Let me address my concerns step by step, as you obviously still don't grasp what the major issue is.
Brandon wrote:
Here's what happened:
- I was asked to look at the bug as part of my 20% code review.
- I applied Erwin's patch (manually) and then played with changing colors around to see what worked and what didn't.
- I tested everything in various color-blindness tools.
- I came to the conclusion that we could ONLY use yellow and blue because:
- Orange and blue vibrated next to each other.
- Yellow and purple vibrated next to each other.
- The use of green or red in any combination was not going to work for a jillion reasons
- Blue and Purple turned into the same color with colorblindness filters on.
- Ergo, Yellow and Blue, with orange-ish highlights.
Why didn't you test the original blue/green? What were your findings on that? You should have applied the colors as present in the patch, as these were the colors agreen upon in the original commit, which were blue for deleted content, and green for added content. Those had been tested by various users, both color-blind and not.
The yellow is *unchanged*
Which is the first issue I raised as a response to your commit; Noting wrong with yellow per se, but the OLD yellow completely clashes with the NEW blue that was originally intended and taken from the French colors. The yellow completely overpowered the blue, as the hue and brighness levels are totally incompatible. David Levy concurred with that assesment.
Does the "designer" in your sig denote any connection in graphic design? I suspect not, as your choice in the combination of the yellow and blue *combined* breaks just about any rules in web design. THAT is what I have been trying to convey; NOT that yellow is wrong, but that is is the WRONG yellow.
The blue is basically Erwin's blue except I might have tapped it around a bit to bump up contrast in certain places; I don't remember exactly.
So. What was *supposed* to be a 15 minute task has now turned into a drama - over something I don't really care that much about anyways.
You have yourself to blame for that. If you don't care that much, why are you forcing your commit and subsequently try to stifle any follow-up discussion by re-closing the bug report? We actually had a fruitfull discussion before you came along. I even changed my patch to incorporate the yellow you introduced.
This was an open bug. I was asked to address it. I did. That's the end of the story.
You were asked to REVIEW my patch, not to make unilateral changes and then ignore any criticism on your changes might generate. If this were an edit in Wikipedia's Common.css, you would have been reverted in a heartbeat.
To see what I'm talking about, have a look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:R106884-diff.png. The top line shows the original proposed colors, the bottom line is Brandon's patch currently in trunk. The ones in between are my versions based on Brandon's patch, after taking several users' comments into account.
The only thing I care about is that the best code ends up in MediaWiki, and not code that every project would want to override as soon as it is deployed. Now, what I would simply like is for everyone just to look at the colors and say which one they like best. That's all...
Why didn't you test the original blue/green? What were your findings on that? You should have applied the colors as present in the patch, as these were the colors agreen upon in the original commit, which were blue for deleted content, and green for added content. Those had been tested by various users, both color-blind and not.
Green has a meaning of "Go" or of "this is ok" in many cultures. Making either side green gives a bias to the diff. Similarly with red. Red means "Stop" or "this is not ok". Many people associate red with blood, and green with nature.
- Ryan
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 10:37 PM, Ryan Lane rlane32@gmail.com wrote:
Green has a meaning of "Go" or of "this is ok" in many cultures. Making either side green gives a bias to the diff. Similarly with red. Red means "Stop" or "this is not ok". Many people associate red with blood, and green with nature.
The argument of "we can't use green because it means good and we can't make moral judgments in the UI" kind of sets off my bullshit detector to be honest. Almost everything and everyone that colors diffs uses red/green, for obvious reasons. Of course that's bad for color-blind people (isn't red-green colorblindness the most common form?), so we're changing it now. But I don't think anyone (apart from some people on this thread) gives a crap about the green=good/better=ZOMGtheyresayingIsuck association in practice.
Of course I'm not a designer or a UX person or anything like that; this is the opinion of a developer, take it for what it's worth.
Roan
I've stated in CR that I don't think light light green has any real cultural issue. It shouldn't be ruled out on those grounds. Red, on the other hand, has stronger connotations. Part of it comes from the fact that GUIs veeeery often have certain color standards, e.g.: Blue: "notice", "fyi", "please read me", "more info" Red: "stop", "ERROR!", "not allowed", "invalid", "failed" Green: "OK", "good", "approved", "success"
...think of all the GUIs text and icons (red exclamations/hands, blue question marks, green checks) you've seen and what the colors indicated. I think medium greens and pretty much all reds (maybe you could get away with faint pink) have hefty enough connotations that we should think twice about using them for diffs.
So I wouldn't say the color-connotation issue is just BS, but I don't think we should be overly cautious in trying to avoid colors that someone, somewhere, might interpret in some way, somehow, as good/bad. I think light green falls into the "neutral enough" bin. Just my two cents :)
-- View this message in context: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/Diff-colors-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-tp... Sent from the Wikipedia Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
On 22/12/11 22:37, Ryan Lane wrote:
Green has a meaning of "Go" or of "this is ok" in many cultures. Making either side green gives a bias to the diff. Similarly with red. Red means "Stop" or "this is not ok". Many people associate red with blood, and green with nature.
- Ryan
I don't see why that becomes a problem. I mean, unified diffs have + before new lines and - before deleted ones. Change control of certain popular text editor uses red for the changed text (both removed and added).
A revision is a change the author did. If the old, red text was good, and the green new one is wrong, then it is a "lie", and should be reverted.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan Lane" rlane32@gmail.com
Green has a meaning of "Go" or of "this is ok" in many cultures. Making either side green gives a bias to the diff. Similarly with red. Red means "Stop" or "this is not ok". Many people associate red with blood, and green with nature.
And in some cultures, yellow signifies death or cowardice.
It's almost impossible to completely disambiguate cultural cues for something the size and spread of Wikipedia, except possible on a wiki by wiki basis; I mentioned it only for completeness.
That said, the original complainer's original complaint was that the yellow in question *was not changed* to complement the chosen blue, in his estimation.
Cheers, -- jra
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