Jimmy Wales wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
It is a pure pipe dream to think that tables are
going
to go away because they are so damn useful and
visually appealing to the great majority of our
readers.
We could eliminate them through code, i.e. don't let people enter
them. This might be (and probably would be!) a terrible idea, but
it's important to keep in mind that unlike matters of prose style,
etc., we actually can control this one at the level of code-enforced
policy.
I'm not saying that we should enforce that there be no tables.
But I do agree with the general critique that some of our pages are
too "over designed" and that tables have been overused to make pages
look pretty, at the expense of simplicity and of the ability to easily
render the pages in other media. (Like text-browsers, for instance)
In standing up to be counted, I clearly come out in favour of tables.
Although I find that they are sometimes difficult to work with, it is a
clear benefit to the non-contributing reader to be able to look up
countries or elements or whatever else is appropriate, and be able to
know exactly where to find a country's population or the isotopes of an
element. Wading through a lot of text when you are looking for a very
specific piece of information can be very frustrating. If the
information is missing from text it is not always evident, but a blank
box in a table is very clear. Although it is necessary to strive for a
balance the benefit of the reader seems a higher mission than the
benefit of the contributor. If the general public finds Wikipedia easy
to mine for information, they'll keep coming back.
Nobody is obliged to work on a table. Many of our best contributors do
quite well working on text alone. If they work an an article where a
table is appropriate it follows the principle of "Always leave something
undone" to have someone else build in the table
Eclecticology