Template talk:Fix-span

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Why the pale colour?

At the moment, this is formatted with colour #888. While this is 53% encoded intensity, working out at as about 25% effective intensity under sRGB, the reality is that it looks rather pale. (OK, so it might vary between different displays and configurations, and there may also be differences of perception.)

Whether it looks pale to you or not, it begs the question: Why does the text need to be coloured at all? The border already serves to indicate the portion of text that needs citation or clarification or whatever. Even if there are situations (such as text-mode browsers) for which we need some other indication, I can't see that this colour is the answer, as opposed to (for instance) a darker shade of grey, or some other colour.

Here are some samples in different colours:

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #888^{[citation needed]}

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #666^{[citation needed]}

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #555^{[citation needed]}

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #444^{[citation needed]}

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #333^{[citation needed]}

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #900^{[citation needed]}

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #090^{[citation needed]}

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz #009^{[citation needed]}

What do people think? I plan to put forward an edit request but am seeing which colour/shade people prefer first. — Smjg (talk) 01:38, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The color was changed as a result of this conversation and the subsequent edit request.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:01, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I've just had a read of those discussions, and can't see any explanation of why the text needs to stand out. The whole point of the template is to enable readers/contributors to know what exact portion of the text needs citation or clarification or whatever, rather than to make it stand out. By "stand out" I mean "exhibit significant contrast with the surrounding text" rather than "look highlighted". Moreover, if there were a need for any text that needs citation/clarification/whatever to stand out, then the non-spanning templates ({{cn}}, {{clarify}}, etc.) would be good for nothing. But they clearly aren't, as they are widely used. Moreover, the tagged text should still be easy to read.

So unless anybody has a compelling counter-argument, I would like to propose that we reduce the level of contrast, and that a darker, still neutral shade of grey would be a perfect way of doing this. I'll post a quick note on the other thread to point people here. — Smjg (talk) 00:26, 3 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As pointed out in the discussion at Template talk:Citation needed span, the current contrast falls short of WCAG accessibility guidelines, and is therefore very difficult to read for people with certain eyesight conditions. I agree with Smjg and Illspirit that the contrast needs to be increased. Can we change the text from #888 to #555 per the request at Template talk:Citation needed span? Kaldari (talk) 23:54, 22 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I just realised that we're talking about two different things - contrast with the surrounding text and contrast with the background. Of course it's contrast with the background that needs to be increased, and I agree that #555 is a suitable shade. (Just added it to the samples above.) — Smjg (talk) 00:09, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There seem to be two rather conflicting positions here. The one position holds that the text wrapped in {{citation needed span}} should be identified yet at the same time deemphasized so that readers get the hint that the text isn't supported. The old pale pink color made the text look highlighted and drew the eye to it; pretty much the opposite of what was desired. The other position seeks to increase the contrast of the text color to the background color so that the wrapped text meets the requirements of accessibility set by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Resolve the differences between these two positions before changing the template.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:46, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to #595959, which is the lightest gray that meets WGAC AAA (#767676 would pass WCAG AA but not AAA). The debate can continue on other colors, but make sure to run them through a WCAG contrast checker such as http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 01:20, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I don't see how changing the color of the text, even to grey, de-emphasizes it. If anything, it makes it look special, like it's a button, especially with the border around it. Personally, I think we should either change the text to regular black or remove the border. We don't need both. Kaldari (talk) 04:45, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]