Draft talk:Genealogy

Formatting and clarification
Thanks for the introductory sentence! It's great!

Regarding one "=" or two "=", Wikiversity does not have a requirement of two "=" for major sections. I chose one "=" when I created the resource.

Before the categories, there is a sisterlinks template call that contains the resource title so that all sister projects can be investigated for genealogy including Wikipedia. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:32, 28 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The issue of Level 1 vs. Level 2 headings isn't a Wikiversity issue, but an HTML accessibility issue. Using multiple level 1 headings makes the content less accessible to users who use/need a screen reader.  There should only be one Level 1 heading on the page, designating the page title itself.  I'll work on a bot function that can search for pages with multiple Level 1 headings and tag them for maintenance.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:02, 29 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Sorry about adding that extraneous Wikipedia link-box, I missed the sister-links at the bottom. :) But yeah, I agree with Dave that the only level-1 heading should be the one provided by MediaWiki as the page title. I guess it's not policy though, so whichever is fine. &mdash; Sam Wilson ( Talk &bull; Contribs ) &hellip; 05:45, 29 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I like the one "=" type headings for readability. Wikipedia uses the two "=" headings so it also helps to differentiate us. No clue what type of device needs a screen reader. My IMAC is over tens years old and works fine with Safari or Firefox to read the one "=" type headings. Do cell phones use a screen reader? My guess from the Wikiversity statistics is that screen reader use is less than 50 % of our hits. Tagging the Level 1 resources with that category seems okay to me. Perhaps that helps to differentiate screen reader needs from IMACs or Iphones? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 21:42, 29 January 2016 (UTC)


 * See https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility . The idea behind this is that a given person's definition of readability is based on their own ability to see and read. The HTML standards allow users to adjust their view of the content to meet their own personal vision needs. Some users may need to increase magnification. Some may have software that reads the content to them. On wikis, users can even customize the CSS used to display their content to improve readability. In each of these cases, multiple Level 1 headings prevents users from customizing their view of the content in a standardized fashion.
 * This is before we even start looking at different devices, different platforms, and different browsers. The end result is that a designer has no idea how users are actually seeing their content. Instead, we rely on standards of relative size and hierarchy, so that the content is designed to be accessible and scale well no matter what device, magnification, or assistive technology is required.
 * If you like the H1 style, and want to alter your personal CSS view to make the content easier for you to read, that's an easy change to make. But we shouldn't be making design decisions that make our content harder for others to read based on non-standard or non-accessible choices.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I read through https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility and saw nothing obvious referring to one "=" versus two "=". Perhaps this is something very subtle. Just FYI but Safari, for example, displays texts that are quite small for WMF sites and Firefox displays texts at about twice the size. These are probably default settings. As there are several possible levels of "=" before no effect occurs (meaning say four "=" versus five "=" where I believe the cutoff occurs), any translation program would probably reduce text size accordingly, or perhaps sonically, or in braille to suggest a new resource title, rather than indicate the second occurrence is in the same resource, or perhaps not. But, a change in url needs to occur to get to a new resource. I doubt one "=" or several "=" designated sections within a resource indicates that a screen reader needs to indicate to the reader, listener, or toucher that a page is being left, unless the standard was set to Wikipedia which has been using "==" after the page title since 2001 I think. Magnification just indicates to the program that more scrolling (or less scrolling with lower magnification) is needed to finish the resource. But the text remains the same. So if you could point more specifically to what's going on with these standards, it would help. I also doubt that standards were set to Wikipedia as it's only been at best the number five internet resource rather than number one.


 * This suggests that the number of "=" should not affect what the browser or translator portrays, unless someone has documented this specifically. Each url is not n"=" dependent where n = 1, 2, 4, etc. But each page portrayed to any sense (hearing, seeing, touching, or perhaps smelling or tasting, though these may not have been developed yet) is url specific. Even for editing, each section regardless of n has a specific section integer attached. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 23:34, 29 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Just FYI but at the present rate that resources are being put into Category:Pages with Level 1 heading, the total number of such resources may be more than 50 % of all of Wikiversity resources. While I realize a bot can be written to increase each "=" by one another alternative is to replace "=" text "=" by Big Text between <>. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

It wasn't a matter of HTML standards being written for Wikipedia, but Wikipedia following HTML standards. When we enter a wiki heading with "=", we are generating an  tag. When we enter a wiki heading with "==", we are generating an  tag, etc. HTML accessibility guidelines for years have stated there should only be one  tag per page, and the Mediawiki software generates an  for the page heading itself. That's why Wikipedia starts all headings with ==, or  as translated.

Screen readers used by vision impaired people use the different heading levels to display and offer navigational clues on the page itself. Multiple  headings on the same page are known to throw off this software.

Your experience with Firefox and Safari demonstrates why we shouldn't try to alter display sizes, but only relativity. Each user is free to zoom in or out as much as they are comfortable with. That's one of the big changes you'll see if you look at the new portal design I created. It zooms well on all devices, from a small cell phone up to a large display screen.

I realize there will be many pages tagged by the bot, but before we can have a community discussion of the issue, we need to know what the scope is. I believe it is possible to have a bot go through and make corrections if that's what the community supports. Adding is an option to force larger than relative text if one wants to, and wouldn't be related to the heading tag issue.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:33, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Just FYI but the bot may have missed all of the pages beginning with numbers, e.g., 1000 Songs, etc. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 11:40, 30 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks! From a performance standpoint, I didn't want to pull all 20K+ pages at once, so I've only processed the alphabet at this point. Even things like C++ were skipped. I'll follow up, one way or another, depending on where the community discussion leads. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:41, 30 January 2016 (UTC)