Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Color

Index · Statistics · Log

Color articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
GA			3	2			5
B	7	17	12	7		1	44
C	7	29	51	73		1	161
Start		37	105	165		1	308
Stub	1	3	22	155		2	183
List		3	21	11		1	36
Category					105		105
Template					141		141
NA		5	14	47	75		141
Assessed	15	94	228	460	321	6	1,124
Unassessed				1		2	3
Total	15	94	228	461	321	8	1,127
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 3,424			Ω = 4.88

Archives
April 2005 – June 2005 June 2005 – September 2005 April 2006 – September 2006 March 2006 – January 2008

Proposed deletion: Silver (color)

Silver (color) (via WP:PROD on 28 December 2007)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 06:01, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:Shades of color

I created a Template:Shades of color designed to standardize the various shades of ... templates and make them easier to maintain. autocollaspe should probably be enabled by default, but I need to set up some template parameters so that for example on the List of colors page they don't collapse there. I converted all the shades of templates that I'm aware of to using this new base template. PaleAqua (talk) 21:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

With the recent creation of Variations of color pages, e.g. Variations of green I wondering if the naming of the templates and categories should be revisited. While personally I prefer the shades of nomenclature, as variations of... sounds very awkward to my ears; I am not as against using variations especially if that is the preference for the minor shade articles. PaleAqua (talk) 09:52, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Dog coat color category

The article Coat (dog) has a large section on colors. I don't know if/who/how it should be added to the purview of this project, as is the horse coat article. But I think it merits it. Best, Shlishke (talk) 02:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Color swatches, color wheel colors, and other strange stuff

Violet (middle violet) (#8B00FF)
#8B00FF

The color articles remain a confusing mess. The biggest contributor, User:Keraunos, collects unsourced trivia, makes up names, measures RGB numbers out of an old book, acts like "color wheel" is a unique thing, and adds ugly little color swatch templates along with factoid-laden info boxes and comparison strip charts to lots of color articles. As far as I can tell, he seldom engages in discussion, but I hereby invite him again.

The trouble is that this stuff is all presented as if true or verifiable, when it's mostly not. Within certain systems like the X11 or HTML colors, I think it's fine to present a sample and the numbers; they come across on a web browser as perfect examples of how the use of those named colors in web pages will appear. For pretty much anything else, the numbers don't make so much sense. The use of terminology like "Green (color wheel)" for codes like 00FF00 is based on a certain logic of an HSV or HSL color wheel to represent an RGB space, but is this any kind of standard or sourced terminology? If so, what's the source? He cites verizon for "Violet (color wheel)", but there's no such name on the page.

And what about that Texas stamp collectors' site that he likes to cite as a source for "NBS" color names and values? Sure, they measured the RGB of their scans of a bunch of stamp colors; but does that make it a reliable source for color data? I'm skeptical. Or he'll use sources like BF2S Forum for "electric violet" even that that page calls it "violet"; or hexcode for "deep violet" even though the hexcodes page doesn't have color names on it.

I'd like to hear what others thinks, and what direction we should take to improve things. Dicklyon (talk) 01:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for a top-down approach. As we fix up our most important articles we'll be better able to see what sources are and aren't out there on color, which will make every article better. However, I can see that some articles just don't belong on wikipedia and need to be merged or deleted as soon as possible. We should pick one to delete as a precedent and then systematically move through them all. Wrad (talk) 02:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that the information boxes should move away from being RGB/HSV centric to be include stuff like symbolism, common pigments and dies, wavelengths and frequencies (or complementary ones) if possible etc. I don't think that most articles should have more than one color infobox. And I think swatches should be in general removed and pictures added. Too many of the sources for color coordinates are arbitary, original research or contradictory. For example colourlovers is a website I've seen referenced a bit. It allows user color coordinate submissions, and often has numerous different entries for names if searched.

I do like what Wrad and others have done with the article on green. Perhaps we should nominate articles to focus on, similar to how green was brought forward. The list of colors in Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, or even just focusing on the main articles for each of the shades of series in some order might be a good way to start that.

As for deleting or merging articles and sections, we probably need to come up with some clear guidelines on what to include and what that should not be included. Colors beginning with "Pale ...", "Deep ...", "Light ...", "Pastel ...", "Dark ...", "Medium ...", etc.. in general don't need there own article or even section. Also colors named after objects or things probably should not have there own page unless the color is notable separately (Orange would be one such notable color). I think my creation of the page Ivory (color) was probably on the borderline of this distinction and may have been a mistake in hindsight... PaleAqua (talk) 04:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I've been harboring a secret wish to make Primary colors a featured topic including Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow. Wrad (talk) 04:20, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

How about we agree to work on removing all the sections and infoboxes on colors that don't have a reliable source? In some cases the name and history is sourced, but not the info. In others, the name and all are unsourced. I often just take them out, but if we had consensus that this is a good direction, we might keep ahead of them. Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure. We need some way to keep each other posted on what's going on, though, by way of AfDs, at least. Wrad (talk) 04:41, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I definitely approve of this effort. I asked someone with lots of AfD experience a few months ago, and it was suggested that the best approach is to put articles up in batches of a few at a time, so that AfD commentators/voters aren't overwhelmed. There are dozens of unsourced stub color articles which should rightfully be merged or deleted, so this will take a while. A good start is Category:WikiProject Color articles needing infobox sources, but that isn't all of them (and some of those may be worth keeping). --jacobolus (t) 13:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Just as an aside, Category:WikiProject Color articles needing infobox sources is now a hidden category, see Category:Hidden_categories for a little more information. While there is not general consensus yet on this, it appears that it is being used on all the lacking sources categories. The "Misc" / "Show Hidden Categories" tab of my preferences may be used to always display such categories at the bottom of articles. PaleAqua (talk) 22:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I know I'm coming into this a little late, but I agree with the thoughts here. I was just looking at Blue and there's a whole section on Variations. Which would be fine, except it's defining hex and other values for things like "dark blue". It looks like someone just went down the list of web-safe colors or something. That info can be very useful; I'm just not sure it belongs in an encyclopedia rather than some sort of color index. I'd rather see a couple sentences along the lines of "several shades of blue are often termed 'dark blue'; these include....." and then pull in darker blues from other articles. (Similar to what's been suggested for Green.) The infoboxes with swatches and exact values should go away except for very specific colors (such as branded colors), and even then the swatches should have a disclaimer that they'll look different on a monitor, etc. Agree that photos are the way to go, especially for broader categories like "dark blue".

I don't have much time for editing these days but happy to help out if this is the sort of direction we're moving. I keep meaning to get to the library for some sources but that doesn't look like it's happening anytime soon :( -- Laura S | talk to me 14:36, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the color wheel colors, it’s very simple. I’ve stated this many times before in color project discussions. The 12 major color wheel colors on the HSV color wheel, which are located at 30 degree intervals, are: red 0 degrees, orange 30 degrees,yellow 60 degrees, chartreuse green 90 degrees, green 120 degrees, spring green 150 degrees, cyan 180 degrees, azure 210 degrees, blue 240 degrees, violet 270 degrees, magenta 300 degrees, and rose 330 degrees. Keraunos (talk) 23:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I moved your comment down. But when you inserted it in the middle it made the replies to Dicklyon appear to be to you. Also do you have a source for using Chartreuse at 90, Spring at 150, Azure at 210, etc? PaleAqua (talk) 23:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The is no need for a source. It is a simple mathematical formula based on the hex codes of the colors. By arranging all the pure chromas, i.e. hues in which at least one of the r, g, or b hex codes is 255, in a circle, it is easy to see which colors are at which angles. Keraunos (talk) 07:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

A source for this notion "color wheel colors" would be useful, too. Sounds like specifically an RGB color model color wheeel; does that make it eligible to called THE color wheel? I don't think so. These books seem to mostly think that "color wheel colors" refers to the colors in the RYB color model. Dicklyon (talk) 00:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The color wheel being referred to is obviously the HSV color wheel, not the outmoded and outdated RYB color model which nowadays is only used to teach children in grammar school. The HSV color wheel is obviously much better because you can get much brighter colors by using it instead of the RYB color wheel which does not allow a bright cyan or magenta. Keraunos (talk) 07:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

It is necessary to in the case of the colors orange, azure, and violet to distinguish between the web colors and the color wheel colors of the same name, since they are different. In the case of green, X11 green (web color lime) is a color wheel color at 120 degrees on the HSV color wheel, whereas HTML/CSS green is a darker color that is mixed with gray and is therefore not on the color wheel but inside the color sphere in the "southern hemisphere" (the shades or darker colors). Keraunos (talk) 07:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

HSV is a quick hack of limited-gamut device-dependent RGB made for 1970s-era computer graphics work, and these names of yours (“spring”, “rose”, &c.) are as far as I can tell completely made up. If there is an article about color wheels it should be historically accurate, comprehensive, and not original research. —jacobolus (t) 00:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The HSV color wheel is the best color wheel that is available at the present time because it gives the brightest colors. It is the color wheel that all the web colors are based on. Keraunos (talk) 07:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The color wheel concept is important because the color wheel is the equator of the color sphere. White is at the north pole and black is at the south pole. All possible colors are at the surface of or within the color sphere.

The tints or light colors are in the "northern hemisphere" of the sphere and the shades or dark colors are in the "southern hemisphere" of the sphere. The achromatic colors are along the axis of the sphere--a line from the north pole to the south pole of the sphere. Keraunos (talk) 07:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

An aside about swatches. Color swatches are nice because they allow one to view the color over a larger surface area and thus get a greater sense of the character of the color. The color bands on the color boxes are too narrow. If you look at some of the other Wikipedias, as for example the Italian Wikipedia, the color boxes have much broader color bands on top that makes it easier to get a sense of what the color looks like. Keraunos (talk) 07:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Harlequin (color)

Harlequin (color) is up for deletion. I can't find sources on the net or I simply lack the expertise on color to do so. Perhaps you could help--Lenticel ^(talk) 08:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Amazingly, quite a few people are suggesting to keep it, even though the only thing we know about it is that it appears in one 1930 dictionary of color names. What's up with that? Dicklyon (talk) 01:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

There are no rules about what makes a color article notable. We need to fix that. Wrad (talk) 01:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Human_rainbow

I think its in your scope! Gaogier ^Chat! 02:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

What makes it notable? The GBR catalogs just about any feat that can be verified. --Adoniscik (talk) 19:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

List of color topics

Anyone maintaining this, or is it yet another useless list? --Adoniscik (talk) 17:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if anyone uses/maintains it, but such lists can be useful for their 'related changes' links, such as this one. --jacobolus (t) 21:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice, I learned something! Isn't this better? --Adoniscik (talk) 21:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I think there's a similar list somewhere under WikiProject Color, which is therefore not in the Article namespace, so the list in the article namespace is probably worth killing. --jacobolus (t) 02:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Unnotable color article clean-up

I'm implementing a plan at the Variations of green article. I'm going to round up all articles on shades of green with sparse content and put them all into this article, and turn their current articles into redirects, then see if I can't organize the central article in a readable way. Help and support will be appreciated. Wrad (talk) 03:06, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I've begun the work, moving info from the article in the Shades of green category into the variations article. I'd like to move more of them in, but I'd like to see more support for the process on this page. Basically, I'm thinking we should move as much as is reasonable into the Variations article, and then determine what is actually notable, and then delete what isn't and expand what is and find a good way to present the information better with that article. Wrad (talk) 03:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Strong support. Especially working on one article at a time; an informal collaboration. Thanks for taking the initiative, I'll help out if I get a chance. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Aye, nice initiative. Started going through what's there and going to take a look at what sources I can find. PaleAqua (talk) 04:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Color

Sample Color
Common connotations
Colorful
Colour coordinates
Hex triplet	##FF0FF
sRGBB (r, g, b)	()
HSV (h, s, v)	()
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	()
Source	[Unsourced]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

I've added a nocoords parameter to the infobox that prevents any of the coordinates from being displayed, but keeps the picture, symbolism, caveat etc. Might be useful alternative for unsourced color coordinates.PaleAqua (talk) 06:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The spelling parameter no longer works. All color infoboxes now use 'color' for the spelling. I'd fix it if I knew how. VMS Mosaic (talk) 01:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at fixing it. PaleAqua (talk) 02:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Fixed now. Sorry about that, lost a pair of braces when I was cleaning up the template as part of my changes. PaleAqua (talk) 02:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Is there a color called "Camel"?

Template:Map caption (see example of its work here: Republic of Ireland, under the map of Europe in infobox) names some light shade of orange as "camel". Neither Wikipedia, nor Wiktionary mentions "camel" as a color. Can this word (in English) be a name of such color? 92.39.161.221 (talk) 19:25, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It's listed in the A Dictionary of Colour ISBN 1854183753 page 79 as "The fawn colour of the camel; beige". Whether it's a notable color name is another question. PaleAqua (talk) 01:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Can someone help me color a link?

.01 Cabal <- I want to make that white, but font tags around it doesn't do a thing. It's a link, so it remains blue. Enigma ^message 17:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, when I removed the rename (|.01 Cabal), it was willing to color it. Not with it, though. Any idea? Enigma ^message 17:35, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I managed to fix it via testing. Seems separate font tags were needed. linky. Enigma ^message 18:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Pink

Anyone considered protecting pink - it seems to get vandalized regularly. ☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 07:13, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The 6 principals

I was directed here from Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Principles, but I find no discussion of the six principals on that page. Is there a discussion of the reasoning behind the Principals? Where can I find it? Or how/where can I start it? Stephenlegh (talk) 16:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Color/Archive 4#Proposed Wikipedia policy/guideline on color/colour articles and swatches in the most recent talkpage archive. (You could also have used the whatlinkshere toolbox link Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Principles :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:09, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:05, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup listing

Hi. A nifty new automated Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Cleanup listing has been created. Take a look, pick a task :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:23, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Abney effect diagram

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a good reference book for colour-related topics? In particular I am trying to find out if Image:Abney-effect-animation.gif is a good representation of the Abney effect. If you could comment about it on this page it would be greatly appreciated. thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 12:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

You should really document on the image description page how it was made. For example, did you assume a linear RGB space when you added white light? That would be a typical big mistake. See gamma correction and sRGB. Dicklyon (talk) 05:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Color

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Infoxbox color cleanup plus variations.

I've made some changes to the Infobox color template to support adding samples of variations to the infobox as well as cleaning up some of the parser functions used, as well as the spectral coordinates header not showing if only one of the parameters was specified. You can see a sample on the template page itself plus at Variations of pink(this rev). I'd be interested in what you think. PaleAqua (talk) 06:54, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Interesting and fun color name site called Name That Color

This color name site, Name That Color: is very popular and includes most of the Web colors, some Wikipedia color list colors, the Crayola crayon colors, and the Xona.com Color List(Resene Paint Colors): all on a single list of more than 1500 colors. There is also an HSV color wheel on which you can move a cursor around, get a slice of the color wheel at that point, and find out which of the codes of the colors on the list is closest to the color you have chosen. Of course it can't be used as a source because it contains Wikipedia colors but it is fun to play around with. I just found this a week ago. Keraunos (talk) 05:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Articles for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xanadu (colour). —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:27, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Purple vs. Violet

We have two separate articles for these, but they are the same thing. The purple article tries to argue that they aren't, but it is uncited and contradicts itself. Wrad (talk) 19:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

What contradiction do you see? Violet is the color of short-wavelength light, while purple is the color of a mixture of long and short (red and blue/violet) wavelengths. On a CRT screen, you can't make violet per se, but a purple of the same hue can sometimes be a credible substitute. The representative colors chosen for the color icons are pretty strange though, with violet being redder than the purple. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, no contradiction, just some repetition. Still, from a scientific perspective they are only different some of the time. From a cultural perspective there is very little distinction at all. I think we're making a mountain out of a molehill by separating them so much. Wrad (talk) 04:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

What definitions do you prefer? How would you treat them both in one article? Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I would have to do it as I go. I'm just bringing it up here to prepare people for what might later be a merger of some kind. Wrad (talk) 05:18, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Value and saturation

In Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Normalized Color Coordinates it states that a fully saturated color should be at 50% value but most of the coordinates used at Wikipedia show fully saturated colors with a value at 100%. Which is the preferred method for Wikipedia? Justin Foote (talk) 01:27, 11 October 2008 (UTC)