about the 'See also' section of this template or the repetition of aircraft types in the other sections? Some readers (including myself) jump straight to the 'See also' section from the table of contents when looking for related articles, missing out the text completely, in this case there is no apparent repetition. Removing relevant links from this section would be unbuilding the wiki. The mentioned navboxes very often repeat links (usually aircraft or engine types) used in 'See also' sections of articles, this also busts the guideline but I can't see how it could be done otherwise without losing their obvious great benefit (do all readers use the navboxes?). There are Featured Articles with repeated links in the 'See also' section, accepted at candidacy review when the nominator has explained why they are there. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 21:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for all the comments. I can see how the links can be useful, particularly in long aircraft articles and to visitors that may not be all that familiar with navboxes. I also understand that it is a "general rule" that doesn't explicitly prohibit the act, though I would contend that exceptions should still be considered rare from the way the guideline is worded (it doesn't actually describe what qualifies as an exception, only that they exist). I'll drop the concern for now and bring it up at the main WikiProject instead should the need arise. Thanks! --GoneIn60 (talk) 23:01, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposal

Agree with GoneIn60. The issue of editors using this template to repeat links already in the body not only challenges SEEALSO, but also WP:OVERLINKING. We all know projects have latitude. All good. But...take the example Airbus A330neo, it currently has three Airbus A330 links in the body and one Airbus A330 link from this project standard template. As the infobox has "Developed from Airbus A330", it's worse than redundant (it's less specific) to have this template say "Related development Airbus A330". (and yes, I've used four links to Airbus A330 to prove my point). My bigger point is not see also/overlink, as we all agree this info appears useful. As the links have structure, the alphabetically sorted See also is a poor location (and the template hacks that by ugly bold headings). A semantic structure is better. So, the question is could the information be better located? Candidates/examples:

• infobox (yes, sounds good and where most tech articles do this sort of semantic/nav and succession linking)
• succession box (if something special is needed, especially at the article end)
• {{Geographic location}} (well, ugly example but a one-off)

The infobox is the obvious candidate, but on larger articles a footer nav box like a succession box may also be useful? Adopting such project wide consistency may better serve all parties and remove a project defense maintenance burden that isn't going away. [1] [2] [3] + others above. Thoughts? Ping User:BilCat, User:Marc Lacoste. Widefox; talk 11:39, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

This WP:SEEALSO template is useful not only for related developments, but mainly for the aircraft concurrence. For the A330, it's all the modern widebodies, we could go from B767 to B747, or even currently used Douglas or Russian models. It would be too much, and editors are caring. References could be made, ex: [4]. It's like a bottom template for the concurrence, but variable for each model.
WP:OVERLINKING states a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead. In the 330neo article, there is a A330 link in the lead, once in the *Development* section, to the -200 and -300 in *Variants* (it should be deeplinking though), and in *See Also* like in a footnote. This complies with WP:OVERLINKING. It's not like we are overwhelmed. --Marc Lacoste (talk) 14:33, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

OK, trying to understand...Isn't a concurrence just like a different version of a succession box? Wouldn't a concurrence be from a source anyway, which isn't possible to reference in a See also but is with the candidates above?

In terms of OVERLINK, yes four aren't sending anyone to jail (and the navbox and any captions don't count per WP:CAPTION / commonsense), but they actually just don't help, they hinder (see the research at OVERLINK). WP:REPEATLINK "... only once..." (emphasis important). The point is there's more of a limited budget with the see also, but less so with the candidates above. It avoids the issue. Widefox; talk 20:29, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for raising the issue here, User:Widefox, and for actually making constructive suggestions for alternatives. (Often other users just want to remove the links outright.) I'm not sure if a succession box would actually be useful, and I'm not sure how exactly a navbox would function with the same flexibility of the see also link section. We've discussed that solution in passing before, but were unable to come up with a working solution. As to the current infobox ar the top of each article, it does contain links to variants and related developments. However, I'd be hesitant to add more links such as for comparable aircraft, and that honestly seems to work better at the bottom of the page. Bear in mind that the template and format is used on well over 10,000 aircraft and engine articles, all of which would have to be updated. Also, the current Aircontent template is somewhat grandfathered in from what it used to be, as it was originally created by the Aircraft project before the current MOS guidelines on See also sections were established, or at least enforced in their current form. I agree the current method can be maintenance-heavy and prone to contentious edit warring in a few cases. - BilCat (talk) 04:50, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, agree. The comparable aircraft is a tangentially related item that has a good chance of not already being in the article, so See also is a natural location. As this is structured info, and would benefit a reference, IMHO a better location is to remove it visually from the unstructured See also, and structure it visually in a box say to the right (compare with succession box and {{Geographic location}}, both of which are located at the bottom). The template could stay put just like portal templates. All tech articles have similar needs on this, just think Aviation is ahead of the others. Just a custom "succession/comparable box" a bit like a {{Geographic location}} for the state of the field. Not sure how much work it would be...it's possible only the template would need changing, maybe a bit of bot editing too (to extract the see also and maybe place the template higher up). Seems trivial, but I could easily be wrong. You know, IMHO there is a long-term inevitability about this, but in the short term it's an irresistible force and an immovable object. It's your project and you're free to ignore me. I'll give a similar example I came across..Medicine Project didn't allow references in columns a year ago. The only question is less is this a lot of work, but more would this be better, and does change get easy in future or harder. Think I should exit at this point, regards Widefox; talk 12:50, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Huh, a more formal infobox is waiting for endless edit wars about what is right or wrong to put in, and if the space is limited it would be worse. There is no definite definition for an aircraft competition. e.g., the Piper Malibu Meridian 6 seats pressurized single engine turboprop competes with the TBM700 and PC-12, but is cheaper so it competes on cost with unpressurized turbine singles, but also in missions with pressurized twin pistons ; there is also the older not produced anymore and the future not produced yet models, and the Malibu is also a 6 seat unpressurized airplane with its own competition! The simpler present way avoids too much fluff. --Marc Lacoste (talk) 15:47, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Change semicolon markup to wikitext bolding

Currently this template creates pseudoheadings by using semicolon markup (e.g. ;Related development). There is nothing wrong with using a pseudoheading here, but the semicolon method violates MOS:PSEUDOHEAD. The reason is that it messes up screen readers and suchlike by calling description lists. The appropriate solution offered by the accessibility guideline is to use wikitext bold markup ('''Related development'''). Both work identically with the table of contents (i.e. these headings are not displayed in the TOC). Visually they are all but indiscernible:

Related development

• This uses semicolon markup

Related development

• This uses bold markup

I hope we can get consensus for this minute change so that I can ping the template editors. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:28, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Given the screen reader issue that makes sense. - Ahunt (talk) 02:06, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Please change this template to use bold instead of semicolon markup to achieve pseudoheadings for all four headings, per the above consensus (e.g. '''Related development'''). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:14, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

 Done Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

MOS:PSEUDOHEAD violations

This template currently marks up headings with bolding, but this is not appropriate for proper accessibility and HTML semantics. Instead, proper subheadings should be utilized, emitting <h3> tags (which would be === in wikitext). Opencooper (talk) 19:03, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 12 October 2021

Consensus at WikiProject Aircraft is that the markup removed in this edit was not Pseudo-heading (semicolon), but simple bolding. Furthermore, the lack of any sort of heading in the current revision gives the template an awkward feel, and it was better off how it was.

I request that this edit be reverted. If the bolding markup causes accessibility issues for a minority of devices, then surely there is a better solution than emulating those accessibility issues on all devices. - ZLEA _T\^C 15:38, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I have reverted the change. I have put third-level headers in the sandbox. Take a look at Template:Aircontent/testcases to see the difference. If the template is always preceded by a second-level "See also" header, then third-level headers make sense inside the template. They will render a bit larger, and they will appear in the article's TOC. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:11, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't really know what to say about using true headers. Part of me wants to say that it makes sense, but another part says that Ericg chose not to use headers for some reason, and that the larger headers dominate the lists and are a bit distracting to me (but that's just my opinion). Since Ericg has not edited in almost a year, I will ask BilCat, Ahunt, Steelpillow, and Nimbus227 (the users involved in the discussion) what they think. - ZLEA _T\^C 22:07, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think we need true headings, as they will make the TOC too long in many aircraft articles. But if the other users are OK with it, I honor that consensus. BilCat (talk) 22:48, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree, we don't need true headings in the template, because we don't need these in the TOC, bolding is a superior solution. - Ahunt (talk) 23:09, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

For the record, I have no opinion on this matter. I'm just a template editor who was summoned here by the edit request. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:46, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Revert to the last stable version please. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 09:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Has this not already been done? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Rendering the semantics

There is a clear distinction between a section heading (represented by the HTML h1, h2,... elements) on the one hand and a localised header for say a table column (th) or a description list name or term (dt). These are all routinely bolded in Wikipedia; see just above here for the h3 in action, and the other examples are:

Table column header
column content

Description list term

often used for FAQs and, round here, sometimes for aircraft variants, etc.

These distinctions are perfectly intelligible to accessibility tools such as screen readers. A pseudoheading is when someone borks the semantic by using a description list term as a subsection heading, which is not what we are doing here. Bolded plain text has no implicit semantic, which is clearly also unhelpful to the screen reader.

What we want to do is, in essence, to nest bulleted lists (ul) inside a description list (dl). This can be done by inserting each ul as the content of a description value (dd). This works perfectly well in my standards-compliant web browser and should work equally well in any accessibility tool. Achieving this in Wiktext has to be coded fairly precisely:

;Term
:*foo
:*bar
;Another term
:*voila

Which yields the appropriate html code (copy-pasted after being served by Wikipedia):

<dl><dt>Term</dt>
<dd>
<ul><li>foo</li>
<li>bar</li></ul></dd></dl>
<dl><dt>Another term</dt>
<dd>
<ul><li>voila</li></ul></dd></dl>

Which renders as:

Term

• foo
• bar

Another term

• voila

May I suggest that we amend the template accordingly? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:48, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

The sandbox is available for experimentation. I'm not sure how the existing 9,000 transclusions would be compatible with the proposal above, and I don't see how, semantically, these unordered lists would be description lists (but I am not an expert in HTML semantics). – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

The technical trick here is called nesting. Each unordered list is placed (nested) within a description list item, specifically within its dd container. The structure becomes clearer if the code is indented in the conventional way:

<dl>
   <dt>Term</dt>
   <dd>
      <ul>
         <li>foo</li>
         <li>bar</li>
      </ul>
   </dd>
</dl>
<dl>
    <dt>Another term</dt>
    <dd>
      <ul>
         <li>voila</li>
      </ul>
    </dd>
</dl>

Actually, this also shows up how the wikitext parser lacks finesse and treats the example as two consecutive description lists, each with only one entry. But it gets the nested semantics correct and so that would not worry the screen readers.

There is a slightly simpler markup it is possible to use, if bullets are not wanted and the indent alone is sufficient. Either way, the existing page markup would not need to be be changed, not in any of those 9,000 pages and the display would be effectively the same as at present; only the template need be tweaked to make its output code semantically compliant, as above. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:04, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

H'mm. Per WP:TEMPLATE, it seems the only way to implement this without breaking existing lists is to prepend each * with :, as :*, before rendering to html. This could in theory be done using the #invoke function to call a Lua module. That is outside my comfort zone, but I'll try to follow it up. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:13, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Hence my comment above (I'm not sure how...). There may be a way to do it, but I don't see it yet. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:42, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a module called String which can do find-and-replace. The template would then contain something like:

#invoke:String|replace|[source markup]|*|:*

but I'd need to check how it passes the text to the function call and how both wikitext and the function itself handle line breaks. The module documentation hints darkly of regular expressions. Joy, oh joy unbounded, as Stanley Unwin used to put it. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Wow! It seems to be working. I coded it at Template:Aircontent/sandbox. It does indent the bulleted lists a bit more though; that is an inevitable consequence of nesting lists here. See Template:Aircontent/testcases#Testing sandbox version. Sorry to be so technically deep, has anybody been able to keep awake here? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:05, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Clever. We need to check that the asterisk is at the beginning of the line and only replace in those cases. See the testcases page. Other than that, I think it could work. [Update: I think I have fixed it. It would be helpful to have some additional real-world testcases, the stranger the better, from actual articles.] – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:35, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Your fix has changed the html list semantic. The html alternates description list headers with bulleted lists, there is no nesting. This use of description list headers (wikitext semicolon ";" ) is exactly what WP:PSEUDOHEAD forbids. I tried a regular expression instead and that didn't fix the html. I have no idea why the parser is failing to nest either fix. On the other hand, I added some inline asterisks to the test cases and my nested code does bork it by adding a colon, so that is not a viable answer either. The current bolded text is the preferred markup for a pseudo-heading, so if we want to fix the accessibility issue then one option might be to move to a more sentence-like plain text lead-in to each bulleted list. So I have added that as a third test example. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:42, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

You are right. I have improved it a bit just now, but not yet fixed it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:33, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

There is something weird going on with; the mediawiki parser/converter, the parserfunctions extension, the String module, and/or the way Lua handles regular expressions. One has to ask why "find \n* and replace with \n:*" behaves differently as a list item separator from "find * and replace with :*". Frankly, I don't give a fsck (File System cheCK) which it is any more; I am beginning to appreciate the wisdom of the current simple-bold markup. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)