I'd like to ask for more eyes and participation in an issue that is in an apparent stalemate.
It all started with revision 105280 (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/105280), where Hashdar commited a new color scheme for diffs based on the French scheme. When this generated some flack for making "green the remove-color", I submitted a patch that reversed the colors (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33139). This was met with general approval.
Before it could be applied though, Brandon steps in with another patch (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/106884) that mixed the old yellow with the new blue, that looks absolutely horrible; a view in which I am not alone. I immediately submitted a new patch that adjusted the colors and levels, which is now under discussion.
However, today Hashdar closed my bug/patch as Resolved, as he considers the matter closed. As the matter is clearly not, I reopened it. Now I would like to invite as many devs as possible to chime in at r106884 (3rd link) to evaluate the various options. Because if the current revision stands, and subsequently makes in into MediaWiki, we will have a default diff color scheme that will generate a guaranteed backlash form any project that uses MediaWiki.
I'm not one to complain fast, but I now understand why develpers without commit access just turn around and walk away; if submittd patches that have approval are summarily overruled by those with commit access, there is really no point in continueing to submit patches.
It's the exact same yellow as before, guys. The *exact* shade.
This is the exact definition of a "bikeshed" argument. Feel free to move along.
On 12/22/11 10:33 AM, Erwin Dokter wrote:
I'd like to ask for more eyes and participation in an issue that is in an apparent stalemate.
It all started with revision 105280 (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/105280), where Hashdar commited a new color scheme for diffs based on the French scheme. When this generated some flack for making "green the remove-color", I submitted a patch that reversed the colors (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33139). This was met with general approval.
Before it could be applied though, Brandon steps in with another patch (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/106884) that mixed the old yellow with the new blue, that looks absolutely horrible; a view in which I am not alone. I immediately submitted a new patch that adjusted the colors and levels, which is now under discussion.
However, today Hashdar closed my bug/patch as Resolved, as he considers the matter closed. As the matter is clearly not, I reopened it. Now I would like to invite as many devs as possible to chime in at r106884 (3rd link) to evaluate the various options. Because if the current revision stands, and subsequently makes in into MediaWiki, we will have a default diff color scheme that will generate a guaranteed backlash form any project that uses MediaWiki.
I'm not one to complain fast, but I now understand why develpers without commit access just turn around and walk away; if submittd patches that have approval are summarily overruled by those with commit access, there is really no point in continueing to submit patches.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Harris" bharris@wikimedia.org
It's the exact same yellow as before, guys. The *exact* shade.
This is the exact definition of a "bikeshed" argument. Feel free to move along.
I don't see, Brandon, that Erwin suggested that it is not.
But no, colorization of elements of a user interface is in fact *not* a bikeshed argument: these colors actually matter to people, because they have culturally ingrained expectations about what they mean -- though those cultures may be geopolitical or they may be intentional (programmers, geeks, etc).
Additionally, of course, there are best practices for how far apart colors should be to be easily distinguishable, what luminance and saturation work best, and what color combinations are bad for colorblind people.
So please, stop taking this stuff personally, and address the issue?
You're a designer; you know know better than to have ego tied up in the results...
Cheers, -- jra
On 12/22/11 12:31 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Harris"bharris@wikimedia.org
It's the exact same yellow as before, guys. The *exact* shade.
This is the exact definition of a "bikeshed" argument. Feel free to move along.
I don't see, Brandon, that Erwin suggested that it is not.
But no, colorization of elements of a user interface is in fact *not* a bikeshed argument: these colors actually matter to people, because they have culturally ingrained expectations about what they mean -- though those cultures may be geopolitical or they may be intentional (programmers, geeks, etc).
Additionally, of course, there are best practices for how far apart colors should be to be easily distinguishable, what luminance and saturation work best, and what color combinations are bad for colorblind people.
So please, stop taking this stuff personally, and address the issue?
You're a designer; you know know better than to have ego tied up in the results...
I don't have any ego tied up in this other than going "wtf" at why this is a thing.
The old colors - yellow/green were not good for a lot of reasons. When it came down to it, the only colors we really *can* use are yellow and blue.
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.
The yellow is *unchanged* 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.
This was an open bug. I was asked to address it. I did. That's the end of the story.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Harris" bharris@wikimedia.org
The yellow is *unchanged*
Is this not what Erwin's on about?
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.
Well, that's a sort of intemperate attitude to have over an accessibility issue, isn't it? :-)
I'm much more attuned to this stuff myself since I turned 45, and became unable to focus on stuff closer than 2 feet from my face. :-)
Cheers, -- jra
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Erwin Dokter erwin@darcoury.nl wrote:
It all started with revision 105280 (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/105280), where Hashdar commited a new color scheme for diffs based on the French scheme. When this generated some flack for making "green the remove-color", I submitted a patch that reversed the colors (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33139). This was met with general approval.
General approval where? I'm not seeing it on the bug, or linked to from the bug.
Before it could be applied though, Brandon steps in with another patch (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/106884) that mixed the old yellow with the new blue, that looks absolutely horrible; a view in which I am not alone. I immediately submitted a new patch that adjusted the colors and levels, which is now under discussion.
I don't think it looks absolutely horrible. And I don't see much agreement with that sentiment on the bug either.
However, today Hashdar closed my bug/patch as Resolved, as he considers the matter closed. As the matter is clearly not, I reopened it. Now I would like to invite as many devs as possible to chime in at r106884 (3rd link) to evaluate the various options. Because if the current revision stands, and subsequently makes in into MediaWiki, we will have a default diff color scheme that will generate a guaranteed backlash form any project that uses MediaWiki.
You're catastrophizing, I highly doubt we'll get guaranteed backlash over such a minor shift in diff colors. As they say on enwiki, [citation needed]. Also I believe you misunderstand the development process. It is iterative, in that we keep making improvements as we find them. Just because a revision is committed does not mean it will be the end result and further discussion is moot.
I'm not one to complain fast, but I now understand why develpers without commit access just turn around and walk away; if submittd patches that have approval are summarily overruled by those with commit access, there is really no point in continueing to submit patches.
It is true that developers with commit access do have the technical ability to overrule submitted patches; we still operate within consensus. Whatever the development community decides is best for MediaWiki as a whole--not just enwiki, or even just WMF wikis--is what goes into the default release.
As I commented on the revision (and I'm reiterating here), I think the diff colors as they currently stand in trunk are generally ok, maybe just need a minor tweak in the blues.
-Chad
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad" innocentkiller@gmail.com
As they say on enwiki, [citation needed].
Well, we probably say {{citation-needed}}, but... :-)
Cheers, -- jra
Hello Erwin,
Thanks for bringing this on the wikitech-l list!
Erwin Dokter wrote:
It all started with revision 105280 (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/105280), where Hashdar commited a new color scheme for diffs based on the French scheme. When this generated some flack for making "green the remove-color", I submitted a patch that reversed the colors (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33139). This was met with general approval.
I am not sure why I posted r105280 in the first place. Must have been an online discussion about colorblind people and how the default diff colors were not fair to them. Or that might have been a bug report. Those colors (green/blue) have been in place on the french Wikipedia since 2007. Anyway, comments were about the green color being switched from right to left, thus you opened a bug and attached a patch (thanks for that).
During an internal tech meeting (I am a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation nowadays), I have asked for some help on this issue since I am neither a design nor a color expert. Luckily, Brandon Harris has that knowledge so I have asked for him to have a look at the issue.
Before it could be applied though, Brandon steps in with another patch (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/106884) that mixed the old yellow with the new blue, that looks absolutely horrible; a view in which I am not alone. I immediately submitted a new patch that adjusted the colors and levels, which is now under discussion.
Yeah I closed the bug report asking to get the colors swapped because the green just disappeared. So since the bug cause disappeared, I though we could just close that bug and move on.
I have looked at your patch this afternoon. Your colors are not that much different from Brandon one. It is clearly not worth it to spend hours and hours in discussion just to add 1% of red in a yellow color or 0.5% of green in the blue color.
Please note any project can alter those colors locally. What I really wanted was to get reasonably sane default for fresh MediaWiki install.
<snip>
I'm not one to complain fast, but I now understand why develpers without commit access just turn around and walk away; if submittd patches that have approval are summarily overruled by those with commit access, there is really no point in continueing to submit patches.
You should comments on code revisions. You should submits patches. Because in the long term, the only thing that matter is getting a better software that helps everyone spread knowledge. A good example is the classic diff gadget you have submitted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-ClassicDiff.css And without your comments, we would never have dropped green :-)
Anyway, I am taking a week long of vacations. Will be back in beginning of January. Lets get in touch then to fix the issue, I can give you a call if you prefer speaking over email exchange. :-)
Note: revisions are not definitives. We can always amend them later on.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org