Help talk:Using colours

Colour generation guide
The 3 colours are generated using the HSV color space, then translated into RGB.
 * The method used for selecting the colours for various top-level pages, eg Main Page, Community Portal, Contents, and Help:Contents.


 * Easily generate similar palettes, from different starting hues, using colorblender.com


 * Table moved to help-page Help:Using colors.

Empty template box
For your own use. Copy to your project-page, and replace in order: A?, B?, C?.

Main Page color
Re: table from main page redesign discussion archive

I'd appreciate someone giving a concise summary of how the new main page colours were selected. (I'm presumming the saturation/hue remained the consistent variables, as shown?)

Then we can generate a few additional colour schemes that all fit well together, helping keep wikipedia consistently styled where possible. --Quiddity 00:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * For the TFA/DYN sections, the the saturation/brightness values vary (as follows) with the hue remaining constant:
 * For the heading background, the saturation is 15% and brightness is 95%.
 * For the heading border, the saturation is 15% and brightness is 75%.
 * For the box background, the saturation is 4% and brightness is 100%.
 * For the ITN/OTD sections, the saturation and brightness scheme is the same as above, but the hue (color) is different. Same goes for the Today's featured picture section.  --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 01:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Perfect. Thanks. i eventually got around to making the table above ;) -Quiddity 03:51, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting external links
List of things that are pertinent, but not suitable for the guideline page itself. --Quiddity 20:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design

American vs. Canadian spelling
How has it been decided to use the Canadian spelling for this project's page title?? Georgia guy 23:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
 * See the first 4 points at MoS#National varieties of English, and the table at MoS (spelling). -Quiddity 00:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It's not just canada, as far as I'm aware, this is the spelling used in every English speaking country apart from the US Philc  TECI 22:48, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It's also the British spelling how do you not know that Orrinpants (talk) 21:58, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

I was wondering the same thing. In everything else related to Wikipedia colors, it's spelled with the American spelling, but this, and only this, has the Canadian/British spelling. Perhaps there should be a bit more...consistency? ♥ ► ąĿÎąş ◄ ♥ (ŧąĿĸ) 23:37, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you suggesting changing all the American spellings? That would be a rather sizable undertaking.  Lankiveil (speak to me) 12:10, 15 July 2008 (UTC).
 * Not to mention every other difference in spelling. SaintDaveUK (talk) 11:26, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This is covered by the Wikipedia Style guide, including the Manual of Style, the spelling guidelines. The basic principles are discussed here.
 * Consistency within article
 * Strong national ties to a topic
 * Retaining the existing variety
 * Opportunities for commonality
 * I think there is little possibility for confusion so applying #3 makes sense as supportable and has the added benefit of requiring doing nothing. wcf Facts are stubborn. Comments? 22:40, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * CSS uses, so this should be moved to Help:Using colors for consistency. 95.49.79.82 (talk) 18:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Talk box colours
How come the colours used in the little box that pops up and says your talk page has been edited aren't included in this article. Philc TECI 22:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * There are hundreds of colours used in the various infoboxes, that arent listed here. Just look at the wiki code to see what colour is being used :) -Quiddity 23:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, I just thought it was pretty central to wikipedia, and maybe it had been omitted by mistake. Philc  TECI 23:37, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Additions needed
Important are IMO some technical facts:
 * 1) Most browsers use dark foreground colours, typically black for text, underlined blue for links, and a slightly different underlined blue for visited links.
 * 2) That's also the case for old browsers not supporting CSS. Therefore changing the background colour is tricky:
 * 3) Dark background colours are out - unless the foreground colour is also changed. Ideally checked with a service converting all colours to a black and white scheme, if it still works it should be fine also for the colourblind.
 * 4) Mixing legacy markup and CSS can have hilarious effects like a legacy black/blue foreground on a dark background, if editors use bgcolor="black" for the BG, and style="color: white" for the FG.
 * 5) Using a legacy &lt;font color="white"&gt; is deprecated. Violating that rule is an option, otherwise better don't use legacy markup for dark backgrounds.
 * 6) Outside of CSS stay away from the hex. #rgb notation, old browsers only know #rrggbb (six hex. digits). Maybe use one of the sixteen colour names, that's guaranteed to work on the most limited devices, cell-phones, PDAs, printers, whatever, as far as they support colours.
 * 7) Text browsers don't support colours. (They need them internally to display mixtures of italics / bold / etc. and logical style tags like &lt;code&gt; on text mode displays with a single monospaced font).
 * 8) XHTML basic and XHTML print don't support inline CSS. If available use class= references to an external style sheet, for links see Customisation.
 * 9) See also my experimental page with links to a colourblind emulator. The interesting table above has no effect on legacy browsers (and often no effect is good news from my POV...&#160;;-) --&#160;Omniplex 15:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * We still need to add the above points,
 * and merge WikiProject Usability/Color
 * And discuss expanding the recommendations into a full scheme (instead of just a handful of samples). --Quiddity 03:25, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I've started collecting and adding some wiki-ish palettes at User:Rfrisbie/Palettes. – Rfrisbietalk 03:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Allowed colors?
This section seems to be a bit abrupt to be added without discussion. On what basis are these colors "allowed," implying others are "disallowed"? The list doesn't seem to be all that consistent with the HSB/HSV style of designating color palettes either. Rfrisbietalk 04:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Really how many accepted colors are there?  EBE123  talkContribs 12:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

active / inactive?
In the See Also section, the page "Infobox Colors" appears to be INACTIVE, whereas the "WikiProject Usability/Color" page appears to be ACTIVE. Should their designations on this page be changed or am I missing something? Newbie Laurie Fox 06:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Both are historical/inactive. I've updated accordingly. (this page has been inactive a while too, needs help.. Usability/Color should be merged here, plus the list of items above..) --Quiddity 20:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Different colors?
Why do the color listed here on this talk page differ from the guideline itself? What one's correct? (If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at the darker color blue.) - Rocket000 00:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, I get it. The table at the top of this page was made based on the green from the main page. That's why the blue and purple shades are a little off. We should fix this. - Rocket000 00:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Other way around. The mainpage was based off of this palette. See this page's history and the main page redesign archives. I forget when or why they diverged.
 * As for fixing, the whole page needs a gentle overhaul, as discussed 3 sections above.
 * (and the table at top contains the ideal we were working from, of 60degree increments, not the actual implementation. Yes that should be made clearer). --Quiddity 01:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for responding. I was just wondering what colors (main page colors or this palette) should be used in making templates and such. Before I found this page, I was going with the main page colors but then I realized, by comparing side by side, most of the templates in use have slightly different shades. Was there any systematic way of determining the main page colors? (Like some system I can use to get different hues?) - Rocket000 13:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Here's what the chart would look like based off the main page (minus extended colors):


 * I can't see any system here, and since these shades are so close to "60degree" table, I think I'll just use that instead. - Rocket000 02:24, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I asked David Levy if he remembered when/why the colors were changed, but he either doesn't recall either, or hasn't had time to reply yet. Sorry I couldn't be more help. --Quiddity 02:35, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Page name
The article was created as Wikipedia:Colours and per WP:ENGVAR should remain there. I've move protected it at that location because of the recent move wars (which resulted in lots of double redirects). Moves can still be discussed here, of course. violet/riga (t) 10:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

To note, most guidelines use U.S. spelling, I oppose the name.--Ipatrol (talk) 23:14, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

template colors
How come the templates now have their color in a little bar to the side? And do these colors mean anything?--190.74.108.43 (talk) 20:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Which templates? -- Quiddity (talk) 21:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * trivia (yellow), globalize (blue), advert (red)... that kind of templates.--190.74.108.43 (talk) 21:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * See Article message boxes. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you!--190.74.108.43 (talk) 22:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Colors in tables
Since tables are the general way to present structured information, and presentation of structured information is often assisted by colors, I'm a bit surprised there is not more table-specific information and guidance here.

It seems especially odd that there is no information about the choice of colors in class=wikitable (#f9f9f9 for background, #f2f2f2 for headings). When I needed a third color for a table heading a while ago (in List of motion picture film stocks), I ended up choosing #ebebeb since it was 7 less than #f2f2f2 which was 7 less than #f9f9f9; but I was not aware of this page at that time. How were the table colors chosen?

Is there any guidance on colors to use within tables? jhawkinson (talk) 15:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia background colour
In addition to presenting the colours employed in the various title boxes, shouldn't mention be made of the Wikipedia's page background colour itself (#F8FCFF)?  JGHowes talk  -  01:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Infobox colours as a customisable option, and its implications
Please see Template talk:Infobox Country 52 Pickup   (deal)  07:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Since this was not resolved, I've set up a RFC: link - 52 Pickup   (deal)  21:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Just checking
I there anything wrong with the use of colour in this article? BUC (talk) 17:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The article seems fine. The Template:Denver Broncos has some hard-to-read colour contrasts though. The orange-on-blue in the title, and the black-on-orange in the groupheadings, should probably be changed. (And the title should be linked to Denver Broncos). I'd suggest the standard navbox colour schemes (or those found in NFL, perhaps), but any sort of dark-text-on-a-light-background is universally recommendable. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There were some concerns about colour being the only indicator though. Can see you see anywhere where that is an issue? BUC (talk) 19:23, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, everything appears to be properly-redundantly labeled. However, I don't know the game at all, so I'm confused by a number of things. You might get more help by inquiring in this recent thread: Wikipedia talk:Accessibility. Sorry I wasn't more help. (also, at the article, footnote:g seems to be broken, but I couldn't see anything obviously wrong?). -- Quiddity (talk) 23:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Color of wikilinks
What are the hex codes for the colors shown in Wikipedia internal links?

-What color is the link to this unvisited page?

-What color is the link to this non-exsistant page? I noticed these colors are different from    and    . Also, what are the colors to visited, existing pages (they're more of a purple color)? Thanks for your help,  α Яβ ιτ Я α Я ι ŁΨθ  ( talk  ) 01:29, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Somewhat skin dependant but some of the defaults are:
 * A standard wiki link you have not visited yet = 002bb8
 * A standard wiki link you have visited = 5a3696
 * A non-exsistant page you have visited = a55858
 * An external link = 36b
 * See Catalogue of CSS classes for links to all the information And more specificly to the default skin see http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css which was used to find the above color codes Dbiel (Talk) 05:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Dbiel!   A rbitrarily 0    ( talk ) 21:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * At least one stage darker for the standard wikilink would be the most significant improvement I can imagine in the WikiMedia software. Tim Starling recently told me that the colour was probably chosen on a hunch at the time (i.e., not trialled or based on any understanding of the psychology of reading). Tony   (talk)  09:07, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Political background templates behind links
An article I do occasional work on, Virginia House of Delegates, just had a large table recoded to indicate political party preference via a background color templates, Template:Party shading/Democratic and Template:Party shading/Republican. This has led to a rather large number of links, blue and red, sitting on backgrounds of #B0CEFF and #FFB6B6. This appears to be a spreading usage in US political articles. Is it just me, or is there a serious contrast problem with this mix of red or blue text on red or blue backgrounds? Rklear (talk) 01:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:Don't edit war over the colour of templates
I added: WP:Don't edit war over the colour of templates to the see also section, after seeing this:
 * Template:Infobox_NFLactive a huge RfC over the color of templates. Ikip (talk) 10:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * More specifically, it's over whether infoboxes need to adhere to the color-contrast guideline. Everyone here please go take a look and weigh in.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 17:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: No colors in body text
I'm increasingly irritated by angry fruit salad coloring like this, with random words in the body of the article colored. Would there be opposition to adding this to the guideline?


 * Colors should only be used in tables, sidebars and illustrations. Do not use colored text, colored links or colored backgrounds in the article body.

Off the top of my head, the only deserved exception I can think of is the habit of denoting some playing cards in color, eg., in "technical" articles like List of poker hands. Jpatokal (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * linked specific diff (for once it is fixed)
 * Yikes! Yes, this needs to be strongly discouraged. Using color like this makes it harder to write, is invisible for some colorblind blind users, and is subjectively harder to read or could be considered ugly/distracting. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Generally speaking I agree, though, we should consider what might count as justifiable exceptions (like the one mentioned above). J IM ptalk·cont 18:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

These are NOT random words. Why did you describe them as such? HarryAlffa (talk) 16:23, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

The colours deployed are those used in the table. The words coloured are those with that colour in the table in the article, which the words are talking about. HarryAlffa (talk) 16:23, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


 * And as Quiddity says, "Using color like this makes it harder to write, is invisible for some colorblind blind users, and is subjectively harder to read or could be considered ugly/distracting." For the specific case of those Hong Kong metro articles, line color is worth noting in tables, but it adds absolutely no value to repeat it in the body text. Jpatokal (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I could be totally wrong here, but aren't there some colours which are "colourblind safe"? HarryAlffa (talk) 16:23, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

If (truly) random colouring of words or background were a problem, then it might be something worth bothering about. However, I believe there are some style guides, or accessibility guides, which deal with colour use already. I can't be arsed looking for them; what about anyone else? HarryAlffa (talk) 16:23, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That style/accessibility guideline is WP:COLOR, and you're on its talk page. Jpatokal (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, the parent guidelines/projects WP:Accessibility and WP:Usability. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Accessibility and ergonomy review
You are right, Quiddity. This is both a Web usability and Web accessibility issue, here is a review of West Rail Line. Dodoïste (talk) 12:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Accessibility review
Most colors doesn't have enough contrast with the background, according to W3C's Colour Contrast Analyser.

Text or diagrams and their background must have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least 5:1 for level 2 conformance to guideline 1.4, and text or diagrams and their background must have a luminosity contrast ratio of at least 10:1 for level 3 conformance to guideline 1.4.
 * 1) East Rail Line : Fail (The contrast ratio is: 2.74) ; Foreground:#6699FF Background:#FFFFFF
 * 2) Tsuen Wan Line : Fail (The contrast ratio is: 4.00) ; Foreground:#FF0000 Background:#FFFFFF
 * 3) Tung Chung Line : Fail (The contrast ratio is: 2.91) ; Foreground:#FF663A Background:#FFFFFF
 * 4) Light Rail : Fail (The contrast ratio is: 2.07) ; Foreground:#DDAA66 Background:#FFFFFF
 * 5) West Rail Line : Passed at Level 2 (The contrast ratio is: 6.66) ; Foreground:#AA0090 Background:#FFFFFF
 * 6) Ma On Shan Line : Passed at Level 2 (The contrast ratio is: 6.99) ; Foreground:#8B4544 Background:#FFFFFF

Ergonomy review
On Wikipedia, every link is blue. Therefore, everything that is not blue is not a link. It is very confusing for the user, so please do not change the color of the links (and same goes for text: text is black).

Each kind of content has a specific color. New colors should only be used to indicate a new kind of interactive content.

Dodoïste (talk) 12:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Wonderfully clearly explained. Thank you for that work. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Templates for deletion nomination of Template:Overcoloured
Template:Overcoloured has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- Beland (talk) 20:55, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merge
Could we, and should we, merge this with Accessibility? — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 19:30, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree where this is coming from, but don't fully agree with the proposal for a full-on merge. My opinion is:
 * The "using colours in articles" section belongs in WP:ACCESS.
 * If that move were to take place, then logically WP:COLOUR is no longer part of the Manual of Style, but instead a technical guide.
 * It may be appropriate to create a hatnote at the top of WP:COLOUR to the new section, such as You may have been looking for Accessibility .
 * But in my opinion it is desirable to keep a technical explanation of how to apply colour separate from the MoS guideline on when to use it. For that reason I'm opposed to a full merge. WFCforLife (talk) 01:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for mentioning that! I was thinking along similar lines myself, and I was really curious if someone would have a similar thought. We do have several Category:Wikipedia how-to articles, and it would make sense to me to do a split here, with the remainder being a technical howto doc. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 02:51, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * All of that sounds good. As long as nothing of value is lost, I endorse a partial merge. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:55, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Done
Pretty much done, except for the page move. This project page has been move protected since 2007, so I can't change move it. editprotected Please move the page to Using Colors and/or Using Colours (I don't personally care which, "Colors" is simply the spelling that I don't have to think about at all). — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 18:38, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, why do we need this page move? Isn't it better to keep the more concise title? Ucucha 21:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Not really, because the page now is a How-to rather then being a guideline and How-to combined. The current name of this page should really redirect to Accessibility, where the guideline content has been moved. Since this page is now only the how-to content it seems to me that the name should reflect that. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 21:24, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

This page rename didn't follow Manual of Style, which says that titles should use sentence case (Like this), not title case (Like This). To fix the problem, please please rename the page again, from Using Colours to Using colours. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 22:01, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. I also removed the move protection; I'll re-add it when people see fit to move it to American spelling again. Ucucha 22:04, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Table color help
Hello, how can we color an entire column in a table please ? Polylepsis (talk) 13:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Move to Help namespace?
Would it make sense to move this page to Help:Using Colours? The current page contents seem more like the pages in the Help namespace than the Wikipedia namespace. –Grondemar 23:07, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Since nobody has commented or objected, I'm boldly proceeding with the proposed move. –Grondemar 11:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks fine,   A rbitrarily 0    ( talk ) 17:03, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

RfC on Consensus
Given WP:CONLIMITED, to what extent and under what circumstances can individual WikiProjects and users customize article appearance with individual styles that deviate from site-wide style guidelines? Interested contributors are invited to participate at Wikipedia talk:Consensus/RfC. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Tables from Talk to the Help-page
I strongly suggest to put the from here into thee Help-page. Very good & useful, explaining right what the color scheme are & should do .(Well, maybe change into "Color", all these English on this wiki ;-).) Also, the top-page table could be there. -DePiep (talk) 00:02, 16 July 2010 (UTC) (adding & sectioning) -DePiep (talk) 01:09, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

help required at X Factor (uk series 6)
take a look at this. IMO there could be massive improvements in the use of color but i'm not really sure how to proceed. --  Lil_℧niquℇ №1 &#124;  talk2me  20:12, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment RE: a new color being added to a series of color identifiers
A newly developed template has been launched, and it helps catalogue life using a color scheme. Please place comments regarding its color at Template talk:Taxobox colour. Thanks! Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

External Link to w3color
You removed a link to w3color that was added by 95.155.1.218. You didn't leave a reason in the edit summary. I thought the link was actually quite a good addition to the page. What was the reason for removing it? Zell Faze (talk) 12:12, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There are a gazillion color tools out there, and none of them actually pass WP:ELNO.  12:45, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I disagree.

WP:ELNO Not applicable as this is a help page, but if this were the ideal version of this help page, it would likely still not contain a colour picker. I think the link satisfies this requirement. Easily passes. The page definitely doesn't misrepresent anything, its a tool. Site has no malware. I don't think this link is promotional. To me it seems a reasonable tool to link to from here. As far as I can tell the submitter doesn't have any affiliation with them. Website isn't selling anything, contains no ads. Site does not require payment for use. Only accessibility problem that I can see is its use of colour and its use of Javascript. Both I think are reasonable given the topic at hand and the nature of what the tool is trying to accomplish. Website uses Javascript. It doesn't require any plugins to use. Page is not a search engine result. Page is not a social network. Doesn't appear to be a blog or a personal website. It looks like a pretty well designed tool for colour selection. Is not a Wiki. I would consider a colour selection tool directly related to a help page on Using Colour. It not a list of manufacturers or suppliers. The site is not already linked to through Wikipedia's sourcing tools (or in this case, I would argue that any section of the interface, which is it also not linked to by). While I can't guarantee the reliability of the site. It seems pretty professionally made, which to me says its likely to be around for a while. Link does not contain an affiliate or referral code. Item not applicable to help pages. The website isn't mentioned in this help page anywhere.
 * 1) Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article.
 * 1) Any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research, except to a limited extent in articles about the viewpoints that the site is presenting.
 * 1) Sites containing malware, malicious scripts, trojan exploits, or content that is illegal to access in the United States. Suspected malware sites can be reported by following the instructions at Wikipedia:Spam blacklist.
 * 1) Links mainly intended to promote a website, including online petitions. See external link spamming.
 * 1) Individual web pages[5] that primarily exist to sell products or services, or to web pages with objectionable amounts of advertising. For example, the mobile phone article does not link to web pages that mostly promote or advertise cell-phone products or services.
 * 1) Sites that require payment or registration to view the relevant content, unless the site itself is the subject of the article, or the link is a convenience link to a citation.[4] See below.
 * 1) Sites that are inaccessible to a substantial number of users, such as sites that only work with a specific browser or in a specific country.
 * 1) Direct links to documents that require external applications or plugins (such as Flash or Java) to view the content, unless the article is about such file formats. See rich media for more details.
 * 1) Any search results pages, such as links to individual website searches, search engines, search aggregators, or RSS feeds.
 * 1) Social networking sites (such as Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram), chat or discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups), Twitter feeds, Usenet newsgroups or e-mail lists.
 * 1) Blogs, personal web pages and most fansites, except those written by a recognized authority. (This exception for blogs, etc., controlled by recognized authorities is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities who are individuals always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for people.)
 * 1) Open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors. Mirrors or forks of Wikipedia should not be linked.
 * 1) Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject: the link should be directly related to the subject of the article. A general site that has information about a variety of subjects should usually not be linked from an article on a more specific subject. Similarly, a website on a specific subject should usually not be linked from an article about a general subject. If a section of a general website is devoted to the subject of the article, and meets the other criteria for linking, then that part of the site could be deep linked.
 * 1) Lists of links to manufacturers, suppliers or customers.
 * 1) Sites already linked through Wikipedia sourcing tools.[4] For example, instead of linking to a commercial book site, consider the "ISBN" linking format, which gives readers an opportunity to search a wide variety of free and non-free book sources. Map sources can be linked by using geographical coordinates.
 * 1) Sites that are not reliably functional and/or not likely to continue being functional. For example, links to temporary internet content, where the link is unlikely to remain operable for a useful amount of time.
 * 1) Affiliate, tracking or referral links, i.e., links that contain information about who is to be credited for readers that follow the link. If the source itself is helpful, use a neutral link without the tracking information.
 * 1) External links on Wikipedia navigation templates or navigation pages such as disambiguation, redirect and category pages.
 * 1) Websites of organizations mentioned in an article—unless they otherwise qualify as something that should be linked or considered.

What part of WP:ELNO does the link not pass? Zell Faze (talk) 13:01, 25 July 2014 (UTC)


 * It adds nothing to the page. This is a help page, which rarely links to external tools. Why should it be added?  20:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)


 * This help page discusses how to use colour in articles on Wikipedia. It shows you the methods you use to color items and then lists commons colours used on Wikipedia.  This list of common colours though does not cover every situation that might come up (nor should it).  I think linking to a colour picker tool would be useful for those situations where the list of colours on this page does not have in it the specific colour that you need in the article.  Certainly such situations do come up, and I suspect an editor in such a situation would be reading this particular help page, thus making it a convenient and useful spot to stick such a link.  Imagine the following, you are working on an article (or more likely a Wikiproject page) and for some reason (why is not relevant here, but such situations are bound to come up) you need to colour something a deep Burgundy .  You open up Help:Using colours and read the page.  You now know how to display the colour that you want, but it wasn't listed in the list, so you really aren't quite sure how you go about displaying that colour.  If there was a link to a colour picker at the bottom of the help page, of course you would follow it and you'd be able to quickly determine the colour code that you need to use.


 * I should also add, that I'm not dead set on this specific colour picker (though it does seem to be a reasonable one to use). I just think that a link to a colour picker of some description would be very helpful to someone reading this page.  Clearly  agreed. Zell Faze (talk) 18:25, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Talk pages and usernames
Does anyone know how to change colours of your username or the 'talk' sign that appears after I post my comment? O ldstone J ames  T / C  18:10, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
 * See WP:SIG. The software imposes a limit of 255 characters, so you'll have to simplify the HTML code that you've used here. -- John of Reading (talk) 22:45, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

How do I change my username colour
I want to change my username,and the colour with it as I've seen it by some users.Can anyone tell me how it's done? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nixious6 (talk • contribs) 19:36, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The colored usernames you see are caused by custom signatures, and are not hardcoded into the username themselves. --I am  k6ka  Talk to me!   See what I have done  20:53, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Is there a Wikipedia standard for using colours for status in tables
I am looking at the table in List of wind farms in South Australia and undoubtedly similar tables in many other places. It has coloured backgrounds for the status column with text values of, , , ,. I have recently added. I made up the new colour as I could not find a guide on whether there is a standard set I should have chosen from. Thank you. --Scott Davis Talk 07:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Printing table colors
Another editor asked at the help desk about printing table colors. He noticed they don't render with print previews, and I noticed that you can't save them using the PDF download function either. Is there a way to do this? TimTempleton (talk) (cont)  21:54, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Pages in Category:Articles with images not understandable by color blind users

 * 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
 * Aftermath of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
 * Angles
 * Antipodes
 * Battle of Tripoli (2011)
 * Blu-ray
 * Catholic Church by country
 * Central Time Zone
 * Civil union
 * Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
 * List of parties to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
 * Crystallographic database
 * De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
 * Detroit
 * Dutch language
 * Dutch Language Union
 * 2011 Germany E. coli O104:H4 outbreak
 * Embassy of the United States, Baghdad
 * Gameplay of Pokémon
 * Pokémon competitive play
 * Human brain
 * Human overpopulation
 * IAU definition of planet
 * Interior (topology)
 * Internet Explorer
 * Interstate Highway System
 * Interval arithmetic
 * Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego
 * Latin Empire
 * List of countries by system of government
 * List of transcontinental countries
 * List of New Testament papyri
 * Long and short scales
 * Minkowski addition
 * Talk:Motion picture content rating system/Archive 2
 * Necklace (combinatorics)
 * New Imperialism
 * Old English
 * Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
 * Otago
 * Protestantism by country
 * Religions by country
 * Religious information by country
 * Cecil Rhodes
 * Schmallenberg virus
 * Scramble for Africa
 * Legal status of same-sex marriage
 * T42 (classification)
 * T43 (classification)
 * T44 (classification)
 * Television in the United Kingdom
 * Wason selection task
 * Wellington, Shropshire

I have made the above list as the category is about to be deleted, see Categories_for_discussion/Log/2019_May_8. It may be useful to add one or more new templates and categories to tag specific images and tables that need improvement. someone may want to check and tick off the above list. – Fayenatic  L ondon 17:41, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Default Wikipedia template and table colors
Just for an example, I'm adding a Template:Digital clock and date to my User page (still in sandbox at this phase). I'm changing it from a plastic white appearance to one that matches the default color scheme of other elements on my page, e.g. TOC, Archives box, and Wikitable. It would be handy if this default color scheme was defined on this page, but Wikipedia is under § Wikimedia, and the color scheme shown does not match the templates and tables I've just described. — Christopher, Sheridan, OR (talk) 21:52, 22 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Semi-protection-unlocked.svg Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. Also, what? This page isn't semi-protected, and I have no idea what you're talking about (so if the page was semi-protected I would decline as XY most likely.) casualdejekyll  23:44, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

British English
Wikipedia's servers are based in Florida, so why is this in British English? Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 12:09, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Helpful tool/guide
I was scouring the internet for a helpful guide to inclusive color palettes and ran across this blog. It appears to do a deep-dive into color-blindness and the palettes the author creates are also shown in the way that people with specific types of color-blindness would see them. Lindsey40186 (talk) 13:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

No American English
Most live in America, and the American English page redirects here. My last resort was to use a profanity filter for translation. Orrinpants (talk) 15:04, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Switch Color Generation Guide to OKLCh
Help:Using colours "The 3 colours are generated using the HSV colour space, then translated into RGB." HSV is one of several representations of the sRGB color space. All RGB spaces are based upon the technology, not human perception, therefore linear gradients therein do not appear uniform, for instance. Other color spaces have been devised that focus on how human eyes and brain see colors. A popular one is CIELAB (with various variants and representations) and a rather recent improvement on that is OKLab, which can be represented by lightness, chroma and hue as well.

I propose to change the Colour Generation Guide to use OK… with the same hues in 10° (or 15° or 30°) steps as for HSV, but I’m not sure yet which systematic L and C values should be chosen to get similar colors to the ones currently suggested. (The values in the table below are very preliminary.)

The end result could be converted back to sRGB hex values, because most authors (who’ll copy entries from this table) are more familiar with them, although some preferable colors might be outside the sRGB gamut. — Christoph Päper 15:01, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Colourblind
I checked my new colours with colourblind filters and it improved support for blue-yellow and total colourblindness. — VitAlv13 (talk) 2:26 PM, May 31, 2023 (EST)


 * Comment Whilst colour-blind filters are a useful tool, quirks and differences exist between them because accommodating color blindness is not an exact science. Is there any scientific/medical evidence to back up your proposed color scheme? I note proposed scheme reduces the palette of options, which could have a limiting effect on articles. The second point is that changing the proposed colour scheme has repercussions for potentially thousands of articles, so is it really necessary? I would be reluctant to change the colour scheme solely on the basis of a single editor experimenting with filters. The current scheme was instituted by so I will tag him into the discussion. Betty Logan (talk) 22:05, 1 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Root comment is just over a year old. It was proposed before I made the edit.
 * My proposal focuses on the red-green confusion lines, which make up the vast majority of colorblind cases. Generally, blue-yellow accessibility is ignored as it is mostly antithetical to red-green accessibility. Trying to make something accessible to both is the same as trying to make it achromat accessible. Root proposal is not terrible though. Tritans will likely confuse blue and green, but going with black-dark-gray-light-white where dark and light represent shades of a single hue far from the neutral axes of any CVD type is a sensible approach, on reflection. Curran919 (talk) 22:44, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Just for clarification, the root comment is not a year old; it was posted a couple of days ago and backdated: . Not that it matters, really. Do you think it would be better to retain the existing version, or is there some scope for optimisation? It should be noted the proposed version takes us down to five combinations (as opposed to six) so the reduced palette might not translate to a straight swap in articles if this were to be implemented. Betty Logan (talk) 04:16, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Instead use non-colour techniques such as labelling, font styles (bold or italic), line styles (dots and dashes) or cross-hatching (stripes, checkers or polka-dots). VitAlv13 (talk) 17:07, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That already exists as an alternative but does not suit all purposes. Betty Logan (talk) 17:37, 6 June 2024 (UTC)