The documentation does not provide any clear guidance on when {{
IncreaseNegative}} (
) and {{
DecreasePositive}} (
) should be used, as opposed to {{
increase}} (
) and {{
decrease}} (
). The fact that all of the templates share the same documentation only adds to the confusion of which one to use when.
For example, some pages have used and in infoboxes to indicate changes in ranking when they really should use and instead — see
Template:Infobox website:
Put {{ Increase}} (
) OR {{ Decrease}} (
PrimeHunter
mentioned a good example when and would be appropriate, where an increase is a bad thing (indicated by red):
Can the documentation be updated to give examples of appropriate uses? — sroc ( talk) 03:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
- As per Help Desk discussion. - thewolfchild 10:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
People who are red/green colorblind are going to have trouble discerning the difference between and
Equally true, they will have trouble discerning the difference between and
Would it be reasonable to create a shape difference for and ?
Antiaverage ( talk) 17:10, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
- Is this certainly true of these particular shades of red and green? For example, the exact shades of red and green on traffic lights are chosen to be easier for colour-blind people to tell apart.
- In any case, this should not be an issue as colour is not being used as the sole means to convey meaning (per MOS:COLOUR); it is the direction of the arrows that indicates the increase or decrease, and the colour is merely an additional visual aid.
- Also, and should not be used together, nor should and , as they serve different purposes. and are used to show a decrease/increase in value or going down/up in rankings; and are used when the good/bad connotation is reversed, such as a decrease/increase in road tolls. So there should not really be any confusion anyway if the templates are used appropriately. —
sroc
💬 15:30, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
Moved from
Template talk:Tfluc-common-doc:
People who are red/green colorblind are going to have trouble discerning the difference between and
Equally true, they will have trouble discerning the difference between and
Would it be reasonable to create a shape difference for and ?
Antiaverage ( talk) 17:10, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed,
Antiaverage. Separately, the coloured arrows and their filenames
sometimes confuse. We should add an informative note to the mouseover text, but we could also make it clearer by, say, adding smilies (maybe not appropriate for some things), or using slightly different colours that will look at least somewhat distinct,
[1] or using drastically different colours that will look very distinct (I'd favour black for good and red for bad, because many English-speaking readers will have a chance of guessing from cultural context). It's been five years. I'm going to mention this in a busier forum.
HLHJ (
talk) 02:35, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
- HLHJ, see also User:sroc's response to Antiaverage on another talk page. I suggest merging these discussions to avoid a WP:DISCUSSFORK. — andrybak ( talk) 08:16, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
end merged text
Thanks, andrybak. Andrybak, C933103, do you think it would be reasonable to just boldly replace the green triangles with the black or blue ones shown? I'd favour black; do you have a preference? This is specific to English-language wikipedia, and we have to pick some cultural convention. I'd also favour Matt Fitzpatrick's suggestion to make the alttexts read "detrimental increase" and "beneficial decrease" or some such. HLHJ ( talk)
Okay, I can see the use for how it's used everywhere else, but on Wikipedia pages where it says the ranking of it, these symbols are next to it, but the decrease positive and increase negative makes absolutely no sense. Is someone purposely editing them to make it confuse people, or is there a reason behind it? And if so, what's the reason? It needs to be explained either in the template, or somewhere else where it can be easily explained. OMGWEEGEE2 ( talk) 12:24, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
- @
OMGWEEGEE2: Can you provide examples? As indicated at
Template:Tfluc-common-doc, {{
increase}} () and {{
decrease}} () should be used to indicate going up (e.g., from 3rd to 2nd) or down (e.g., from 9th to 10th) in rankings respectively. —
sroc
💬 15:35, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree our use of "positive decrease " can be confusing when applied to ranking. A positive change in ranking, I believe, is generally thought of as moving upwards – towards the top of, a "list". This is quite often also visualised as such, and other times merely metaphorical. A downwards arrow does not seem like the best possible way to indicate an item moving upwards on a list. Let us consider the below example and think about whether this change would be best annotated with an ↑ upwards arrow, or a ↓ downwards arrow.
1. Foo.
2. Bar.
3. Quux.
1. Foo.
2. Quux.
3. Bar.
Alexa's own website even plots the graph for this metric in reverse ( example 1, example 2), with the Y-axis starting on the top left with 1, and increasing downwards.
At the same time, I do find the distinction of positive/negative increase useful in general. For example, accidents in transport could be measured as "number of accidents per year" where an increase is negative, or as "percentage of accident-free trips" where an increase is positive. When reading an article, this context isn't always obvious and can easily change or be forgotten. An indicator there helps the reader. The same for something like the Gini value of a country (e.g. Luxembourg) where it may not be obvious at first whether a value like "28" would be improved by an increase or decrease. The indicator shows in which direction it moved, and whether that direction is, in the larger scheme of things, the positive or negative direction.
Back to the topic of ranking, I understand where the current convention comes from. The ranking has a number attached to it, and we currently track that number. The problem there is, while we do not have the exact algorithm used by Alexa, there must be some kind of value internally used (presumably based on number of visits and unique users). The ranking is merely the list sorted by that value and assigning numbers starting from 1.
I wonder what we would do for something like Gross domestic product. This is generally expressed as a monetary value (absolute, not relative to other countries). However, there is also a list. Would we track an increase in GDP as "increase" (in value) or as "decrease" in ranking?
Alternatively, rather than tracking increase/decrease, a perhaps more appropiate term for ranking is "up" and "down". That would remove the ambiguity, but would require a dedicated template pair for rankings, but perhaps that's worth it? Doing so would also address the accessibility issue, because currently the tooltip for this template is not written with rankings in mind. Thoughts? -- Krinkle ( talk) 16:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
- It seems {{ Rise}} and {{ Fall}} already exist. Perhaps we should use those for Alexa rankings as well. -- Krinkle ( talk) 16:18, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
I noticed that the alt text for this template, and related templates, is ambiguous. "Unemployment: 5%" would be read as "unemployment increase negative five percent". It isn't immediately clear whether we're talking about a value of 5%, an increase of 5%, or even a decrease of "negative" 5%.
Might there be any less ambiguous alternatives, such as "falling", or "detrimental rising"? Matt Fitzpatrick ( talk) 22:56, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
In some part of the world, a red arrow would indicate a favorable trend while a green arrow would indicate an unfavorable trend. Thus isn't it a bad idea to color-coding Increase/IncreaseNegative/Decrease/DecreasePositive at all? C933103 ( talk) 01:08, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
The documentation does not provide any clear guidance on when {{
IncreaseNegative}} () and {{
DecreasePositive}} () should be used, as opposed to {{
increase}} () and {{
decrease}} (). The fact that all of the templates share the same documentation only adds to the confusion of which one to use when.
For example, some pages have used and in infoboxes to indicate changes in ranking when they really should use and instead — see
Template:Infobox website:
Put {{ Increase}} (
PrimeHunter
mentioned a good example when and would be appropriate, where an increase is a bad thing (indicated by red):
Can the documentation be updated to give examples of appropriate uses? — sroc ( talk) 03:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
- As per Help Desk discussion. - thewolfchild 10:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
People who are red/green colorblind are going to have trouble discerning the difference between and
Equally true, they will have trouble discerning the difference between and
Would it be reasonable to create a shape difference for and ?
Antiaverage ( talk) 17:10, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
- Is this certainly true of these particular shades of red and green? For example, the exact shades of red and green on traffic lights are chosen to be easier for colour-blind people to tell apart.
- In any case, this should not be an issue as colour is not being used as the sole means to convey meaning (per MOS:COLOUR); it is the direction of the arrows that indicates the increase or decrease, and the colour is merely an additional visual aid.
- Also, and should not be used together, nor should and , as they serve different purposes. and are used to show a decrease/increase in value or going down/up in rankings; and are used when the good/bad connotation is reversed, such as a decrease/increase in road tolls. So there should not really be any confusion anyway if the templates are used appropriately. —
sroc
💬 15:30, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
Moved from
Template talk:Tfluc-common-doc:
People who are red/green colorblind are going to have trouble discerning the difference between and
Equally true, they will have trouble discerning the difference between and
Would it be reasonable to create a shape difference for and ?
Antiaverage ( talk) 17:10, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed,
Antiaverage. Separately, the coloured arrows and their filenames
sometimes confuse. We should add an informative note to the mouseover text, but we could also make it clearer by, say, adding smilies (maybe not appropriate for some things), or using slightly different colours that will look at least somewhat distinct,
[1] or using drastically different colours that will look very distinct (I'd favour black for good and red for bad, because many English-speaking readers will have a chance of guessing from cultural context). It's been five years. I'm going to mention this in a busier forum.
HLHJ (
talk) 02:35, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
- HLHJ, see also User:sroc's response to Antiaverage on another talk page. I suggest merging these discussions to avoid a WP:DISCUSSFORK. — andrybak ( talk) 08:16, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
end merged text
Thanks, andrybak. Andrybak, C933103, do you think it would be reasonable to just boldly replace the green triangles with the black or blue ones shown? I'd favour black; do you have a preference? This is specific to English-language wikipedia, and we have to pick some cultural convention. I'd also favour Matt Fitzpatrick's suggestion to make the alttexts read "detrimental increase" and "beneficial decrease" or some such. HLHJ ( talk)
Okay, I can see the use for how it's used everywhere else, but on Wikipedia pages where it says the ranking of it, these symbols are next to it, but the decrease positive and increase negative makes absolutely no sense. Is someone purposely editing them to make it confuse people, or is there a reason behind it? And if so, what's the reason? It needs to be explained either in the template, or somewhere else where it can be easily explained. OMGWEEGEE2 ( talk) 12:24, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
- @
OMGWEEGEE2: Can you provide examples? As indicated at
Template:Tfluc-common-doc, {{
increase}} () and {{
decrease}} () should be used to indicate going up (e.g., from 3rd to 2nd) or down (e.g., from 9th to 10th) in rankings respectively. —
sroc
💬 15:35, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
I agree our use of "positive decrease " can be confusing when applied to ranking. A positive change in ranking, I believe, is generally thought of as moving upwards – towards the top of, a "list". This is quite often also visualised as such, and other times merely metaphorical. A downwards arrow does not seem like the best possible way to indicate an item moving upwards on a list. Let us consider the below example and think about whether this change would be best annotated with an ↑ upwards arrow, or a ↓ downwards arrow.
1. Foo.
2. Bar.
3. Quux.
1. Foo.
2. Quux.
3. Bar.
Alexa's own website even plots the graph for this metric in reverse ( example 1, example 2), with the Y-axis starting on the top left with 1, and increasing downwards.
At the same time, I do find the distinction of positive/negative increase useful in general. For example, accidents in transport could be measured as "number of accidents per year" where an increase is negative, or as "percentage of accident-free trips" where an increase is positive. When reading an article, this context isn't always obvious and can easily change or be forgotten. An indicator there helps the reader. The same for something like the Gini value of a country (e.g. Luxembourg) where it may not be obvious at first whether a value like "28" would be improved by an increase or decrease. The indicator shows in which direction it moved, and whether that direction is, in the larger scheme of things, the positive or negative direction.
Back to the topic of ranking, I understand where the current convention comes from. The ranking has a number attached to it, and we currently track that number. The problem there is, while we do not have the exact algorithm used by Alexa, there must be some kind of value internally used (presumably based on number of visits and unique users). The ranking is merely the list sorted by that value and assigning numbers starting from 1.
I wonder what we would do for something like Gross domestic product. This is generally expressed as a monetary value (absolute, not relative to other countries). However, there is also a list. Would we track an increase in GDP as "increase" (in value) or as "decrease" in ranking?
Alternatively, rather than tracking increase/decrease, a perhaps more appropiate term for ranking is "up" and "down". That would remove the ambiguity, but would require a dedicated template pair for rankings, but perhaps that's worth it? Doing so would also address the accessibility issue, because currently the tooltip for this template is not written with rankings in mind. Thoughts? -- Krinkle ( talk) 16:12, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
- It seems {{ Rise}} and {{ Fall}} already exist. Perhaps we should use those for Alexa rankings as well. -- Krinkle ( talk) 16:18, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
I noticed that the alt text for this template, and related templates, is ambiguous. "Unemployment: 5%" would be read as "unemployment increase negative five percent". It isn't immediately clear whether we're talking about a value of 5%, an increase of 5%, or even a decrease of "negative" 5%.
Might there be any less ambiguous alternatives, such as "falling", or "detrimental rising"? Matt Fitzpatrick ( talk) 22:56, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
In some part of the world, a red arrow would indicate a favorable trend while a green arrow would indicate an unfavorable trend. Thus isn't it a bad idea to color-coding Increase/IncreaseNegative/Decrease/DecreasePositive at all? C933103 ( talk) 01:08, 1 September 2018 (UTC)