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. Heck, we need /more/ not fewer tables because Wikipedia is filled with tabular/almanac data that isn't at all well-suited to prose.
Think of how difficult it would be to find the thermal conductivity of lithium if there wasn't a table with that information in it. Having this information in a very predictable place for a themed set of articles is a very good thing. But it is ugly in the wikicode code, so;
tarquin wrote:
One simple option would be to put the code for the table on another page, and import it -- much like we do with images. We could agree on nicer table syntax at a later date too.
Which is something I suggested some time ago. A table:namespace would be most useful here. The outside border could be clickable so that a user can navigate to the table namespace page.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I lost track of my WikiKarma somewhere in Death Valley - I'm sure I had some left.
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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)
--Jimbo
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
Ray Saintonge schrieb:
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.
Of course tables are a good thing. But the more complicatet our "source code" gets, the more people shy away from editing it. Especially new users, who click on the edit button for the first time and only see interlanguage links and html code will never do it again, if they aren't firm with this.
I worried about the interlanguage links some time ago on this list, and Brion supposed to put them beneath the text, so they aren't the first thing people see. But I thought it wouldn't be nessesairy because Magnus' idea to keep them in a separate table was making progress. But if this will take longer we should ask people on the announcement pages to copy the interlanguage links beneath the text.
I like the idea of a table namespace very much, indeed we can handle tables like we do handle images now, or better like we will handle svg graphics in the future. Nobody will be frightened by something like "[[table:Parliament Discography]]". There should be links to the articles table pages beneath the edit box, and maybe the table borders could be clickable and lead to the corresponding table page.
Kurt
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Nobody is obliged to work on a table. Many of our best...
I too dislike tables. I can work with them (and do so for work) but don't like them.
I simply ignore articles that have tables, even thought I might otherwise work on them.
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com writes:
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)
Yes, and on audio devices table-less info is easier to "read", too (I'm told).
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