Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-15636815-20131111185541/@comment-15636815-20131119191919

Rastislav,

Please forgive my attitude earlier. I felt frustrated because you had been commenting and providing feedback during the creation process, yet voiced your biggest concerns after the page went live. I got a bunch of work done last night, though, so I'm okay, now. ;-)

1. The sorting problem is a known issue. MediaWiki's Help page talks about it. The only way we can get sorting to play nice is to go with separate entries, as in the Workshop T2. I dislike this solution because I prefer to see dual cost items together. It's much easier to identify them with rowspan than it would be if they were separated completely. I think most people in the community agree with that. (Anyone who disagrees should speak NOW!!) Besides, this problem is a temporary condition caused only when the user chooses to view the information differently from the default display. People seem to be okay with that just long enough to find out what they want to know, mostly because the page goes back to normal upon reloading or refreshing.

2. Regarding the alignment of text in numeric columns: I tested keeping the text right-aligned with the numbers, and I didn't like it. It looked extra weird, especially with two or more rows of text. I just adjusted Workshop T1 to use this format so you can judge for yourself.

3. I'll look into filtering. Not today, but this week for sure.

4. I'm not sure when you noticed the wider columns in the Award Themes section. I noticed it last night and fixed it then.

5. Actually, the positions of the footnote references are extremely consistent. In every case, the footnote is applied to the first piece of information that is unusual--which is the whole reason for a footnote in the first place. In other words, as soon as the reader sees something that makes him wonder, "Why is that?", the footnote is right there, ready to answer the question. For Western and Black Hills, that moment is the first "Free". For Meadow, that moment is "N/A". For other themes, where nothing about the data is unusual, but we have extra information to give, I footnoted the name of the item because users almost always read that column, no matter what.

However, I admit freely that the footnote references tend to get lost next to the large images. I tested putting the references on the names below the images, but that seemed to get lost even more. In addition, the new Extensions page, many entries have images without the link below because they don't need links, and footnoting the images provided consistency. I could MAYBE consider adding a one-character column on the right for that purpose. I'd need input from several people before doing that, though.

6. If the coloured fields attracted your attention, then you got the point. That's exactly what we want. If people don't realise that some information needs to be updated, they won't update it. "Conservative grey" does not have the same effect--not even close. I could have gone with more subtle shades of yellow and green; I chose these shades because they are "Web safe", meaning that almost every computer and monitor on the planet will render them correctly. That may not happen with a different shade. I'll see if I can find some different shades that will be almost as safe. Changing to shades of grey, though, is not going to happen.

Thank you for the compliments. This has been a long and difficult process. Many of the things on those pages are things I had to learn how to do after somebody said, "Why don't you...?" Thank you, also, for your work on the extensions database. I found a few errors last night, but those entries were low-level items, and you probably didn't have an easy way to verify that data. I did. ;-)

I'm surprised that Pixel is so willing to share their data, and even more surprised that they don't have the data in a format they can view easily. LOL ... Maybe we'll hear from them soon. Again, thanks for everything. I've done most of the coding work, but the new Themes and Extensions pages use many of your ideas. The pages look much better with your ideas than they ever would have looked without them. Well done to you. :-D