These types of site policy threads should
ALWAYS be placed in our staff forum, not in our content revisions forum, or moved there by our staff if these types of mistakes are discovered.
Anyway, all three bureaucrats have previously talked about this issue and agreed about that it seems like a bad idea. Here is how my last conversation about this issue went:
First_Witch
Heya Ant, quick question. I heard that we outlawed bolding the ability links in the PaA section of our profiles. Is that true? And if yes, why? It drastically improves readability of profiles with insane amounts of scans linked into that section and its not as intrusive as writing up bullet point sections
Antvasima
Because it works in bullet point format right in the beginning of sentences, but inserting dozens of bolded text segments into long blocks of otherwise unbolded regular text, and cksntantly rapidly switching back and forth, makes the formatting incoherent and uneasy on the eyes, so it turns much harder to properly focus and digest all of the information there like when reading a book for example.
First_Witch
I can't really agree with that. Some profiles are such massive walls that scans and abilities literally melt together. Throwing them into bulletpoints and scroll boxes makes them a hassle to navigate. I truly believe this should be reevaluated, at least as a legitimate alternative
Antvasima
I really really would rather not being forced to deal with constantly trying to protect the wiki's overall readability for casual viewers over and over regarding the same issues.
Our current format has also served us well in this regard, and it would cause far too much unnecessary work for no true gain to apply this.
First_Witch
Are you really going to insist that this
Wall of text is more readable with unbolded abilities than it is bolded? Or that putting it into a scrollbox which would forces everyone to scroll through the lenght of this profile several times over is a adequate solution? Please link me where this was discussed at the very least
Antvasima
Have you ever read a book that constantly rapidly switches back and forth between different text formats?
I agree that the large blocks of text do not look good, but doing what I just described doesn't solve any problems, it worsens them. Bullet point lists look far better structured and are much easier to easily overview for me.
First_Witch
I havent. Do you know what I did read though? University textbooks that highlight important terminology and symbology, followed by a unbolded definitions. It has been done Ant.
Its not only you who read this profiles Ant. Ton of people find those Bullet point ugly as sin, me included, for example, but begrudgingly use them in lack of better alternatives
Sigh, at this point all I ask is that you at least reconsider it. Peace
Antvasima
Well, I think that the bullet points format look much more professional/encyclopaedic and easily overviewed at least.
I currently have an aversion to switching back and forth between bolded and unbolded formatting in large blocks of text, and consider it to not remotely be worth the effort to apply to 28,000 profile pages, but will try to consider it.
First_Witch
Its really not even going to apply to a fraction of the profiles Ant. It should be kept for Profiles massive and scan heavy enough to warrant it.
Antvasima
Here are the views from the other current VS Battles wiki bureaucrats about bolding powers and abilities in large text sections that list them:
AKM sama:
"I think it would look inconsistent with the rest of the profiles in a way too obvious manner. I'd prefer all the profiles to either have bolded P&A or none."
DontTalkDT:
"I'm against it. It looks, quite frankly, ugly. Additionally, there is no need to bold them at all, if one doesn't make their entire explanation text links to scans. Moving such links into references is the better fix and more in line with how we handle references in general now."
I am afraid that we are not going to accept this suggested change. My apologies.
First_Witch
Last post on this. You can consider this topic as dropped.
In Answer to AKM;
And Bullet Points dont clash even worse with the rest of the profile? Like, I get if its a thing of preference, but the argument makes 0 sense when we allow some profiles to have a completly different visual format.
DT;
First point is a nonargument, the same way we dont take my subjective feelings into consideration. Second would require far more work, considering that scans being linked into the PaA section is a far more widespread and older tradition than References are. It would require more work to them out of the section than to just bold 20 words in a 500 word text block.
Again, consider this topic dropped. You don't even have to respond to this. I have made my dissatisfaction known. Good day to you Ant,
Antvasima
1) Bullet points bring a considerably greater visual professionalism and organised structure to our profile pages than crammed together long blocks of text.
2) It is not a nonargument, as visual aesthetics is a largely subjective issue, which much of your own arguments have fundamentally been based on, and references is both a much more professional encyclopaedic standard and long-term practically workable, as scans and YouTube videos are under constant thread to be removed. It is a far more crucially necessary and objectively beneficial change than what you suggest.
