User talk:Alvorecer

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Hi Alvorecer! I noticed your contributions to Social cost of carbon and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

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Happy editing! Gaismagorm (talk) 14:14, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh hi, thank you! The green economics sidebar infobox isn't doing what I want.

I'm going to revert it and come back to it later. Alvorecer (talk) 14:18, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop inserting sidebar templates[edit]

@Alvorecer: With the exception of one editor at Wikiproject climate change, it was thought that the "Climate change and society" template is not good for insertion into articles, mainly because of its size, duplication of the Climate change navigation footer, inappropriately calling so many articles "part of a series", and general misuse. Please stop inserting that and similarly inappropriate templates, at least without further discussion to gain consensus at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Climate change. Thank you. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:51, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with RCraig09. Please also see previous discussion here. I actually think that template ought to be deleted. EMsmile (talk) 23:01, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like it! I suppose it is a matter of taste. It is my understanding that various sidebar templates are competing for a similar role. For instance, Climate change and society could be replaced by Climate change sidebar, Green economics sidebar, Climate change mitigation, Green politics, and Environmental justice on various pages. Do you have favorites among these templates? I'll work on flat templates for the time being. Alvorecer (talk) 09:33, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a new user you should be editing slowly and incrementally, and taking in feedback from experienced editors. Making a particular change to a lot of articles very quickly, without any discussion, is never a good idea. Also, in general, a good image in an article's lead is more important than a sidebar.

With regards to climate change, you can see from previous discussions (see links above) that we (people from WikiProject Climate Change) are not overly keen. Maybe the template on climate change and mitigation is OK but the others are not really suitable. Feel free to start a new discussion on this on the talk page of WikiProject Climate change, noting the link to the previous discussion at Wikiproject climate change archive. EMsmile (talk) 11:04, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You don't like the added functionality? I have a lot of respect for images too. I didn't add Climate change and society to Climate movement because the image kept getting in the way, even though I think Climate change and society is dead-on the right template for that page.

I will join the discussion there! Alvorecer (talk) 11:24, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't add my comment there because the discussion was archived.

Summarised:

I don't think CommonKnowledgeCreator's Climate change and society template should be deleted. I think sidebar templates pertaining to environmental topics with some connection to the economy or society should be merged. There are at least six of them, and it's confusing as to where they belong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Climate_change_sidebar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Climate_change_and_society

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Climate_change_mitigation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Green_politics_sidebar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Green_economics_sidebar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Ecological_economics Alvorecer (talk) 13:08, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, sidebars contain many links, more than ~90+% of which may not be closely relevant to the subject of the article. Short, concise, time-tested, narrowly pertinent sidebars can be useful: if a specific article is truly "one of a series on xxx", then a well-focused sidebar might be appropriate. However, a recent problem is that Climate change and society is unfocused, unduly long, and grossly distracting, and doesn't add anything to the mature Climage change footer which is time-tested and much less distracting. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:09, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Alvorecer, it doesn't matter if a previous discussion is in the archive or not: You can either cut and paste it to the current talk page or just start a new talk page entry at the bottom of the talk page of WikiProject Climate change. I noticed you have also been adding nav boxes to articles (at the bottom) (RCrai09 called them "footer" above). For the nav boxes I tend to be less critical as they are less intrusive. They are at the very bottom of an article and they can be neatly collapsed in one line. But the side bars are often rather annoying in my opinion as they often take up the "prime spot" in the lead. An image in the lead is usually far better than a sidebar in the lead. Having the side bar a bit further down makes it less annoying. I agree with RCraig09 that only narrowly focused sidebars, and those that show a series of something, are useful.

Out of curiosity: why have you opted to make this your first main mission after joining Wikipedia? Do you have any data or info that these side bars and nav boxes are really adding much to the user's experience (honest question; perhaps there is a paper on this that I haven't seen yet)? Do you also plan to do other article improvements or just these sidebars and nav boxes (again, honest question). EMsmile (talk) 20:32, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The concern stems from my time lurking on Wikipedia. I found it difficult to find all Wikipedia pages pertaining to a specific subject. Even with the infoboxes and categories, I keep overlooking relevant pages, often already too late.

Am I right to conclude that you don't like sidebars in general, or is it just these sidebars? Is there something about the layout(s) that you find too distracting? Also, are you using a screen smaller than 1920x1080?

There are some edits that I find confusing: removing Green politics from Climate governance and History of climate change policy and politics, removing Climate change mitigation from Greenhouse gas inventory, and removing Climate change and society from Water scarcity. Alvorecer (talk) 10:36, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The key issues are: (1) size—how distracting they are, (2) specific relevance to the article—not just vaguely or generally related to an intermediate topic, (3) accuracy—whether the article is truly "part of a series on xxx", (4) non-redundancy—should not duplicate what's already in a footer navigation. If it fails any of these tests, it's basically a spam-box. —RCraig09 (talk) 16:41, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the "part of a series on ..." bit just sort of there? Some sidebars seem to have it, others don't. There doesn't seem to be any difference between sidebars that have it and sidebars that don't. Do you not like large sidebars like COVID-19 pandemic or Pollution?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_sidebar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Pollution_sidebar Alvorecer (talk) 11:25, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only climate change sidebar that I find vaguely useful is the one called "climate change mitigation". All the others, in particular "climate change and society" is absolutely pointless and ought to be deleted; that's why I have removed them from those articles that you mentioned. I have written about it on the talk page of that template and also on the talk page of WikiProject Climate Change.

My screen (laptop) is fairly small but even more importantly: apparently, lots of people read Wikipedia on smart phones. How do sidebars look on smart phones? Probably even worse. So I think you're wasting your time with those side bars.

Don't people find related articles easily through the wikilinks that are in the texts? EMsmile (talk) 20:24, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia doesn't load infoboxes on mobile, so that's a non-issue.

Most pages on Wikipedia aren't long enough, or at least not extensive enough, to cover all related issues. Additionally, it's really difficult to just "guess" if Wikipedia has an article on a topic you just read and what the article's present name might be. There are some terms that are great for templates because you'd never guess their names like "sustainable procurement" or "climate-smart agriculture," or because the articles rarely come up in texts like "superinsultation" or "energy conservation in the United States."

RCraig's statement that ~90+% of links are not closely relevant to the subject of the article, is one I don't agree with. I dislike the Climate change footer infobox. I think it looks far too overbearing, and I guess that it discourages further reading. I think anything that breaks Climate change footer into more bite-sized templates is a good thing. Would you be happy if I never use the |all status and restrict myself to expanding at max, one category? Alvorecer (talk) 09:45, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion: the fewer side bars the better. If they must be there, then they should always be collapsed (or at max one category expanded). They should only be in the lead if the lead had no suitable image before. If the lead does have a suitable image already then the sidebar should not be in the lead but somewhere further down below. (in my opinion)

If mobile phones don't display infoboxes and sidebars then why even waste time on developing and adding new sidebars given that so many readers now read on mobile phones?

I wasn't aware myself how much mobile phone use for reading has gone up. I've saved two links that someone previously pointed out to me about this development:

Analytics: https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-os/os-family-and-major-hierarchical-view
Here's the main page on stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics EMsmile (talk) 10:32, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The ideal solution would be to include all material topics using good writing, but I would be surprised if I could do that in ten years or less. I hope that mobile users are mostly interested in skimming articles and that people interested in doing research use desktop computers and can improve their knowledge and work using the added features. Alvorecer (talk) 10:48, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm taking a minimalist approach, check for yourselves if you approve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Alvorecer

I'm confused about the hesitancy. I think sidebars appear on good articles about half the time. If you don't like the specific layout, I can make a template look like one that you like. Alvorecer (talk) 13:19, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]