Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates/Fantasia Barrino discography/archive1

MOS discussion (moved from project page)

Oppose - table headers can be bold, fine, but until someone points me to where MOS says this useless bolding of album and single titles is correct while not bolding music video titles at the same time, I'll be opposing. Not to mention some other issues:

• Blank cells are not good.
• The additional headings over each table may meet WP:ACCESS (today) but they're completely obtrusive to people who don't use screen readers. Perhaps the ACCESS crew should consider making this sort of thing invisible to 99.9% of our audience, while keeping it "visible" to screen readers.

I'd like to review this in full but until the bold and access issues are addressed, that's it for now. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, I'm extremely disappointed to see these unapproved changes rolled out over other existing FLs. FLs comply with MOS, not DISCOGSTYLE. If these lists are not reverted to comply with MOS, I'll nominate them all to be delisted en mass. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I am a bit disappointed as I was told numerous times to begin using WP:DISCOGSTYLE, and convert a list I was already working on to that format, and now I find this out. Candyo32 20:14, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

If possible, please provide a comprehensive list of existing FLs that have been modified to meet this new "style". Thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:23, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Kelly Rowland discography, Kesha discography, Rihanna discography, Hilary Duff discography, and Ashley Tisdale discography. Candyo32 23:14, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Can someone please explain why these lists have now been modified to contradict MOS, which clearly states "Bold type is reserved for certain uses (see boldface, above)." where "above" restricts it to:

• Table headers
• Definition lists (example: Glossary of trucking industry terms in the United States)
• Volume numbers of journal articles, in some bibliographic formats

I see no mention of items within a table being bold, nor explanatory text on top of table headers being bold. Please revert those FLs back to comply with MOS and I recommend you do the same to this list. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:56, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

TRM, I hate this new style too, and I see little point in it. The thing is that the singles are bolded because they are table headers - row headers, rather than column headers. Adabow (talk · contribs) 09:19, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I see, so why aren't the music videos bolded as well? The Rambling Man (talk) 10:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I myself have no idea. I was just carrying things out. Candyo32 11:11, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no contradiction with MOSBOLD, which clearly states that table headers are to be bold, and the tables comply fully with MOS. Your browser makes table headers (and captions) bold, and it seems nonsensical to me that there should be an objection to an effect that is a result of the default behaviour of a browser. If you want to argue that the row headers should not actually be row headers, or that tables should not have captions, then we can have that discussion. That then is completely an issue of accessibility, and you're going to have to justify why you believe it is acceptable to disadvantage visually-impaired readers to satisfy your own personal preferences. While Wikipedia comes to terms with the changes we need to make to improve accessibility on the project, there will be a period where an inconsistency exists between earlier articles and the latest ones. The solution is not to resist accessibility improvements in the newer articles, but to make the changes necessary to improve accessibility in the earlier articles.

If you feel that it would be better that table row headers did not display in bold on Wikipedia, then a case can be made to impose normal font weight at MediaWiki talk:Common.css, as we did to ensure that row headers became left-aligned.

As for the captions, I agree that they are longer than is strictly necessary, and could have some of the minor detail trimmed out. --RexxS (talk) 13:37, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I think one problem I had was understanding that "table headers" means (to some) the left-hand column as well, I had envisaged headers to be just that, at the head of the table, the first row, the headings so to speak. So, in this case, why aren't the music videos bolded as well? Clearly this affects just about every single featured list as they now, according to this update, contravene MOS. Table row headings in bold is fine, and quite natural in appearance. Making each row start with a bold element is quite unnatural and now disadvantages the majority of readers. As an favour, could you make the table here accessible according to the new MOS so I can see what's going on? Finally, what is the purpose of the captions? Section headings provide the information required in general. Are these for screen readers? The Rambling Man (talk) 13:44, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

And when did row headings become left-aligned, it's clearly not the case in this list? Did anyone at MOS think about the featured list people when these discussions were going on, as we are the primary customer of data tables? The Rambling Man (talk) 13:51, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Yup, the music videos talbe yhould have row headers too, I do not know why this was not done. I'll fix it now.

"Making each row start with a bold element is quite unnatural and now disadvantages the majority of readers." No, having row headers in bold is a common practice. Just like table captions. For example, Infobox are tables too, and they have a table caption and row headers in bold. As I stated above, the only issue is that it changes your habits. The first steps may be hard, but you'll get used to it after a while. ;-) Dodoïste (talk) 14:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm very disappointed that no-one bothered to talk to WP:FLC regulars about this. The tables are unnatural in appearance, and are an overuse of bold text. What about small text, while we're on this, I imagine that is disadvantageous too? So that will need to be changed. I note that RexxS talks about left-aligned headers, this list fails that too, so is that to be modified? You'll have to forgive our wary approach to this after the complete farce that was WP:ALT, especially since this change will have a similar impact across just about all WP:FLs, with ACCESS crew popping up to oppose based on a decision reached by a couple of "experts" at WP:ACCESS who didn't bother to engage us in the discussion. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:15, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

As for "natural", I had a quick look at four online newspapers (Telegraph (UK), NY Times (US), Sydney Morning Herald (AUS), Le Monde (France)) none of whom follow this "natural" approach, a small sample, agreed, but please can you point me to the discussion with the accessibility experts who sanctioned this, and then the community consensus to add it to MOS? The Rambling Man (talk) 14:25, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Row headers are left aligned, just like RexxS said. Column headers are centered.

It's not to late to talk to FLC regular about this, and we're willing to do so. We just have a limited amount of time, since there are too few active users at the accessibility WikiProject. We engaged the discussion with the DISCOG project, as it seemed to be a good starting point. It's the first time we are doing such a thing, so we didn't know we were supposed to act otherwise. Please assume good faith. :-)

There was a big issue with WP:ALT, because the active editors there weren't listening to experts. I did try to fix the concerns back in July 2009, but I could only fix small issues and not the core ones. Later on, this caused huge issues (around march 2010 if I'm not mistaken). Now WP:ALT is fixed and accurate.

We aren't using the same approach here with tables, we are following W3C's approach and our guidelines are reviewed by experts. Much better.

There were numerous discussions. Mostly at the DISCOG project and WP:ACCESS talk page. The review by the accessibility expert was written in French, since the expert is French. Which do you want? Note that some of these discussions may be really technical and complex, just like the review by the expert. Which one do you want to read?

Note that at the French Wikipedia, this guidelines is accepted, and applied without significant difficulties in the featured articles.

I said it's a common practice. I never said you will find it in every website. Especially not in websites that are poorly accessible.

Now RexxS did also said that "If you feel that it would be better that table row headers did not display in bold on Wikipedia, then a case can be made to impose normal font weight at MediaWiki talk:Common.css". I'd second that. If you feel that this is the best solution, then let's go for it. Kind regards, Dodoïste (talk) 15:00, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I can't see any justification for the overuse of bold here. MOS says "In the first two cases, the appropriate markup automatically adds the boldface formatting; do not use the explicit triple-apostrophe markup" about bold. That simply isn't the case in this list, the triple apostrophe markup is clearly used here. I want to be linked to all discussions please, and in particular where a wide community consensus was achieved to start rolling this out over a number of featured lists, once again without bothering to talk to the FL community. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:03, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

"The triple apostrophe markup is clearly used here": you obviously didn't look at the code of these tables. The bolding comes with the headers by default, no "triple apostrophe markup" is used here. I'll be off for a few hours, I'll provide links to the discussions this evening. Yours, Dodoïste (talk) 15:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I did look at the code of these tables, there exists triple apostrophes. It turns out they are not needed. But they are there. So please don't assume bad faith. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:24, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Request added at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Bold row headers by the way. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:35, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Huge (edit conflict) @Rambling Man: I'll try to respond to your seven (?) points:

(1) Table headers are semantically defined elements and are translated into TH tags in HTML, so apologies if there's any confusion between what may be thought of as common usage of the word 'header', but in web pages it has a very specific meaning, since both column headers and row headers are different elements from table data (the TD element in HTML). Screen readers may be set to announce the column header and row header before the data for each cell, allowing a blind reader to navigate up, down, left, right within the table, while still being clear what the data is related to. This is very important for the visually impaired.

(2) I agree that the music videos really ought to have row headers as well, and I see that Dodoïste has fixed that problem.

(3) I still don't agree that having row headers contradicts MOS, but I do understand your point if you are used to seeing only column headers.

(4) Did you mean "Table column headings in bold is fine, and quite natural in appearance."?

(5) I'm used to seeing row headers in bold on other sites - see [Fantasia Barrino's Filmography on IMDB] for example. As more major sites adopt accessibility improvements, I expect it will become more usual and less unnatural. But please accept that this is a matter of aesthetic taste, and I believe that we shouldn't be putting that before genuine improvements to accessibility. Non-visually impaired users are really not disadvantaged in the same way when they see bold row headers.

(6) I have made that table accessible as far as I could, but the table contains more than one level of row headings and it really needs a more advanced technique (using IDs that wikimedia software does not yet support in wikimarkup) to make it fully accessible. I've also disguised the changes by mimicking the previous formatting – which actually contained errors such as trying to set the background to #f9f9f9, when the wikitable class already sets it to #f2f2f2. I've removed as much of that unnecessary markup as possible and used inline css styling instead. The problem with that complex table is that there's no semantic reason immediately obvious why certain headers should be bold, or centred, or have a grey background. Nevertheless it must be some project's idea of a style, so I'm happy to respect it. The consequence of course – as you can see from the comments above – is that it's difficult for editors not familiar with CSS markup to accurately employ the correct inline style to produce the desired visual effect. Are all of those embellishments really necessary?

(7) Captions are most useful when multiple tables exist within a single section, or are separated from the section header by textual commentary. They then serve to inform a blind reader what data they are about to encounter, and are part of the table, so become portable if the entire table is used elsewhere. I agree that where the table immediately follows an appropriate section header, the caption becomes duplicative. But the question then is "How do we get editors to recognise when to include a table caption, and when they may omit it?" This is early days for these kind of accessibility improvements, and it will take some time before every editor can make those sort of decisions. It's difficult enough to persuade a WikiProject that adopting more accessible methods is a good thing; introducing another layer of guideline on decision making as well is probably a step too far for many. For now, I'd ask FL reviewers to be sympathetic to captions, and perhaps we can work together to arrive at guidance that meets all our expectations. --RexxS (talk) 16:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Centralised discussion now attempted. Please see WT:FLC. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:43, 4 November 2010 (UTC)