Forum:Typography refresh

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So apparently we'll be updating to mediawiki 1.23 soon (end of next week I think). And 1.23 has the typography refresh in it. And it seems Electrified Admin thinks this is a good idea, but I don't.

The so-called typography refresh (whatever that's even supposed to mean other than just sounding good) is supposed to make the site easier to use for people with vision problems. The text is bigger, the content area is a shade of dark grey that supposedly meets some specification for greyness somewhere, the level 1 and 2 headers are some serif font that they keep waffling on, and the content area and/or sidebar may or may not be some sans-serif font of somebody's choice. The bigger text, well, whatever I suppose. I don't think it looks as good and most people know how to zoom text if they really need to (which I don't), though. But whatever. The greyness of the text makes it harder to read, even though it meets some specification, and kind of ugly. The serif headers seem like they should look nice but are actually ugly and weird and some have said they look unprofessional because the standard practice is to have serif content area and sans-serif headers. They also don't render some accented characters very nicely which looks stupid, though this is probably only relevant to Vietnamese wikis. The sans-serif content area, which I think they are going to put in again in the near future (they took it out) is also just weird and unnecessary and looks ugly with some fonts because it overrides the computer's choice of most appropriate font. Overall, these changes are unnecessary and problematic, which means that there is no reason to make them. Hotchinchilla4u says that the typography refresh will improve the formatting on the main page but I don't see how. It looks just fine how it is now.

I am well aware that Wikipedia has implemented the typography refresh (or rather, the WMF has forced it on the somewhat unwilling community) and that some of you may see this as a reason for us to do it too, but I disagree with this for the reasons set out here.

So because of all this I would really like us to avoid having the typography refresh when we update to 1.23. This is not impossible; I have an override that we can stick in MediaWiki:Vector.css and I am willing and able to update it as necessary. I also think there is a way to create a classic vector skin and use that instead but I'll have to look into that later when I have more time.

Let's hold a vote shall we? – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 20:48, 25 May 2014

Some more thoughts of mine on why the typography changes don't look good, for the benefit of anyone who cares:

The font used in the headers is 'ugly' for some well-defined reasons. The colon character is commonly used and clearly ends somewhere above the line where the rest of the characters end, and that doesn't look good to me. There's also a sort of 'wiggly' look to it - most of the characters seem to be lined up but they somehow look as if they aren't. The kerning may have issues. Finally, it doesn't fit with the general appearance of the wiki IMHO. The rest of the text/wiki is sans-serif which may have something to do with that. It looks like it's trying to have a sort of character that isn't really supposed to be there and doesn't fit in or maybe looks...I find it hard to describe. May be related to what Hotadmin described once as modern or contemporary (I forget which word he used). I always disliked sites that tried to be 'modern' and have weird fancy fonts and stuff and the Vector skin was a rare, refreshing exception until somebody decided that was a bad thing.
The content area text is larger than that of the tabs. It looks out of place somehow. This is fixable by changing the tab text to 0.875em to match, which would probably be the logical thing to do but I don't think anyone's planning on it.

Hope that is useful in some way and not just me talking to myself and benefitting no one at all. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 02:17, 31 May 2014

More details on the headers. The font stack used is Linux Libertine, Georgia, Times, serif. I have Linux Libertine installed on my Linux box but not on the virtual Windows desktops I use - at least not this particular one I'm using now - so I assume I'm seeing Georgia from here. Georgia doesn't have the wiggliness and irregularities that Linux Libertine seems to and overall looks much better, enough so that I might not mind it. I don't know how many of you have seen it both ways; I should take a screenshot with various different desktops. More to the point, however, Linux Libertine is a free font and it seems very likely that this is the reason it is being used on Wikimedia projects. It is very important to them to be as 'free' as possible even when it means a less pretty appearance. On Uncyclopedia, though, we don't care if something is free, so there is no need to use a suboptimal font for the sake of freeness. Doing so would go against our principles, even, I think. For this reason I would prefer it if we could all have a look at what Linux Libertine is like, decide for ourselves if it looks like barf, and then not use it if such is the consensus. We may be a Wikipedia parody but I believe we are also in some sense parodying them by rebelling against some of their principles.

I'll upload a few screenshots in a bit and I would really appreciate it if you could look at them and make a possibly more informed decision. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 05:43, 1 Jun 2014

Vote on whether to adopt the typography refresh

OK, people, now listen up! As anyone can tell you who has ever been involved in a heated argument over whether tab stops should be set every 4, every 8, or every 10 spaces, this is a religious dispute.
What that means is, in short, there is no right answer here.
The flip side of that is that every possible answer to this question is wrong and will leave nearly everyone angry and dissatisfied.
You cannot convince anyone of your point of view with reason, because this question is fundamentally one of religion, not reason.
You cannot convince anyone of your point of view with force, because the admins all have roughly the same amount of power at their command.
And you cannot simply let it go because that would be contrary to your beliefs about this issue, which you have only just realized you hold really strongly, because (see above).
Consequently, it is all totally hopeless and we should just accept the fact that it's the beginning of Armageddon and move on. Snarglefoop (talk) 17:20, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Technically we can try to convince people with force - in the case of sysadmins, by deploying the change (and yes, this is going to happen; we will not alter the system level for this kind of change no matter how much consensus there is), in the case of admins, by reverting it in the site css (while this would be the appropriate method for a site change, please don't actually do it without consensus), and in the case of users, by enabling gadgets to change the appearance they receive (because if you personally don't like it, this is what you should do, along with reporting specific issues to your cool and sexy (sys)admins/developers so we can file bugs or otherwise try to get them fixed upstream).

I do agree that it's hopeless, though. -— Lyrithya ༆ 12:51, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Score: 0

Against for all the reasons set out above. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 20:48, 25 May 2014
Typography "refresh" is a bad idea. -- Jack Phoenix, professional ~~killer~~ admin (Whine ?) • (Wikia ♥ ads) 21:57, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
I agree that the typography refresh has problems, and is if anything a net decrease as far as usability is concerned, but same as when we debated moving to vector or not, one core thing holds: Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia. It should use the same (or very similar) visual styles. Issues with the typography refresh that are truly problematic can be fixed without abandoning it entirely. -— Lyrithya ༆ 22:31, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
Have you read this? Do you disagree with it? If so, why? – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 02:21, 26 May 2014
Your personal views do not determine what the site is or is not, nor anyone's - the site is many things to many people, with every user taking a somewhat different approach. And that is fine, but on the surface, in its presentation to visitors, to my knowledge Uncyclopedia has never stopped being a humour site in parody of Wikipedia and sister projects. -— Lyrithya ༆ 21:32, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Against. Gray text is a cancer on the World Wide Web. And fancy custom fonts on web pages should wait until all popular browsers implement the (as yet unwritten) dynamic font loading standard. Snarglefoop (talk) 03:14, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
And by the way I use Monobook on Wikipedia. Typography refresh, ppthbtbthhbtbhththtt! on you. Snarglefoop (talk) 03:22, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

The font colour can easily be fixed. Using the typography refresh on Uncyclopedia does not mean we need to use it completely without modification; we have competent designers in our employ for a reason. And by 'in our employ', I mean we sometimes threaten them with shovels until they fix the email server. And by 'for a reason', I mean because they were there. Anyway, you're right, that colour is bad. Something most designers these days can't seem to get through their thick skulls is that if users have issues with contrast with black on white text, it's something wrong with the font rendering, font, or monitor, not the colour choice. Idjits.

We can also fix the fancy font issues by using fonts that actually go together, and without cross-language legibility issues. Oddly we don't even pay our designers, or even technically have designers (I think normally we call them 'sysadmins'), and they still know more about this stuff than the entire WMF design team. How weird is that? -— Lyrithya ༆ 21:32, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
There are many different opinions on how close our site needs to be in appearance to Wikipedia to successfully accomplish our goals. I think that at least to the public we should appear as similar to Wikipedia as possible, so that high school and university students can continue to use as a source on their essays. If there is some way we can improve "typography refresh" before we implement it, even better. If there is some way we can make the fact we are implementing it a joke, even better. And then we just need somebody to whip up a code so people can opt out of the change (sorta like how I still use Monobook). -- The Zombiebaron 05:06, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
We may need to decide what exactly our goals are, I think. How essential is it that we look exactly like wikipedia for someone to want to use us as a source? We do already have a potato logo, after all, and some mentions of 'Uncyclopedia' scattered around on every page, as well as several different namespaces that contain content that wouldn't appear on Wikipedia. Is this additional difference big enough that it will be noticeable to the public? Also, I already said I had some override code so opting out should be fairly trivial. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 15:03, 26 May 2014
There is no way to "decide" what "our goals are". Everybody has a unique opinion on the matter and that is why we hold votes before making large changes to the site. If you believe that a change is wrong you get to vote against it. Historically the community has voted for keeping our public appearance similar to Wikipedia's: several years ago when Wikipedia updated their Main Page layout we copied it, and of course we changed from Monobook to Vector. -- The Zombiebaron 08:07, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
That's all true, but you haven't given me your unique opinion but the opinion of 'the community', and I was hoping to hear people's unique opinions. Three members of the present community have voted against the typography refresh, one has voted for, others haven't voted because they don't care or are busy writing articles and stuff, so at the moment it would appear that 'the community' is mostly apathetic to negative about this particular change. Not trying to say the community is unimportant, but I don't think we should make decisions based on what was decided many years ago by a community that is not all here any more. Am I wrong? Should we stick to what was decided many years ago? Can things not change in that time? Perhaps not. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 14:56, 27 May 2014
I actually did give you my opinion in my first comment. Yes I believe that the opinion of the community changes over time (especially as the userbase changes), I was merely pointing out the historical context for my opinion. -- The Zombiebaron 20:23, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Sorry. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 21:28, 27 May 2014

Even with the typography refresh, users will still have the options of using other skins or enabling a gadget to restore the old vector appearance. This largely only concerns how the site will appear to readers. -— Lyrithya ༆ 21:32, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
For. I actually like the way it looks. I don't see what all the fuss is about. --EMC^[TALK]21:48 May 26 2014
Who. The. Fuck. Cares. Another piss on the wall argument that will pretty much effect the site less than circle-jerking in a forum. Try writing 20kb of content instead of 20kb of arguing about font size and color. ~Sir Frosty (Talk to me!) 07:37, 3 June 2014 (UTC)
True on the editing, but circle-jerking in forums remains one of the cornerstones of Uncyclopedia. Someone has to decide who gets to go first on the soggy biscuit, and who eats the leftovers. ... Ahhh. ... So it's about font size? I had no idea. Also... HIIIII Frosty! J F C 01:11. Jun 4
Circle-jerking where people are actually taking what is going on seriously is far more depressing than the manner of dicking around which is the norm on the site. ~Sir Frosty (Talk to me!) 07:27, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
Lyrithya once said something about how people complain if they want to complain, and go around poking articles with a stick if they want to go around poking articles with a stick. It's a sentiment I happen to share. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 01:57, 9 Jun 2014
Editing the articles is what's fun. Perhaps we should do a collab on circle jerking? Or complaining? How about a colab about complaining about how poor the circle jerking is getting these days. Wait. We are. ... It's kinda like Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia. :) Someone edit something!!! J F C 02:05. Jun 9

Vote on whether we should be a parody of Wikipedia

Support

Score: 1

you're a fucking moron. should we go back to wikia too? were a parody of wikipedia, and were one of the best out there. what do you suggest we do then if we dont parody wiki? internet cartoons? vlogs? turned based strategy gaming forums?FAKEHATER spam me 01:02, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Going back to Wikia and not being a parody of Wikipedia are quite different things: the one is a return to the (former) status quo, the other is a departure from it. I am suggesting we be a parody of any and all encyclopedias - a parody encyclopedia. Why is that unacceptable? Also, Wikipedia is not Wiki. And you edit conflicted me. Boo. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 02:10, 27 May 2014
This is Uncyclopedia. Uncyclopedia is a humorous parody of Wikipedia. What "Uncyclopedia" is is not something which we can decide here. It is bigger than us. If this wiki is not Uncyclopedia, and is planning to be anything other than such, then someone please let me know... J F C 02:19. May 27

Oppose

Score: 0

Discussion

Score: negative infinity plus pie

I think we could set ourselves apart from The Site Which Must Not Be Named if we decided we weren't a parody of wikipedia, and we could justify being significantly different in appearance and process. On the other hand, it might make us less recognisable, and there seems to be some strong opposition to the idea so I think I'll recuse myself from taking a stand on the matter for now. – Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 23:25, 26 May 2014

More blathering of dubious value

It seems the idea of not being a parody of wikipedia is strongly opposed. I won't attack any of you any more for saying so because I can see that there is consensus on the issue and I've behaved atrociously enough lately without pouring more coffee in the keyboard.^[1] Everyone who's expressed an opinion on the subject has been around longer than I have, too, so I really have no right to try to rock your world.^[2]

However, I would like to make the reasons for my position clear. I probably won't succeed in doing so, since I often use a lot of words and don't end up making any sense, but I can at least try.

I didn't like that we were making the typography change merely because wikipedia did so.
I was under the impression that not all the community agreed that we were a wikipedia parody, among those who disagreed being Zombiebaron (correct me if I'm wrong, Zombiebaron) and Multiliteralist.
- I have proposed changes to the site with the intent of making us look/act more like wikipedia, and they were rejected. See: Forum:A new concept for VFD, Forum:Templatey things

I originally thought we were a parody of wikipedia and should try to look just like them. I have discovered a lot of differences between us and wikipedia and I originally considered these a problem to be fixed, but when I tried to 'fix' some of them (see above) they were shot down. (See also the histories of Template:Vfd and Template:Oldvfd.) It didn't help matters that as a wikipedian I am used to how wikipedia works and sometimes expect uncyclopedia to work the same way or wish it did. In any case, after considering all these differences and the various people opposed to changing them, I flipped from really wanting us to look like Wikipedia to really thinking that was wrong.

I basically just went from one extreme position to the other because I have a tendency to try to see things in black and white which often results in an 'all or nothing' type of attitude, i.e. I tend to think all one thing is right and if I discover it isn't I tend to start thinking all the other thing is right, and I won't or can't consider anything in between. I also sometimes will get confrontational with little to no provocation. All this results in my starting a lot of drama here that probably wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for my creating a hornet's nest and then stepping in it. Like you really wanted to hear a bunch of psychoanalysis of myself. Anyway, moving on.

So in conclusion...I'm not really sure what I can conclude about any of this but I think we shouldn't go poking the wikipedia parody business any more. It's not worth it.

↑ I could be blowing stuff out of proportion, mind you. I do that a lot.
↑ Not that I have any rights here anyway, but you know what I mean.

– Llwy-ar-lawr (talk • contribs • logs) 15:35, 27 May 2014

Are you suggesting we don't need Drama? Hell no. Bring it on! Keep the 'argument' going. Anything to get RC scrolling currently has got to be good! ... :D Anyway... IMO, and as far as I'm aware no one has upset anyone about anything, if that's what anyone is worried about so it's all cool. RE the typography change I don't understand enough (and can't be bothered to take the time to do so because I want to do other things) to make a judgement so I trust the consensus. Also, Jack Phoenix is usually right about this sort of stuff. J F C 16:14. May 27

Dramathonics, Thespianism...what would any Unc be without it? --

RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 22:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

[1] I could be blowing stuff out of proportion, mind you. I do that a lot.

[2] Not that I have any rights here anyway, but you know what I mean.

[1]

[2]

Forum:Typography refresh

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Forum:Typography refresh

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