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Template talk:Television home release

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More than one release

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There are show's seasons with more than one release per season ("Volume 1" and "Volume 2"). It would be required to have a "more complex" table, with parameters like Title2, Set details2 and Special features2 etc. e.g.: Glee (season 1). Thank you — Artmanha (talk) 23:57, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Given the fact that different "volumes" would have different release dates, this would mean everything in the table would be different, so the easiest method would be to just have two tables. Alex|The|Whovian? 00:01, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. Just wanted to check it with you before updating them. Thank you so much! — Artmanha (talk) 00:08, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reformat without tables

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I'm going to suggest something pretty radical for this template: completely removing the table structure, for better WP:ACCESSIBILITY, especially on mobile.

If you've ever looked at a page that uses this template on a small-screen device like a phone, you know that the formatting is... well, IMHO, not great. (If you haven't, here's how the template transclusion in the Clone High article looks on my Galaxy S6: Screenshots hosted at Imgur.)

This is an issue that applies to a lot of templates, not just this one, which I'm acknowledging as all the more reason to start with this one. This particular template is relatively rare in that the table structure really adds nothing to it. The information could just as easily be formatted — in fact, might be better formatted, even in desktop browsers — as simple wikitext/wikilists. (Also, it's only used on 54 articles, so it's not a major impact to change it.)

So, my proposal is simple. A reformatting such that this:

Doctor Who: The Complete Eighth Series
Set details Special features
  • 12 episodes
  • 5-disc set
  • 16:9 aspect ratio
  • Subtitles: English
DVD release dates
Region 1 Region 2 Region 4
9 December 2014[1] 24 November 2014[2] 19 November 2014[3]

becomes, instead, this:

Doctor Who: The Complete Eighth Series
Set details
  • 12 episodes
  • 5-disc set
  • 16:9 aspect ratio
  • Subtitles: English
Special features
DVD release dates

There's room for some debate about the heading structure, and the levels should probably be made adjustable for maximum flexibility, but that's the basic idea. It's slightly longer on desktop, but not excessively so. (My browser renders the table at 450px tall, whereas the list version is 600px tall. The table structure itself takes up more height than you'd think, and you lose any savings from the shorter length of "Set details" compared to "Special features".) The advantage, though, is that it's significantly more readable on a narrow-screen device. And it loses none of the information from the table except for the outdated, purely decorative background |color= parameter for the title row.

Some anticipated potential questions, with my responses:

Should we do this for other templates?
Obviously that's something to consider on a case-by-case basis, but I think we should when possible.
Should this be done as part of a larger, organized, wiki-wide effort?
Such an effort seems worthwhile to me, and IMHO could start here. I don't see any reason to not do this, and instead wait for something that might never come around.
Should the table be reformatted for mobile display instead, using CSS or the like?

That's the far thornier question, isn't it? I agree that would be another possible solution to the mobile-formatting problem, and makes a lot of sense for more complex tables that do have valuable structure worth preserving. But in this case, the table really adds as little to the desktop rendering as it does to the mobile rendering, so why preserve it at all? Also, if a CSS solution to this issue was likely to come around, it would've already.

A magical, wiki-wide CSS solution is unlikely anyway. Responsive table layouts would likely have to be coded on a case-by-case basis, even if they were to become an option. In this case, I genuinely feel the best solution is to do away with the unnecessary table.

Without the table, what's the point of using the template at all? Why can't users just enter this information into the article themselves?

There's a sense in which that applies to literally every template transclusion on Wikipedia, if you really think about it. (In fact, until a few hours ago the article I took my screenshots from, Clone High, was manually building its own table of information. I'm the one who made the edit to move that information into a standardized template transclusion instead.)

The point of template transclusion is to standardize the formatting and handling of the data passed in, for repeatability and simpler article coding, and so that changes and enhancements (whether to layout, formatting, or processing) can be made centrally and apply to all transclusions. All of that still holds as true. There's really no reason at all that the standardized formatting/layout has to involve a table.

-- FeRDNYC (talk) 11:49, 28 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll find that Alex 21 has based this on raw code that exists/existed at many articles. On a desktop browser I much prefer the table layout to the text only layout. It's much easier to get the information you are after as it hits you in the face instead of having to scroll through everything. I didn't realise that it existed. Had I, I could have converted many articles. It's 2019, not 1990 and a table seems appropriate. --AussieLegend (✉) 05:43, 1 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@AussieLegend: I guess that's kind of my argument, as well: It's 2019, not 2009, and using tables for layout is just so Web 2.0 — and demonstrably sucks on mobile. I agree, on a desktop browser, the table layout is slightly more... ... ... "pleasant" (though I can't honestly argue that it's significantly more readable or clear), but given that well over half of Wikipedia pageviews these days originates from mobile browsers, and given how much less clear and readable the table version is on phone screens (or even smaller tablets), it feels to me like reader priorities have shifted out from under us.
I completely understand and appreciate that the template is based on commonly-encountered existing content, but that content was created (I'm fairly comfortable assuming, because statistics are very much on my side) by editors both using and targeting desktop browsers, primarily or even exclusively. Most of Wikipedia's content was. That made sense 15 years ago, when our cultural/editorial norms (table-based layout) took root. But those norms are now quite a few years out of date, to the detriment of mobile readability.
I don't in any way mean to criticize the past work of any editors, including and especially Alex 21, and hope this isn't taken that way. Something doesn't have to have been poorly-done or ill-conceived to simply grow outdated. Technologies change, communities shift, and standards evolve; that's just the nature of the web. To capriciously chase every shiny, new trend is foolish and disruptive, and I'd certainly hate to see Wikipedia go down that road. (That's why I'm suggesting the simple elimination of the table, not replacing it with a bunch of CSS flexbox trickery that'll magically lay itself out to fit any device.) I guess just don't understand how "layout tables, however attractive in certain scenarios, are growing and will continue to grow increasingly problematic in Wikipedia content" can be at all controversial as a statement. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 01:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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