Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:HiddenStructure

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellany page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Keep (outcome seems likely and the advice presented seems to indicate deletion would be bad even if deletion were the likely outcome). I will attempt to get {{rejected}} or {{historical}}} (or some variation thereof) placed on the page instead. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:HiddenStructure

Promotes a method of conditional hiding which breaks on some screen reading software and text browsers. See User:Locke Cole/Don't use hiddenStructure. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

• Delete as nominator. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as nominator is on a crusade. Please provide me a link to where someone who uses lynx (on a regular basis, not just for testing) has complained. In fact, here's a lynx user who agrees that it's no big deal. Here's one comment from a blind Wikipedia as well that says it works for him, on one of the most common screen readers. The page itself says it best in the second paragraph, where fair warning is given that the template should be "readable and make sense" as though the rows weren't hidden. Use it as a convenience, not a necessity. If this page is deleted, people who use this technique will have no guidance whatsover for proper use. -- Netoholic @ 21:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  LOL, now I'm on a crusade. Do I get a t-shirt when I finish? Oh, and the blind Wikipedian you quote? You're just twisting his words around to suit your needs (as you always do with people who talk with you at all). He also said this–

  • 2006-01-23 05:08:05 — Here Graham87, a blind Wikipedian, discusses screen reading software and the limitations therein, and also states that he doesn't believe we should use CSS hacks.

    ...I would strongly recommend that the css hacks not be used because there will be a sizable number of people using older screen readers, and they may not be able to upgrade. –Graham87 (talk · contribs)

  And no, I don't regularly hear from blind Wikipedians or Lynx users, because the vast population of people that view Wikipedia aren't regular editors and have no idea who I am (and ergo, it's even less likely that the small percentage of disabled readers or Lynx users know who I am). That's why they're called a minority, that's not an excuse to abuse them as you seem to think it is.

  As for this page being deleted being any problem, no, it won't be. It'll stop people from using this broken method on the site so we can fully deprecate and remove hiddenStructure from MediaWiki:Common.css. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  Indeed, he did make that comment on 1/23 and I immediately made changes to reflect the fact that care must be taken. Templates using hiddenStructure should work and look just as good without it as with it. -- Netoholic @ 22:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  The same user continued to object on 1/27. (That's the post that preceded the one that you cited.) Why did you claim that this individual "says it works for him," when he/she clearly indicated that it doesn't (because he/she would have to pay to upgrade to version 6.0)?

  You say that "templates using hiddenStructure should work and look just as good without it as with it," but you're conveniently comparing them to templates without any sort of support for conditional parameters (instead of the {{qif}}-based versions that you seek to eliminate, even when this necessitates the consensus-defying removal of some conditional parameters). —David Levy 23:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

• Delete — per nom. Keep, but mark it as deprecated. _→AzaToth 22:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete or deactivate (via a custom variation of the {{rejected}} and {{historical}} tags). This page promotes a crude hack that "harms both the primary site's accessibility and offsite reuse of material" (quoting Brion Vibber, our lead software developer). Netoholic has attempted to minimize the method's harm by unilaterally removing functionality from templates (in deliberate defiance of consensus). This is the latest chapter in his "crusade" against meta-templates. —David Levy 22:14, 16 March 2006 / 02:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  I didn't create it, and my contributions to WP:HIDE have been fairly minimal. Don't try the "Netoholic created it so it must be bad" tactic. The fact is that hiddenStructure is being used quite a lot... through no action of mine. -- Netoholic @ 22:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  I didn't claim that you created the page. You are, however, using it to promote a harmful coding technique. —David Levy 23:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Useful information on a useful technique. Some people need to upgrade their browsers. — Mar. 16, '06 [22:34] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

  Some people lack the option of upgrading. Not everyone can afford an up-to-date computer system, and newer browsers often run poorly on older machines. According to the blind person that Netoholic quoted out-of-context, this is true of JAWS (a popular screen reader). And even if the user's hardware is capable of supporting the upgrade, it can cost between US$160 and $260. All of this is explained in the post cited by Locke Cole and the post that preceded the one cited by Netoholic. —David Levy 23:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  How much did the old ones cost back in... whatever year they were released... adjusted for inflation? (Just curious...) — Mar. 16, '06 [23:20] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

  I don't understand the relevance of your question. It costs someone who already owns an older version of the software between US$160 and $260 to upgrade to the current version. This doesn't even consider the fact that older versions "use a more flexible authorisation scheme, have an easier-to-use directory structure, and are generally more responsive on slower computers." —David Levy 23:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - "Some people need to upgrade their browsers"? Un freakin' believable! Even if we accept this stunning worldview that it is the responsibility of others to find ways to make Wikipedia work properly for them... hiddenStructure is still garbage. It still causes templates to break when copied from English Wikipedia to other language Wikipedias. It still doesn't work on new browsers coming out if they aren't set up to handle that particular bad CSS kludge. It still should be banished to the outer void as completely unneccessary rubbish. --CBDunkerson 22:55, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  "Normal" web browsers are free. — Mar. 16, '06 [23:20] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

  And blind people don't matter? —David Levy 23:28, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  I didn't say that. You, however, seem to be implying that all blind people must have computers and software that suck. If I were blind, I'd find that offensive. — Mar. 16, '06 [23:35] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

  What?! —David Levy 23:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  Again... just wow. --CBDunkerson 23:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  Implying that those who disagree with you are completely unreasonable might make you look cool, but it doesn't yield any compelling reason to delete the page. — Mar. 17, '06 [00:04] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

  I assume that CBDunkerson is stunned by your apparent implication that we shouldn't bother considering users of anything other than "normal" browsers. If that isn't what you meant, please clarify your remarks. —David Levy 00:17, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  Some newer browsers don't properly display SVG's and we aren't waiting around for them. — Mar. 17, '06 [00:46] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

  False analogy. HiddenStructure can be removed without having to 'wait around' for anything. Methods of doing the same thing which actually work already exist. --CBDunkerson 00:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  The MediaWiki software automatically converts SVG files to the PNG format. There are some compatibility issues regarding 24-bit PNG transparencies, but that situation has nothing to do with accessibility. —David Levy 02:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep There are no technical reasons to delete this page. However, it should be tagged as either {{rejected}} or {{historical}} instead, based on consensus.--TheFarix (Talk) 23:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  Do such designations apply to this type of page? It hasn't been presented as a proposal, guideline or policy. —David Levy 23:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  Some sort of notice or warning should be placed on top of the page. But the page is of historic value and shouldn't be deleted.--TheFarix (Talk) 01:39, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  If that's a valid option, I can get behind it. —David Levy 02:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  Putting a deprecated notice would be a good start.--TheFarix (Talk) 02:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, as the method is still in use in many templates. Good documentation—even if it must be prefaced with a statement saying the method is deprecated—is far better than having cryptic undocumented CSS classes floating around. —Kirill Lokshin 00:12, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  This is not a vote to remove hiddenStructure from MediaWiki:Common.css, but merely a vote to remove a page which discusses how to use it (to try and curb new use of this template). A separate discussion to remove it from MediaWiki:Common.css will come once it's been removed from wide use. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  I'm quite aware of that; I'm just saying that, until we've fully deprecated the class itself (and I suspect it'll take significantly longer than one might expect), we should keep the documentation so that people seeing it in templates where it hasn't been removed can have some idea of what it is. —Kirill Lokshin 01:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Hidden structures are a bad idea. AdamJacobMuller 01:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Either Delete this or tag it as {{historical}} or {{rejected}}. It's pretty clearly inferior to the other methods of doing conditionals for the reasons stated by Locke. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 01:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as {{rejected}}. — Omegatron 02:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. What the hell? Hidden structures may be a bad idea; I haven't been convinced and will admit to using them. I'll also have everyone here know that they don't break my version of Lynx, but that's a different matter. Deleting documentation is a spectacularly bad idea; I can't believe this is even being considered. Mackensen (talk) 02:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  Er... either you haven't read the comments above (which leads me to ask why you voted already without reading the discussion), or, you think disabled people have no business using Wikipedia. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC) This comment was out of line and over the top; apologies to Mackensen for this. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  Re. your assertion that you believe Mackensen to "...think disabled people have no business using Wikipedia." I can tell you categorically that this argument is complete and utter rubbish. I am using Speakup under GNU/Linux with Lynx and a terminal to type this text, and I can most vehemently state that hidden structures pose no problems to me at all. They are treated exactly as one would expect in a modern GUI browser; that is, they just don't show up in the infobox when hidden. I may not be "disabled" in the full sense of the word, in regard that I am not technically "partially sighted" but rather have an inability to use computer screens for prolonged periods, which has thus placed me in a similar position - one which, I might add, has not prevented me from editing Wikipedia, and has not lead me to encounter difficulties with hidden structures. Please save such arguments for where they possess merit. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 02:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  *sigh* Look, people who run GNU/Linux are a minority as it is, and I sincerely doubt there's a majority of disabled people using Linux. There's an actual honest-to-God blind Wikipedian quoted above who has said that the software commonly used on Windows does not support CSS and that he strongly urges us not to use CSS to hide data like this. As far as Lynx goes, have you taken a look at the screenshots on User:Locke Cole/Don't use hiddenStructure? Unless I'm behind on my version of Lynx, it still looks this way today (that is to say, it spits out garbage or tons of blank fields that may confuse a reader/listener). —Locke Cole • t • c 03:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  Your comment is so insulting as to be beneath reply. Mackensen (talk) 03:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  Your position is insulting, but I replied to you. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  I must say, Locke, that you seem to be getting carried away. I share your concerns regarding "hiddenStructure," but you're beginning to tilt at windmills. Please try to calm down. —David Levy 03:24, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  The reason for deleting the documentation is to discourage its future use. Others have suggested inserting language into the page to state that this is deprecated and should not be used, or perhaps tagging it with {{historical}}. This may be a better idea for people who want to keep this around in an archival fashion. And again, my apologies for my incivil responses. I reacted poorly to your opening of "what the hell" and should have taken greater care in responding. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  Accepted. Thank you. Mackensen (talk) 03:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. I hate hidden structures, although I would second Mackensen in stating that deleting documentation is indeed a bad idea no matter how one dislikes what is documented in it. In this regard the "toothpaste is firmly out of the tube", with respect to the fact that this hack is widely used on Wikipedia; there is precious little purpose to deleting documentation that refers to something in use, and indeed it is a bad idea to leave something this widely used without being documented for those that don't understand it. This MfD would, perhaps, be rather akin to deciding to MfD Wikipedia:Blocking policy on the grounds that one felt that blocking users was thus harmful, and we should thus not promote blocking, despite its widespread use by admins to keep vandals at bay. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 02:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  The idea in deleting the instructions is to discourage their further use. I find the comparison to the blocking policy irrelevant... —Locke Cole • t • c 03:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep for documentation purposes. Locke Cole, just mark this page as deprecated with a statement of why it should not be used. FCYTravis 03:04, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, for the same reasons as User:NicholasTurnbull. I add that I find User:Locke Cole's comments to Mackensen above insulting and incivil, and strongly urge that he retract them. Kelly Martin (talk) 03:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Neutral Delete/keep.. doesn't matter. We need to migrate off that junk. It breaks Wikipedia disply on my blackberry, and makes it harder to screen scrape articles. Lets fix the stragglers, and remove the CSS. The instructions can say as historical, or be deleted because they would then be completely useless.--Gmaxwell 03:18, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete—It's a shame for a free, open encyclopedia to ignore accessibility. —Michael Z. 2006-03-17 03:41 Z
  • Don't appeal to emotion. The page recommends that accessibility be kept in mind. Take any template using hiddenStructure and remove it totally.... the template should be readable and usable without it. If that's the case, then using hiddenStructure is a convenience only. Don't make your decision based on poor template design and overuse of optional sections... those can and should be fixed. -- Netoholic @ 03:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per NicholasTurnbull. --Phroziac ♥♥♥♥ 03:57, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per NicholasTurnbull. Alphax ^τεχ 04:22, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Very confused about all the meta-template and server-strain bickering lately. In any case, keep the page and mark it appropriately as proposed or rejected or historical or controversial essay or whatever it is. --TantalumTelluride 05:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and mark as historical or rejected. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 05:43, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, whether or not it is to be implemmented. - Mike Rosoft 11:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Ingoolemo ^talk 23:58, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. per -TheFarix and others. ^BlankVerse 02:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep but tag as ill advised, rejected, historical, or may cause cancer. Deleting this page will not stop its use and this page would be better served to document what it is and why it is considered bad. kotepho 12:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - While I think this is an extremely poor method for hiding redundant parts of tables, I believe that as long as there is at least one usage of this css class then it does need to be documented. I would suggest that we add a box to the top or side indicating that this is one of a number of competing methods and link to WP:DIT MrWeeble Talk Brit tv 19:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep but depreciate as much as possible due to legitimate concerns about hindering access for those with disabilities. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 23:23, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, and Locke Cole please learn how we get rid of old policy. We tag it. We don't delete it. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 23:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

  HiddenStructure was never policy, and please try to be more civil. --CBDunkerson 00:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

  As you wish. Please, everyone, the way we deal with old policy proposals is to tag them with {{rejected}}. We do not do damnatio memoriae. I apologise if anyone thought I was being incivil. It was certainly not my intention. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 00:40, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

  Actually, I don't think it was ever a policy 'proposal' either. It certainly was never 'tagged' as such. It is instructions on how/why to do something which apparently most of us now feel shouldn't be done. People explain how to do things on the Village pump every day and we delete those as a matter of course. Do 'how to' pages automatically become 'undeletable' if they are placed in the Wikipedia namespace? This is not a case of old policy/proposal being retired, but rather of instructions we no longer wish people to follow. Mind you, I'm not arguing against the consensus to keep it... I'm demonstrating why I felt your original comment to Locke was inappropriate. This page is different enough that nominating it here was a reasonable approach. --CBDunkerson 02:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

• Must Keep -- go ahead and withdraw authority from it if you don't want people to do things this way; but a great deal of template space uses this hack and this technical reference should not under any circumstances be deleted. John Reid 01:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

I originally was considering something like the suggestion made by numerous people above that the page should be marked 'deprecated', 'rejected', or 'historical' rather than deleting it outright. I changed my mind because the fact is that people are pointing to this page to promote the use of hiddenStructure (leading some people to think it is a policy/guideline). Further, when added those tags are being immediately removed... tags only last until Netoholic's next revert. Deletion is permanent. --CBDunkerson 12:18, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point. Netoholic has reverted all attempts to label this page as "inactive" or "deprecated."

Mere months ago, he was dismantling meta-templates (sometimes replacing them with "hiddenStructure" code), based solely upon the vague remarks of Jamesday (one of our developers), which he believed overruled the will of the community. Now he's ignoring clear, unambiguous statements by Brion Vibber (our lead developer) because he doesn't "believe there is consensus to deprecate." So suddenly, now that a developer has condemned his method, we need "consensus" before we can act. —David Levy 13:09, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Deletion is not permanant. Neither Netoholic's reverts nor anybody else's are permanent. Hopefully the software deficiencies that make this useful are not permanent. A contributor leaving the project due to continued harassment could, however, be permanent. — Mar. 20, '06 [00:03] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.