Template talk:Cquote/Archive 2

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[edit] Suggestion: Use gray

The current color used on the quote marks is complete inappropriate to the Wikipedia style. Can we please use gray? ☆ CieloEstrellado 05:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

That would be an improvement. The current colour is similar to link colours, for some reason. —Michael Z. 2006-10-16 22:29 Z

[edit] More compact spacing

How about changing:

cellpadding="10"

to "5" so the quote marks are a bit closer. ADH 14:09, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Please do. The foramtting of this template is still too overwhelming, especially for articles with multiple quotes. -Will Beback 22:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is the point of this template?

What is wrong with normal block quotation style. Why do there need to be flashy graphics in an encyclopedia article. What is going to be done with this template with regard to the print edition? —Centrx→talk • 04:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It tends to make quotes far too prominent. -Will Beback · † · 09:18, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Some religious editors are using it to make Wikipedia a Qur'anic QUOTE FARM. When theyre done all you see is the Qur'an verses not the text and thats seeming to be the point.Opiner 09:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Template should either be deleted or changed to simply use the html blockquote tags. I read through the discussion above, almost everyone hates it. I think it's time for the motion to be put on the floor. Anyone want start a debate on killing this thing? Derex 09:33, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes PLEASE. Itd be okay if only used when appropriate but hey you know Wikipedia.Opiner 09:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
The debate is already here. Are you asking for a vote? A vote on this page will be inherently biased. — Omegatron 20:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abused

This template is being badly abused. No one following the instructions about longer quotes. Its only helping make Wikipedia the quote farm.Opiner 08:57, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems like you disagree people adding too many quotes, not necessarily with the use of this template in general. Cacophony 06:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please restore template

This is a request to please restore the template. Please use the WP:TfD Template for Deletion procedure if you want to remove this option. I personally don't entirely disagree that it has been abused in some cases but this is not the way to go about it. -- Stbalbach 21:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Templates for quote formatting already exist. People using this template in place of them are the ones "style warring". Articles should all be consistent in style with each other. You can't create a POV fork of an article because you dislike the consensus viewpoint. You shouldn't be able to fork a style template because you dislike the consensus viewpoint, either.
{{Rquote}} should get the same treatment, by the way. — Omegatron 21:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
That's a great argument you can make at WP:TfD. Put it up for deletion if you want, and see what the consensus says. In the mean time, please restore the template. -- Stbalbach 21:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This is not a deletion, either technically or effectively. Discussion about changes to templates occurs on the template talk page. There is discussion agreeing to do this. Please explain why you disagree with the change, in light of that discussion. —Centrx→talk • 21:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Your playing games and not operating in good faith. You removed the graphic quotes which is the sole reason for this templates existence effectively deleting it. To say you didn't delete it is true only in a very literal and technical sense, it's like something a 2 year old would say. I would ask that you please restore the template and follow the proper TfD procedures. The kind of discussion your asking for is a stylistic one (color or placement of the graphic quotes) - a discussion about the templates existence or not would be handled on the TfD page. -- Stbalbach 22:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, please restore the template to its original form. Seriously, this is an attempt to decide dictatorially what quotes should look like in all articles. Why not just let the editors in the relevant articles decide? If you don't like how this template is being used in an article, post on that article's talk page and have it changed to blockquote - why force everyone to follow your tastes?? Besides, Stbalbach has a point: if you don't like it, take it to TfD, don't just in effect delete it. Mikker (...) 22:19, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

This change merely removes the cartoon quotes. This is an encyclopedia; please explain how this template has a use with regard to that and with regard to the discussion above. It is much more effective to deal with an issue centrally, rather than making thousands of minute changes, and anyone is welcome to discuss the matter. I have reverted the change, on thy request, but countervailing reasons or new options are necessary in order to override the previous consensus, which you can read above. —Centrx→talk • 22:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Merely? It is the only reason for the templates existence. As for "previous consensus", you might want to consider the thousands of Wikipedia editors who have chosen to use this template because they happen to like it. Wikipedia operates according to procedure, and the procedure for templates is the WP:TfD process. You've already acknowledged your intention was to effectively delete the template in a central location. So, follow the TfD procedure. Everyone else does. A little tag is added so everyone can see its up for vote and weigh in. Certainly a lot more democratic, don't you think? -- Stbalbach 22:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The other templates have boxes and backgrounds and other formatting, they are different. Regarding its usage, there appear to be about 5,000 uses of this template; many of them are added by the same people, and others are added simply because it was the "best pick" out of the quotation templates, or because the user does not know about other templates. Anyone who wants can come here and discuss the matter. WP:TFD is the process for template deletion; this is not a deletion, and if this change were brought up there it would likely be quickly closed as not related to the WP:TFD process. If you think this template should be deleted, you can nominate it for that but I don't think that is necessary; this template serves a particular function, but there might be good reasons for making quotation uniform with one template. (Separate note: Wikipedia is not a democracy. Deletion discussions are for deciding whether something is appropriate for the encyclopedia with reference to policy and fundamental principles. Votes without reasoning or authority behind them are discounted.) —Centrx→talk • 23:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the rv Centrx. I realise your change simply removed the "cartoon quotes" but I happen to like them. De gustibus non est disputandum most certainly applies here methinks. I also realise deciding things centrally is more efficient but that doesn't mean it is necessarily better. I mean, isn't that the glory of Wikipedia? That we're not centralised? If all the editors on a particular article want to use cquote in its original form, surely they ought to be allowed to do so? (Wouldn't WP:CONSENSUS require that?) Additionally, cquote serves a function no other quote template does. Take, for example, United States Constitution: on the one hand, you want to set the quotes apart from the text but, on the other, you want to preserve the flow. A simple blockquote doesn't do the former, Template:Quotation, Template:Quote box, and Template:Epigraph fail to do the latter. And Template:Rquote makes the quote too elongated and is more appropriate for a "side note" of sorts. Furthermore, cquote allows the use of footnote refs - check out how I've used it in Richard Dawkins. Mikker (...) 23:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia article editing is decentralized, but there are central policies and guidelines, and once you start using a template you are using a centralized system that propagates a certain style or method. The nature of such a system is that many people are using this quote system because they see it is common and there is no other option besides using boxes and backgrounds, which are substantially different. That is, the system makes it so that these people are not necessarily choosing the blue quote marks, but they keep multiplying anyway. One could quite effectively go through each article individually and change its formatting to remove the images—and random article editors would think it better and be thankful, but it would be tedious and would, in contrast, be ignoring the wisdom of a consensus decision that can be reached centrally, which could also come up with better options for distinguishing the quote. —Centrx→talk • 23:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
While I see what you are saying, I think my point stands. If well informed editors want to use cquote why can't they? Ultimately, this is a matter of taste. You don't like the cartoon quotes, I do - there's no use in arguing about it. Besides, there is a very good reason why we make a distinction between policies (like NPOV) and guidelines (like MOS): the former are mostly (in Jimbo's words) "non-negotiable" while the latter "are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception" (see WP:RULES). Moreover, guidelines like MOS allow a fairly wide scope to decide things in particular cases simply because (1) uniformity is not all that important and (2) there is usually no consensus on certain rules (like American vs. British date notations etc.). Questions like whether quotes should have "cartoon quotes" around them are purely aesthetic and consensus on something like that is simply never gonna happen. Besides, what harm does this template do? Also, please read: WP:MOS#Disputes_over_style_issues. Mikker (...) 00:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It unduly emphasizes the quote. It is no more a matter of taste than requiring that editors not select favorite sentences in an article and bold them randomly strewn throughout AN ARTICLE. —Centrx→talk • 00:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that removing the cartoon quotes is not sensible. If the template is required to do anything else, it may be better to start a new template, or introduce tweak parameters, keeping the traditional behaviour as default if no parameters are given. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
This isn't a cartoon; it's an encyclopedia. Forking templates because editors don't agree on what they should look like is not the way things are done here. Same as forking other content because some people don't like the way it's written. This template should be merged with the other quote templates or deleted. — Omegatron 15:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


"It unduly emphasizes the quote" from your point of view. I happen to disagree. When (a) the quote isn't a "side note" that should be read seperately (e.g. Mount Tambora), (b) it is desirable to preserve flow but (c) the quote is important enough to be emphasised, cquote is entirely appropriate. Again, consensus on this will never be achieved so I fail to see the point of arguing further. We might as well discuss the merits and demerits of British vs. American spelling or argue over whether pink is the new black. Mikker (...) 18:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
There are cases where it is appropriate and looks good, just as in bold. And there are cases where it doesn't look good. We need some style guidelines to help the thousands of editors who use this template. -- Stbalbach 13:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
No, there are not. There are no cases where it is appropriate to make sentences randomly bold, or randomly change font size because it looks better to the editor making that change. In fact, it's against our style guidelines to do so. This isn't a graphic design site where people show off their skills on each article; it's an encyclopedia. Styles should be used to make the content look good and more readable, but should be used consistently for the whole site. Setting a different style for only some articles is bad. — Omegatron 15:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
There are arguably cases where cquote is stylistically appropriate to the article and looks good. You may disagree but I suspect because you want to delete it on grounds of "consistency" - which has never been the case on Wikipedia, nor probably never will be. We have multiple ways of quoting, that is a good thing, not bad. What is needed is a guideline on when to use cquote - obviously it adds extra attention to the quote, above the norm, so it needs to be justified by the user. This can be done if we create a set of guidelines based on cases where it looks good. If you or others are unwilling to even acknowledge its aesthetic merits and compromise in certain cases, then this who thing is dead center and going no where. -- Stbalbach 15:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Omegatron, Wikipedia is not (and should not be) centralised. Indeed, your argument that style has to be "consisten[t] for the whole site" [emphasis removed] is manifestly false. That is why we have style guidelines not style policies (see WP:RULES for the difference}. It is also why in several cases MOS and other guidelines leave it up to particular editors to decide. BC vs BCE, American vs British spelling, the style of the date notation, and numerous other stylistic issues are simply left optional in guidelines and a purely aesthetic matter like whether "cartoon quotes" should be used or not is exactly the same. Mikker (...) 18:57, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Wrong. Style is very much centralized, and it should be. It should not be changed from article to article or from paragraph to paragraph.
The articles are shared by everyone. Just because anyone can edit a page doesn't mean that they have free reign to do whatever they want with them. Wikipedia is not your personal website. — Omegatron 18:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
All of the examples you gave are writing style, which doesn't apply to changing the presentation style of the website from article to article. Not the same concept.
This is the same concept:Formatting issues such as font size, blank space and color are issues for the Wikipedia site-wide style sheet and should not be dealt with in articles except in special cases.
How far do you think I would get if I started putting whole articles into a large cartoon font because I particularly liked it? — Omegatron 19:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

That's clearly a straw man. My point is not that there are no rules whatsoever (i.e. anyone can change the presentation of articles to anything they like) my point is that some stylistic issues are optional. Like, say, BC vs. BCE. And the reason it's optional to pick one or the other is because (1) uniformity in these cases is not that important, (2) no consensus exists and (3) there is no harm done by one or the other. The WP:POINT you are making with your colour coded posts is completely different - it's not merely an aesthetic issue. Colour-blind people, for example, would not be able to access articles that had coloured text.

Besides, what actual harm does the cquote template do? Why should you get to decide for everyone whether it can be used? In some cases blockquote is appropriate, in other cases quote box is appropriate, in yet others rquote and in some cquote. Your preference for blockquote to the exclusion of all the others is quite simply your arbitrary taste and I see no reason why your preferences in this regard should be allowed to over-ride article-level consensus. When something is merely a matter of taste (as opposed to questions around accessibility, readability, neutrality etc.) it is simply not appropriate to make a centralised decision.

If you can give me a sound argument why cquote vs blockquote is not merely a matter of taste, I'll gladly change my mind. Mikker (...) 20:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As I already said, your arguments about BC vs BCE and British vs American spelling are not relevant. You're arguing that because writing style is allowed to vary from article to article, the presentation style of the articles should be allowed to vary, too. But this is obviously not the case. If it were, each article would have a different background color, be written in a different font, use a different layout, have different borders and frames around images with different float and caption styles, be broken up into different types of sections with different methods of linking to other articles. But that's simply, obviously, not how we do it here. All of the articles have a common structure defined by Wikipedia:Guide to layout. They all have a common TOC style, image formatting style, and page presentation style defined by the site-wide CSS. Presentation style is decided by consensus for the entire site at once. We don't allow "style forking" to make one article look different from another.
You're exactly right; it is a matter of taste. This template enforces the aesthetic tastes of a small number of users on the entire encyclopedia. Your preference for cquote to the exclusion of all the others is quite simply your arbitrary taste and there is no reason why your preferences in this regard should be allowed to over-ride encyclopedia-wide consensus.
(And yes, it's poor HTML, too. We shouldn't sacrifice accessibility and adherence to web standards for the sake of a visual style that most people don't even like.) — Omegatron 14:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Cquote breaks accessibility and laughs in the face of good HTML authoring practices after eating a sardine sandwich. It replaces a normal semantic text element, <blockquote>, with an ignorant layout table containing three cells and lacking a table summary or headers. Two of the table cells each contain a span with a misleading title attribute, in turn containing a meaningless image with misleading alt text, enclosed in a link to an irrelevant image page. For a screen-reader user, this yields a signal-to-noise ratio of about 500%, in my estimation.
While reducing utility for disadvantaged readers, this template also adds over a kilobyte of unnecessary source code to the page. Can you imagine the frustration of a user who's already saddled with having to use a screen reader encountering this crap half a dozen times while trying to read an article?
All that so you can see your cutesie purple cartoon quotes in the free encyclopedia. —Michael Z. 2006-12-12 02:47 Z
Hmmm... I hadn't thought about that. Two questions: can the bad HTML authoring be fixed whilst keeping the basic point of cquote (i.e. in my view, to place more emphasis on the quote than blockquote and less than quote box)? Secondly, as I am unfamiliar with screen readers, what exactly is the problem here? Won't it just read "cquote" or will it read the actual code contained at Template:Cquote? If the latter, is there a way around this? Furthermore, what are the accessibility impacts of the other quotation styles (quotation; rquote; epigraph; quote box)? If these are indeed serious problems I suggest it be discussed over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability as well as here. Mikker (...) 03:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I can't tell you exactly what a screen reader will make of it: the most common one, JAWS, is very expensive. The cquote HTML output also has a totally kludgey wikitext/HTML/CSS hack to make the quotation marks unclickable in visual browsers, and its impossible to predict how a screen reader will interpret it. I bet each one will make something different out of it, but I'm sure they won't hide it, because that depends on visual elements overlapping in the z-axis.
In the Lynx text-only browser, the quotation marks appear as links above and below the quotation, with the title of the current page as link text, but linking to the quotation marks' image pages! Whoever built the code didn't care about users of alternate browsing devices, and screwed it right up for them. Shamefully lame for an "open" encyclopedia.
The source code of a block quotation should be
 <blockquote>
 quote text
 </blockquote>
But instead, cquote makes it the following (this is without anything in cquote's optional citation parameter, which will add another table row containing a properly-formatted paragraph and cite element)
 <table cellpadding="10" align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; background-color:transparent; border-style:none;" class="cquote">
 <tr>
 <td width="20" valign="top">
 <div style="position:relative; width:20px; height:20px; overflow:hidden;">
 <div style="position:absolute; font-size:20px; overflow:hidden; line-height:20px; letter-spacing:20px;"><strong class="selflink"><span title="Template talk:Cquote" style="text-decoration:none;">   </span></strong></div>
 <a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" class="image" title="Template talk:Cquote"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Cquote1.png/20px-Cquote1.png" alt="Template talk:Cquote" width="20" height="15" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote1.png" /></a></div>
 </td>
 <td>quote text</td>
 <td width="20" valign="bottom">
 <div style="position:relative; width:20px; height:20px; overflow:hidden;">
 <div style="position:absolute; font-size:20px; overflow:hidden; line-height:20px; letter-spacing:20px;"><strong class="selflink"><span title="Template talk:Cquote" style="text-decoration:none;">   </span></strong></div>
 <a href="/wiki/Image:Cquote2.png" class="image" title="Template talk:Cquote"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Cquote2.png/20px-Cquote2.png" alt="Template talk:Cquote" width="20" height="15" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Cquote2.png" /></a></div>
 </td>
 </tr>
 </table>
An accessible version which looked the same could be built, but I suspect it would take a lot of work and debugging in different browsers to make sure it works right. I think it would require a blockquote with a div element nested inside it. One of these block elements would have a left margin and background image aligned left applied with CSS, the other would have them on the right. Because wikitext breaks CSS URL declarations required for background images, the CSS would have to be applied in one of Wikipedia's style sheets. As far as the web browser/screen reader is concerned, it would be identical to just a plain blockquote, but could look exactly like the current cquote. The source HTML code would look like the following, and all of the good bits would be in the style sheet:
 <blockquote class="cquote"><span>
 quote text
 </span></blockquote>
It could be done a couple of other ways using simple HTML and complicated CSS, too.
Actual quotation mark characters could be floated in the left and right margins and formatted to be big and pink. The problem with this is that in professional typography, block quotations don't have quotation marks.
Another way would be to add the quotation marks using the CSS before: and after: properties, but MSIE doesn't support them.
For a different approach altogether, see template:Epigraph, which I created and used in T-26. —Michael Z. 2006-12-12 05:18 Z
We have editors who use screen readers. Just ask them. I have a feeling it's not the end of the world, but if we formatted it correctly, it would be easier for them to read.
Regardless of whether it really bothers them, we should use semantically-correct markup. It's necessary for viewing properly on non-computers, like cell phones or PDAs, for instance. (Currently, they'll display the images alongside the quote, making it very difficult to read on a narrow screen. If we used proper syntax, the images wouldn't be displayed at all on screens that couldn't handle them.)
Regardless of markup problems, we still shouldn't be using this template, because it's a "visual style fork" and gives the encyclopedia an unprofessional, unorganized appearance, enforcing a disliked visual style on many articles and encouraging edit wars over differences in taste. — Omegatron 15:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I just noticed it uses the kludgy, accessibility-breaking {{click}} template for the images. This template is a total mess of garbage code and should not be used anywhere. We should change it to a plain blockquote version during this discussion just for the sake of the site's markup. — Omegatron 15:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I didn't realise this template was the source of the images with the misleading descriptions; I'd learnt to mentally filter them out while reading. No-one should have to do that. {{Click}} should not be used because its output is ugly with a screen reader and the graphics are distracting anyway; there's no point in having a layout table for a single quote; and blockquote should be used so a screen reader user can get feedback when they've entered a quote and also move between quotes with quick navigation keys. You can't guarantee what a screen reader will do to CSS; certain versions of JAWS, for example, only take into account a site's top-level CSS for performance reasons. Therefore Wikipedia should be easy-to-use without CSS support. Graham87 05:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)