Template talk:Establishments in decade

Spacing
re your edit, I have tried to be consistent in leaving a white space between the nav box and "see also" links on this and many similar templates. IMHO it's an improvement. I specifically find it helpful to separate the link to the counterpart, e.g. disestablishment, from the navigation to other establishment dates. – Fayenatic  L ondon 19:23, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * white space is a good idea.  But using - pushes it below the commons cat link, which doesn't help.  Why not just a blank line? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * OK. There were some templates where blank lines did not work to push the "see also" link down; I didn't figure out why, but just forced it down with the "-".
 * Here's a test which works using a blank line. That one has a Commons link below the main template, which is my preferred location for it, even though that too gets moved further down by the blank line. Are you looking at a different example where Commons is above? and do you prefer it there? – Fayenatic  L ondon 20:03, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I prefer Commons link above, because other stuff floats to the left of it. That means it all takes less of the v precious vertical space. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:18, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I used to think that way. Indeed, I still usually put portals at the top for that reason. However, only some pages have Commons links. When I am clicking forward or back through the centuries, I want the navigation box to be at a consistent height on the page. If some pages have a Commons link above the nav box, then the position of the nav box jumps up and down from one page to the next. – Fayenatic  L ondon 21:31, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that jumping is not good. But why would it happen? If there is a Commons link, it floats at top right. The navbox floats left, and stays at the top. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:19, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
 * In such a case, the browser window is not sufficiently wide for both, then if the Commons link is coded above the nav template, the nav box will be pushed down.
 * In other cases, the nav template floats on the right. Here's an example: from Category:2000s in Moldova you can click to 2010s & back at the same level, but if you go to 1990s, there is a Commons template at the top which pushes the navbox down.
 * My preference chimes with MOS:LAYOUT for article pages, on which Commons is considered an "external link" so goes at the bottom. (There is no MOS for category pages; Alan Liefting and Jc37 proposed MOS:CAT years ago, which would have placed Commons at the top after portals, but it was abandoned due to lack of response.) – Fayenatic  L ondon 12:59, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

you make several good points there. Here's my thinking on it:
 * 1) MOS:LAYOUT does indeed say external links at the bottom.  I really wish we could do that. However that is not possible on category pages, because the shamefully crude category software does not allow anything to be placed below the body of the page, which in this case is the listing of the category's contents. So in MOS:LAYOUT terms, category pages are compulsorily broken: the footers have to be combined with the lede, and the body below both.  Mad, but there it is.
 * 2) Given those software limitations, where do we place the 2 common category footers — portal boxes and commons links — so that they do the last damage to the layout of a part of the page where they are present only because of a software bug? Any solution is going to be some sort of least-worst kludge
 * 3) I suggest that the priority in chosing a location should be to minimise their vertical height, to keep the body text as high up as possible, to miminise the chances that readers do not have to scroll down to find what they came here for, viz the listing of the category's contents. (That minimise-scrolling-to-get-to-the-key-stuff idea has always been one of the key principles drawn by Jakob Nielsen from all his extensive usability research: see https://www.nngroup.com/articles/scrolling-and-attention/)
 * 4) You also set a priority of keeping the navbox in a consistent position, which is a good goal. I suggest it should be a lower priority than vertical height, whereas I think you give it a higher priority.  Philosophically I think that you are mistaken 'cos it seems to me that access to the category's contents is the core purpose of the page, and navigation to sibling cats is secondary ... but I'm sure you have a good reason for your view.
 * 5) However I also think that there need be no conflict between our 2 objectives
 * 6) If the navbox is on the right, its vertical position will vary depending on the presence or absence of portal boxes and commoins links. Not all cats in any series have commons links, and they will also have a variable number of portals.  So it seems to me that placing the navbox on the right defeats your goal.
 * 7) AFAICS, by placing the navbox on the left, we
 * 8) * minimise vertical height, by ensuring that the navbox does not get pushed down by commons links and portals
 * 9) * ensure consistency of position, by keeping clear of the commons links and portals

So I tweaked Template:DecadeCategoryNav. This edit changes   to , which inter alia moves the navbox to the left. As you can see on your examples of Category:2010s in Moldova and Category:1990s in Moldova, the navbox is now in the same place each time, and vertical height is minimised.

Looks to me like a win-win, but what do you think? Have I missed anything?

(Sorry if my tone is a bit off. I had an ugly evening, and hope none of my bad mood has been directed at you, but I'm not sure. You are a valued colleague, and any spikiness by me is in no way intended.)

Best wishes, -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:40, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * your tone is fine, your arguments are strong, and your solution is indeed a good one!
 * I tinkered further with the appearance of Template:DecadeCategoryNav, taking out the fixed width which was making longer country/topic names wrap unnecessarily.
 * Looking for other cases, I found that Ireland decades have their own IrelandDecade which had BDDecadesInCentury on the right. Eventually I realised that this edit allows a parameter left=yes, so I activated this in IrelandDecade.
 * Why does BDDecadesInCentury include "clear"? This forces the navbox to go down below the Commons link at e.g. Category:1950s in Ireland. – Fayenatic  L ondon 12:33, 19 April 2018 (UTC)