Template talk:Information

General style of template (and use of mbox class)

I had this discussion with Fastily after my recent edits that ended with this version.

Hi Izno. Just letting you know that I've reverted your recent changes to {{Information}}. It's not clear to me why these are helpful changes, especially the removal of the colored background (which I am opposed to, by the way). Given that this is a widely used template, please propose your changes on the talk page before implementing them, thanks. -FASTILY 07:39, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

@Fastily: I am removing uses of message box classes that do not originate directly in a Module:Message box template per MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#description. When I did that for Template:Information, the internal borders disappeared. So wikitable was the next best thing that preserved some colors.

Our use of colors is also generally unnecessary there and per WP:ACCESS removal is generally supported though I don't care too much about this aspect. Izno (talk) 07:48, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Is there a way to perform this change without removing the the lavender blue table headers? I'm using dark mode with monobook, which isn't exactly a high contrast theme. In this case, losing the colors makes it virtually impossible to tell the difference between the fields of the template and the text entered for each field. -FASTILY 08:47, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

@Fastily: Gonna' be honest here, that seems like a wikitable on dark mode problem, not a wikitable problem, since it affects substantially more than just this template. Like, basically a good quarter of this website has a wikitable class table in some form. If you don't think there's sufficient contrast, that seems like an issue to report to the gadget talk page.

The re-change is trivial, but the appearance looks worse for basically everyone else. This is the revision of interest, turn your gadget off for the hot minute to see what it looks like. Izno (talk) 08:54, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I compared the revisions with color and without color, with light mode and dark mode, and my conclusion is that this is still a UI downgrade. Could you hold off on this change until there's a solution which allows for retaining the current color scheme without downgrading the UI? Thanks, FASTILY 21:17, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I think my suggested version is a clear improvement and the concerns listed are something that Fastily should take care of in their personal CSS since they affect just about every page on the site (and we have not heard general issues with those either from most people). Izno (talk) 03:50, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

I do note that all uses of this template on proxied Commons templates, will retain the old style (as it is hardcoded in styles attribute values on the Commons side and then proxied to us). I personally think that consistency here between the local Information template and the Commons variant is warranted.

I also note that mbox-inside is an 'wrapper' for the width behaviour of mboxes (the box is inside something instead of being full page width). That seems like logic which maybe we should just add to all the mbox template transclusions?

Long term of course it is imperative that Commons does some cleanup on their highly outdated license and information templates and knocks them back into the 2020s. These templates have largely not been touched since the 2007'ish standardisation, with a small 2013 round of adding (hidden) metadata fields to them. They are not mobile compatible and have hardcoded and inconsistent styling. Its one of those things I've considered a few times of doing myself, but without being an admin it's just troublesome to get the changes through on Commons. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:44, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

TheDJ, I'm not really interested in chaining ourselves to whatever Commons does here. It could be literal decades from now before someone thinks this is something important to change there what with their existing backlogs. Never mind the massive inconsistency the Commons templates display.

That seems like logic which maybe we should just add to all the mbox template transclusions? I don't really see that this is something necessary for all templates. I guess I'm fine if we pull that bit of CSS into TemplateStyles here and then I can be on my way.

To be honest this template also needs a rename, but I doubt that will happen with its thousands of uses. Izno (talk) 17:32, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Anyway, I've migrated the offending class into the templatestyles here. Izno (talk) 18:50, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that it is important to stay consistent with the design so if this was to change all file licencing templates in use should be changed along with it (eg: {{Non-free use rationale}}). It would be ideal to have the file summary design inline with commons since if one was to look at a commons file and it have a completely design to a enWiki hosted file it wouldn't be ideal but at a minimum all enWiki file summary templates should be changed. It is a bit of a shock when first looking at a wikitable version of the file information after being used to the current design but overall I don't think it is major and would just take time to get used to and would be more inline with the wiki as a whole. Terasail^[✉️] 16:36, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Reaffirming that I am strongly opposed to changing the colors. Consistency between Commons and enwp is important, especially for readers. Also, for folks using dark mode, the proposed new color scheme is aesthetically hideous. I spend a lot of my volunteer time working with files, and I prefer a UI with colors. -FASTILY 09:57, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Any chance we can also remove the recently added "File information" title/heading in the code? It is essentially redundant as most files this template is used on have a "Summary" heading. Just kind of looks awkward now. Salavat (talk) 14:20, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Table captions are required for WP:ACCESS. Izno (talk) 17:34, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

How to add multi-lingual descriptions?

The usage and syntax sections don't offer any help.
Multiple |description= properties just override one another. galenIgh 16:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

It seems one way is to use something like description={{en|...}} {{de|...}} {{...

If there's a canonical way, perhaps someone could expound in the template page? galenIgh 16:38, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

@.galenIgh: This is the English Wikipedia, image descriptions should only be in English. To your first question: it's a basic principle of template design that parameter names must be unique. The MediaWiki software does not warn you if you try to use the same parameter twice, it silently ignores all uses except for the one which occurs last. This is not something that we can override. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

The same images may be used, and in many cases are used, in multiple language Wikipedias (some images may be from MediaWiki Commons, but not necessarily). Here's an example.

If the form in my previous comment can be considered "canonical", perhaps it can be described in the Template page? galenIgh 22:48, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Your example image is not on Wikipedia, but on Commons. You can tell because it shows a box like this:

As it says, its file description page is at c:File:2016 Singapur, Downtown Core, Hotel Fullerton (01).jpg and that does not use Template:Information but instead uses c:Template:Information, which is different. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:23, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Edit request for dark mode compatibility

Merge changes in Template:Information/sandbox/styles.css to Template:Information/styles.css for dark mode compatibility. These changes were taken from c:Module:Information/styles.css and adapted. You can check in the test cases. —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - _uselesscontributions} 12:38, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:19, 5 September 2024 (UTC)