Template talk:Red Dwarf

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can we get rid of $£ as it just redirects back to the red dwarf page 82.24.175.199 (talk) 11:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lost Episode section

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Most of the items are lost episodes of Red Dwarf. Could we have a lost episode section? 92.7.176.179 (talk) 12:04, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template styling

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There's no pressing need for this template to be bright red. The particular shade is not notably associated with the series (it appears in the log and is the colour of the ship, but it is not iconic in any sense and both makes the template more difficult to read (particularly links) as well as adding significantly to the page size. I'll be removing this again shortly. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:02, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If consensus is reached, Chris. Compare this with the Template:The Simpsons, for example. Have you ever seen this show? Red is quite iconic as you put it. Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 13:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've also raised this on the talkpages of the relevant articles, which you failed to do too. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 13:13, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The Simpsons-related templates are problematic for the same reason, but that's going to take rather a lot more cleanup as there are far more of them. As for being iconic, where is the colour generally used on, say, advertising for the show? Just on the logo? FWIW The Simpsons DVD boxes are actually yellow, suggesting a stronger tie there. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing wrong with red, it just needs lightening a bit so it doesn't clash with the blue (linked) or dark blue (visited link) on the page. It's currently #CC1111, perhaps a couple of shades lighter, i.e #EE3333? ~~ Peteb16 (talk) 13:53, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That somewhat emphasises the problem. If there isn't a canonical shade of red, then why are we using red at all? It doesn't do anything to align the template to the articles it's on (which are not red-coloured). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"FWIW The Simpsons DVD boxes are actually yellow, suggesting a stronger tie there." – Have you ever tried getting hold of Amray red 2-disc DVD cases? I've been trying to get some for my Red Dwarf DVDs for eff'ing years, and they are not available to get anywhere.. and given that the BBC has gone to an effort to keep the entire Classic Doctor Who DVD release in silver cases, single and double, sometimes made to order ("BBC" sometimes moulded in the case), then possibly no-one is willing to produce red cases, except in single-disc form. So it's probably hard to relate DVD-case colour to a TV series as "canoncial".. otherwise Doctor Who cases should probably be a deep TARDIS blue. Personally, I don't see why we shouldn't have coloured templates.. I don't know if the Wiki community was given a choice when it came to designing the Vector design, but it seems to me that if they didn't want to "lock" every page, template and layout into monotonous shades of blue and grey they wouldn't give us the option to theme things. {{episode list}} in particular uses all sorts of coloured headers across the dozens of TV shows it's used on. People visiting websites want variety, and colour has a psychological effect on how people perceive and enjoy the internet experience.. read the reviews of books/encyclopedias on Amazon, if only black and white layouts have been used when colour could have been used, people are less impressed.. why should Wiki be any more anti-colour? As much as I respect WAI, we are in the 21st century here.. that does not mean Vector or "default" CSS themes are better.. though obviously bright white on bright red is not particularly readable in all cases. Really it should be a slightly murky red, to give better contrast – as it is poor contrast between colours that impedes a colour-blind reader, not actual colours – but not so deep it becomes maroon. Barring that, there's always Starbug green, a shade of Blue midget, or those dashing garbs they wore in The Tank.. Penal purple. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 16:27, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
#FF7070 — Red Dwarf (too pink)
#FF4040 — Red Dwarf
#EE3333 — Red Dwarf
#FF0000 — Red Dwarf
#CC1111 — Red Dwarf — current
#BF0000 — Red Dwarf
#A00000 — Red Dwarf
#8F0000 — Red Dwarf
#6B0000 — Red Dwarf (too deep)
We have for years discouraged the use of colour overrides; in fact, pretty much since the {{navbox}} template was properly rolled out. Pprior to that navboxes used hand-hacked HTML and colouring, font size and indeed width was usually completely arbitrary. Case in point: This is what the template used to look like, before it was converted to use the navbox styling in this edit. It remained with the default colours until this edit, and the colouring has been removed once before (Lugnuts summarily reverted it citing the Simpsons template then, too). "Wiki" is "anti-colour" because colour draws the eye and should be used only sparingly: that's a basic principle of design, especially of documents. If we're to style an ancillary template like a navbox using a bold red, there should be a very good reason for it, and "I think colours are pretty" and "well, Red Dwarf has the word 'red' in it" are not good reasons. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:41, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it seems Wiki itself is not that anti-colour, otherwise it would simply prevent in-line CSS styling, and there would be far fewer themed and coloured templates than there are, for navboxes about films, music, genres, topics, etc. I don't think even MOS disallows it, only advises that caution be taken to prevent readability issues. Personally, I think the use of pastel colours is fine, for black text, as I don't particularly like white on colour myself in most cases, but a couple of headers and a few words is not much to complain about.. though I do see that the standard blue hyperlinks on red are near-impossible to read.. which is an issue and needs sorting out. If people are opposed to removing the red, the only option is to unlink anything on red and somehow place it within the navbox lists. I can't think of any other compromise, but WAI must be given priority over "pretty colours", as you say, because WAI is just plain common sense. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 10:13, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"If it's not banned then it must be encouraged" is a common logical fallacy on Wikipedia, but {{navbox/doc}} quite specifically discourages overriding the defaults. That we provide support for overriding them is not in and of itself a reason to make use of it, much like cars providing airbags is not supposed to encourage people to drive into brick walls. There is no need for a compromise here: there isn't a good argument for keeping the colour, and there are several not to. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:29, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No one is arguing that we should "encourage" the use of colour, I think the saying you're looking for is, "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". That said, there's a distinct difference between "discouraging" and "prohibiting".. people are discouraged from smoking because it will most likely kill them, but it's not prohibited.. indeed, a lot of people benefit from them, especially governments imposing taxes on them. However, there is no "risk" or moral-dilemma here, Seems that discouragement is also a big step away from a community consensus prohibiting it, in which case it becomes a mix of personal tastes versus colours relating to a subject, such as yellow in The Simpsons, versus WAI and WP:IJDLI. Fortunately it's not a given right of Admins to moderate the use of colours or impose this "discouragement" in every case, unless there's an overwhelmingly obvious difficulty for all readers, so you're just going to have to take a step back and see how the community feels about it, as is the standard procedure now that you oppose the colouring, whilst some favour it. Whilst you feel there is no room for compromise, some may feel that that in itself is your opinion and open to question. There are a lot of grey areas on Wiki, this appears to be one of them and despite the discouragement of colours, there is also a parameter that implies the right to use them. I think it should be done sparingly (the same word used in the navbox/box), but that's just my opinion. I also think many other pale shades of pastel colours can work just as well as pale blue, and in my experience of web design, know this to be true – there is no ideological web colour patellate because everyone has different visual perceptions, including the WMF team who designed the Vector CSS theme, regardless of their research into what is most likely to be comfortable for the majority. In conclusion, it's clearly a bigger issue that just this one template, or even the navbox template itself.. but once you open a can of worms... Ma®©usBritish{chat} 13:57, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If we're repeating ourselves: the vast majority of our television navigation templates do not override the base colours, suggesting that broader consensus weighs against arbitrary styling; the template documentation discourages it; bold red is a distracting colour for what should be a relatively low-profile footer template (hence the unobtrusive default styling). Now, in amongst the red herrings (WAI and the Vector skin, again; my admin status), was there a rebuttal in the above comment (other than to compare the use of an arbitrary colour override, favourably, to smoking) to any of those points? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:04, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One clearly has a prejudiced POV towards colours and/or those who use them. So we deal with this one navbox.. than where does your crusade take you? All coloured navboxes..? Followed by all coloured infoboxes..? Then those templates such as {{episode list}} which are coloured..? Then perhaps the massive amount of Portals which use colouration... and so on until Wiki is a drab, blue-grey site of "politically correct" colouration? You're trying to purify one drop in an ocean of colour-dyed water. Why don't you, as a "template expert" or whatever you consider yourself, go tweak the master navbox template that creates a tracking Category:Navboxes using background colours.. it can be done, as there are similar templates, such as Category:Film articles using image size parameter. Perhaps then this idle speculation and "suggesting" might have a more solid basis to argue a point with, than what currently comes across more as resentment towards use of colour, without proving anything, thus convincing noone. I fail to see how the mention of WAI or Vector skin comes across as a "red herring", I think you're confusing reality with idealism, in terms of how editors have themed areas of Wiki, compared with your own view. The only red herring is that you keep throwing in the navbox/doc, which does not say "you must not use coloured background style", and is not the MOS, it probably equals an essay in terms of where it stands as a guideline, but there is no explicit consensual policy behind it. Regardless, whether I have a rebuttal or not, consensus still counts, as I've made my points clear, I don't oppose some colouration, but I do oppose the over-use of colours or bright colours that affect readability, which makes me quite neutral, neither entirely opposed to your concerns, nor completely supportive of Lugnuts. So, you needn't go on complaining about the red herein this template to me; I've agreed in-part that there are some readability issues, but that doesn't necessarily mean it should not be themed, clearly other editors feel the red of "Red Dwarf" is iconic. Just as those at "The Simpsons" template feel the yellow is iconic. I don't think WP:N comes into play here, because it's about how Wiki looks, and has nothing to do with being informative. On a broader scope, Wiki won't retain editors if it makes every subject bland and monotonous, or imposes strict design rules for every nook and cranny, so that we can't enjoy Wiki whilst working on it, and that's probably why it allows some degree of styling, and where you're no-doubt wrong about the whole "everything should be standardised" thing you seem to be preaching. We're all volunteers, and we all want to enjoy editing, without becoming bored because of red-tape, restrictions, or adhering 100% to the global CSS design. If we did that, we might as well let bots herd the site, and us sheep could find other more intellectually challenging things to do. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 12:02, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In the interest of actually moving this forward, rather than simply repeating myself at twice the previous length with some eyebrow-raising slippery-slope arguments thrown in for the sake of it, I've actually gone and added category tracking of titlestyle and groupstyle (the two parameters used to control this template's appearance) to the parent template. Once that's populated it should give us some idea of how widespread the use of colour is. My initial hypothesis is that it's almost universal when the subject matter is football teams, countries or other subjects popularly identified by a well-defined livery and nearly nonexistent otherwise, but let's get some figures. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, interesting.. well over 800 and counting, though I don't think we agreed that colouration is subject to any particular topics, and as a zero sports interest person myself, I cannot guess how far that could go given the vast amount of sports, teams, leagues, competitions, etc covered on Wiki. And these are just the number navboxes, not the number of instances they themselves exist on articles, which will far exceed the final count. Seems to be a fair few TV/film and music boxes in there though, as I expected. Geography may be common, as you say, as some colours are iconic to nations. Even if there are 1.7m+ transclusions of navbox, there are going to be varying degrees of importance, usage, etc that are contributing factors to visibility and popularity, so whether the total be a small or large minority, it does not directly determine a consensus in favour of default, only that many navboxes do not concede to using default standardisation. We cannot simply disregard that minority as being harmful or ignorant of standardisation, as that would be unwarranted attack on many editors.. it may have to come down to accepting the simple fact that many coloured varieties exist, and only dealing with those that present readability issues. The right to reset them all to default would require a much larger discussion and proposal, perhaps at VP, before anything could be enacted. I imagine though, that there would be massive opposition to making this many navboxes plain default, because of the wider implications for all other styled templates and areas. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 13:24, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Seem to be a lot of Military history templates here, that use {{Campaign}} which are default theme. Might be worth tweaking it to exclude those which may use the default colours in those parameters, or it creates a false count. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 13:28, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This straw man argument that I'm looking to purge colour from Wikipedia entirely is tiresome, and you should stop making it (especially given your rather surprising assertion in the previous wall of text that you're neutral on this matter). I accept that there are classes of navigation template for which colour overriding is an accepted (and indeed pretty much universal) component. However, I contend that television programs are not one of those areas (notwithstanding specific high-profile cases), and that in absence of a good argument for why they should be (a good argument being one which is both cogent and concise, something that is sorely lacking in this case) they should not be easily exempted from the broader discouragement of such.

I deliberately didn't exempt particular classes of templates from the categorisation because (aside from being unnecessarily technically complicated) I think that we'll find that when fully populated the proportion of templates which override the defaults is still very low even when all of the exceptions to the general norm are included. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:01, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So you're saying this "tweak" to an internal administrative template, not even for use on articles was purely out of.. standardisation? I don't make claims that I can't substantiate, and your own wording with terms such as "unobtrusive default styling" shows that you are strongly in favour of the plain default style. Sorry, I can't ignore that elephant in the room, no matter how tiresome it may seem, your actions speak for themselves. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 14:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also, speaking of straw men, your habit of questioning the way people present an argument, instead of just responding to their comments, is hardly inspiring or appropriate.. it's simply a way of leading a discussion through a subtle form of WP:CPUSH; by claiming that someone's argument does not conform to your standards you try to gain some form of higher-ground of reasoning. Laudable attempt, but I'm not naive enough to be swayed by such underhand debate tactics. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 14:22, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My argument is and always has been that styling should not be arbitrarily overridden lightly, and in particular arbitrarily. I have openly stated this repeatedly, along with providing my own counterexamples (because in the absence of anyone else providing credible counterarguments I suppose I have to do it myself). Now, you are not only continuing to misrepresent my position (quote: "the right to reset them all to default"; "disregard that minority as being harmful or ignorant of standardisation") but accusing me of hiding this somehow. Frankly, that bears even less in common with reality than your earlier assertion that despite arguing at extreme length for the opposite case (namely, that editors should be permitted to override the defaults both lightly and arbitrarily) and casting about all sorts of aspersions on both my character and my competence you are "quite neutral" in this case. (Pointing out the flaws in your argument, by the way, is perfectly acceptable within a debate, and you really ought to read the list of indicators of CPUSH more thoroughly before accusing editors in good standing of bad faith.) Now that that is cleared up, let's see if anyone can actually provide a cogent rebuttal to the original arguments for removing the style overrides in this particular case. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Further misdirection. Firstly, no one misrepresented your position, and those quotes were taken out of context. Secondly, no one said anything about your character, and even less about your competence, and I note the lack of quotes for this second claim. Thirdly, you did not point out the flaws in my argument, but instead what you consider the flaws in the manner I present an argument. Finally, no one accused you of bad faith, nor do I have any interest of whether you are in good standing, I take each fresh argument within its own right, not the whole life history of a man. Note also that WP:CPUSH is an essay, and those indicators are mere examples, neither defining nor exhaustible.. and I believe my wording was "a subtle form of CPUSH", which clearly implies a derived form of such behaviour, which you so righteously deny, yet with the same civil POV consistency. And now that that is cleared up, I'll note your ignorance my earlier comment regarding your alteration of other non-mainspace navbox, by instead making these other statements seem more significant, has not gone unnoticed which only confirms what I've said. As for a rebuttal, simple.. your default style change was removed and you haven't got consensus to reapply it.. even if a style was clearly hideous and highly unreadable, say something as fucked up as this , if 10 seemingly sensible editors were to disapprove of it, and 1,000 wild-eyed editors supported it, it would probably have to stick.. that's Wikiocracy for ya... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.. every system has its flaws.. Wiki has many. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 15:12, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the very last point: consensus most assuredly isn't a head count, and the extreme minority has led some significant changes in the project in the past. The rest of that wall of text is best answered with bullet points and diffs, but I haven't the energy for that right now (especially given that I really have better things to do with my time than attempting to break a filibuster over something so trivial). I'll perhaps reply later. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:17, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do as you wish, I'm more interested in seeing how this template develops, than some ego-trip between you and me.. because in the interim the colouration is still problematic, as are the blue on red side links. I'm sure you agree with that. Ma®©usBritish{chat} 15:28, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of the 8,000+ listed so far, I have determined the following topics:
  • Sports.. too many to list, but include Olympics, and major sports such as American football, football (soccer) and baseball.
  • Geographical.. places and localities: countries, areas, regions, divisions, National parks, roads, attractions, settlements: towns, cities and such. US Interstates. Amusement parks. Flags and heraldry.
  • Geological and biological: forests, hills and mountains, fauna, species, etc. Protected areas, SSSIs.
  • Media.. film, TV, music: including programs, series', awards, bands, discographies, filmographies, etc.
  • Airlines.
  • Astronomy: Stars, and other space-related discoveries.
  • Medical and health: diseases, illnesses, physical conditions, biological, chemical, medicines, etc.
  • Politics: presidents, politicians, etc for various countries and states.
  • Educational institutions: Universities.
  • Cars.. lots of makes and models.
  • Transport: Trains, ships.. etc.
  • Religion: Cultures, followings, churches, etc.
  • Scout movements, and similar.
  • Biographical.. too many to list, includes actors, politicians, directors, singers, and other notable celebs and people, worldwide.
  • Historical: Broad areas, local histories, general topics, conflicts.. etc.
  • Programming and coding languages, websites, computing.
And in between all these, hundreds of other topics, small and large. Needless to say, if we are to assume that many of these navboxes are styled somehow, the prevalence is enough to show that this is not a minor issue affecting a few small areas of Wiki.. some of these topics are vast. It's also not a good enough argument to simply state that there are more default standard navboxes than styled ones. The question that must be asked, is this: Let's say the amount of themed navboxes stops at 10,000.. the question is not then that that there are "only 10,000 in 1.7m deviant designs", the question is that these 10,000 deviants are surviving, unchanged from their current state of styling, and that combined, these styled navboxes must have gotten millions upon millions of views over the years since creation, not only by visitors, but by regular editors, admins, etc. If no one but Chris sees fit to reset them back to default once noticed, then there is either an unspoken passive-resistance to navbox standardisation, or more likely, fewer people actually care about standardisation than has been be claimed. It takes all of 20 seconds to load a navbox template, delete a few colour parameters and save it. Or a bot could reset them automatically, and yet no such bot exists. The fact that few editors are actually undertaking this to help keep templates in-line with the recommended default standard, speaks entirely for itself. I believe Chris is right... there probably is a larger consensus for standardisation than styling things willy-nilly. But I also think most editors are evidently happy to turn a blind eye to it, in many areas, and this is proving to be one of those areas. Because standardisation, however much anyone promotes it, doesn't appeal to everyone, and the forms of discouragement cited have obviously been highly ineffective, ignored not only by each editor who themed each navbox, but each and every editor who views it thereafter. Anyone who can't see this is only kidding themselves, given the distribution of styled templates. In short: this is not an isolated incident, or a few scattered navboxes, it is a trend covering whole topics, whole WikiProjects, and large active chunks of Wiki. So, filibuster I may be, but when virtually every experienced registered editor and promoted admin over the past few years is guilty of not discouraging styling harder, to prevent the trend from reaching the over-whelming level it has gotten to, I think it matters not. /end wall of text – have a nice day! :) Ma®©usBritish{chat} 19:23, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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