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Guidance on "cartoonish" graphics
Myself and some others have raised some concerns over at social distancing over the use of a series of "cartoonish" graphics for medical advice. You are welcome to join that discussion, and please make comments specific to that situation there to keep discussion centralized. For here, I was wondering if the MoS gives any guidance about, for instance, which types of fonts are most ideal for a graphic illustration. And, if not, should such guidance be added? I'm not envisioning a strict policy banning comic sans so much as more of a "if you have the choice, don't use comic sans" kinda thing. Sdkb (talk) 05:23, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Size
The guideline said: "Except with very good reason, a fixed width in pixels (e.g. 17px) may be specified." WP:THUMBSIZE says: "Except with very good reason, do not use [fixed width in pixels]." This contradiction was I believe unintentional, but since the previous wording is more in line with the other guideline, I've restored it until a new wording, if desired, can be agreed. DrKay (talk) 14:55, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have changed to "Except with very good reason,[clarification needed] a fixed width in pixels (e.g. 17px) should not be specified." - no doubt that "not" had been removed at some point. There have been any numbers of undiscussed fiddles to this wording over the years, and the community's view is not very clear - the use of both fixed pixels and "upright" settings have been in decline for some years, it seems to me. DrKay's new wording of "absolutely necessary" clearly tightened the criterion considerably, in an unhelpfully vague way, as his own "clarify" tag showed. Johnbod (talk) 15:33, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
To this I've added the few cases where fixed pixels are generally allowed, please review if there's issues with that. --Masem (t) 16:01, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - there are in fact many other cases where fixed pix are more accepted, for example lead images and those with odd shapes. Johnbod (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the most recent RfC here, it appears that the decision was that there would be no ethnic galleries in articles, not just leads. The location of the NOETHNICGALLERIES guidance in the Images for the lead subsection implies that it only applies to the lead. I found this confusing. The RFCs came in stages, and one had a contested closing, making this hard to research.
LaTeeDa and S Marshall, like I stated with this edit, "It's also still question as to whether this guideline applies to lower in the article; maybe [we] should move it out of this lead section." In the followup RfC, I did ask editors about this matter; it was one of the things I felt needed clarification. Although not enough editors in the RfC explicitly stated that they felt MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES applied to galleries lower in the article, it seemed that most editors were for the guideline extending to the same thing happening lower in the article. This is because, to repeat, it doesn't make sense to state that it is any more of a problem to have ethnicity galleries or similar in the lead than lower in the article. I noted that the same concerns would still be taking place in the article, except now it would concern the lower part of the article instead of the lead. As for how things are today? A number of editors cite MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES when removing ethnicity galleries from lower in the article. And as seen in the ANI discussion I linked to in the guideline, Sandstein stated of S Marshall's close, "In my view, you also correctly put forth the view that this would also apply to galleries further down the page, if these galleries had, like a lead image, no purpose other than 'here's what a bunch of x-people look like'." So, to me, it is probably best that MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES be moved out of the lead section in the guideline. I'm sure that if we surveyed the editors who voted, the ones who were for MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES will clarify that they feel it extends to lower in the article as well.
That's my understanding of how this has been applied. I'll point out that some of the confusion over the scope is likely a result of the first (Nov 2015) RFC being reworded. For two or three weeks there was a discrepancy between the header and the actual RFC wording scope: one referred to articles and one referred to infoboxes. Meters (talk) 19:40, 8 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Meters, this is the November 2015 RfC. The header states "Proposal for the deletion of all the galleries of personalities from the infoboxes of articles about ethnic groups" and the part of the closure states "The result of this RfC is that there is consensus to remove portrait galleries from the infoboxes of articles about ethnic groups." So what do you mean by "For two or three weeks there was a discrepancy between the header and the actual RFC wording scope"? And what rewording?
For the record, regarding LaTeeDa's bold edit, I felt it was best that I not make that change since not enough editors had specified supporting MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES extending to lower in the article and since I was heavily involved in the January 2016 RfC (and started that RfC). Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 16:19, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
From the discussion above, it is clear that the 2016 RfC did not reach consensus about whether MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES should apply lower in the article, although there are other reasons for moving MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES out of Images for the Lead. If the 2016 RfC scope applies only to infoboxes/leads, contrary to the RfC proposal statement, shouldn't the closing statement be amended to clearly qualify the scope? As is, with the proposal statement referring to 'articles', this creates confusion. With the link in MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES to this RfC, the RfC has a high profile. This has a practical effect now, where editors who might disagree with my edit moving MOS:NOETHINCGALLERIES from the Images for the Lead section will read the 2016 RfC proposal and closing statement, and assume RfC support for my edit which did not exist. LaTeeDa (talk) 09:28, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
