Template talk:Shades of color

Heading size
I reverted the heading size back to the default, the larger size made the navbox look out of place when nested among other navboxes on a page. PaleAqua (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

More colors
Template needs expanded to allow more than fifty colors. See Template:Shades of blue which has 51 colors. The edit would be to add a sixth section for another ten colors.

VMS Mosaic (talk) 07:56, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi. The first step would be to code it on Template:Shades of color/sandbox. Then test it thoroughly and consult other editors. Then request the edit. Regards &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:26, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I've updated to a version of this template supporting 60 colors. I've also created a test cases page to make it easier to test changes for this template.

PaleAqua (talk) 14:33, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good. VMS Mosaic (talk) 20:45, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:17, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Reducing the number of article## parameters
Since I was looking at this template anyways because of the colors reaching the 50 limit, I've updated the sandbox with a that automatically detects (color) and (colour) designations on the pages so that the article## parameter does not need to be used in most cases. Any opinions on going with this approach. It does make the template more complicated. I also did the same thing with a helper template at  (edit: fixed to point to the right version) which hides some of the complexity at the cost of adding another template into the mix. PaleAqua (talk) 19:42, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Both links point to the current sandbox version. I'm far from an expert on templates, but that version does appear fairly complex. VMS Mosaic (talk) 21:21, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input. Grabbed from the wrong part of the URL for the second link, should be fixed. Yeah it's a bit more complex which is what I'm worried about and why I reverted the first time I tried it on the live template. The other approach I thought about is finding a way to strip " (color)" and " (colour)" from name parameters. I really would like to see if I can get rid of needing the article parameter since most of the time when editors update the various navigation templates they miss that one. PaleAqua (talk) 21:35, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The helper template makes the main template look a lot cleaner and easier to modify. Are there performance issues?  I assume the helper template will also have full protection? VMS Mosaic (talk) 22:31, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming that it probably should be protected as well, though I kinda wish the color templates didn't need protection. Performance issues is one of the reasons I'm asking for input, not sure if there are but this does add a lot more work to the template. Especially for pages that have multiple color templates such as the list of colors article. PaleAqua (talk) 00:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've just spent some time working on this template. How does the sandbox look? Using subtemplates here is definitely the way to go, and you really should not worry about performance issues if it improves the utility of the template. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:11, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sandbox and testcases look good. I had a version of the test cases that had a ton of tests for the automatic (color) / ( colour) detection, guess I'd forgotten to actually save that page, I see you tried it with Azure. Nice to know that we can mostly ignore the performance issues. PaleAqua (talk) 12:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to update to with Martin's changes and then tweak all the navigation templates to remove unneeded articleNN parameters. PaleAqua (talk) 14:30, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm about halfway done and going to take a little break.
 * ✅: Shades of blue, Shades of red, Shades of green, Shades of cyan, Shades of brown, Shades of orange, Shades of yellow, Shades of white, Shades of pink, Shades of violet, Shades of grey
 * Shades of cerulean, Shades of spring green, Shades of chartreuse
 * Note that I question the existance of the cyan, spring green, cerulean and chartreuse templates. I think only major color names should be used. PaleAqua (talk) 16:13, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I've finished converting the templates, except for the last three ( cerulean, spring green, and chartreuse ) that are nominated for deletion. PaleAqua (talk) 05:15, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Protection
This template has little history of vandalism and has fewer than 500 translusions. I propose that semi-protection would be adequate. What do others think? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Semi-protection seems reasonable to me. PaleAqua (talk) 12:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, protection lowered. So I'll leave the updating to you now :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:30, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Awesome and thanks for all the help. PaleAqua (talk) 12:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Should the sub templates also be semi-protected? They have no protection now. VMS Mosaic (talk) 23:33, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

"The samples shown above are only indicative"
This strikes me as rather silly. The samples are "indicative" as opposed to what? What is a non-indicative sample? See also No disclaimers in articles. --dab (𒁳) 09:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I had a similar thought. I found it a little weird seeing the disclaimer on Template:Shades of red and found it was transcluded from this template. What, exactly, is the logic of having this disclaimer? Are we worried someone's going to try and extract the definition of a color from this infobox, instead of something more sensible like following the link to the article? And even if they did, doesn't WP:DISCLAIM cover this? --Xanzzibar (talk) 04:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll have to see if I can find the discussion that lead to that addition again. The big issue we have is that there is an erroneous assumption that a color term corresponds to exactly one RGB color coordinate. If I recall the disclaimer came from this issue, though it really isn't the best approach. It can be seen in the proliferation of color infobox boxes especially those on the shades of .... articles. There is also the whole display calibration issue. Note that WP:DISCLAIM has has the technical exception which I believe applies in this case. I do believe that a better approach should be found. ( I would love to see redesigned color navigation boxes and infoboxes that would better deal with presenting the information. One of the problems in my opinion is that the shades of color templates are user both as navigational templates and as color samples. This means that they tend to end up with duplicate links to the same color articles for slightly different shades ( hues, tints, etc. ) of the same color and that they are full of original research. There are a large number of colors on the various pages which use color samples grabbed off random pictures as the definitive coordinates. Especially when you consider how few of these pictures have proper color management information. PaleAqua (talk) 05:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Template categories
I really don't like it that whenever I use these templates, it automatically adds a category listing to the page that I can't remove. Right now, I have all of the templates on my Whiteboard/Sandbox just so I can experiment with different colors and I can see what they are called but now my Whiteboard page has all of these nonremovable categories on it and if you go to Category:Shades of brown and other colors, you'll see my Whiteboard page listed there along with actually relevant pages.

I don't feel it's my place to remove this feature from all of the shade templates but, seriously, what were you thinking to automatically assign categories which can not be removed or deleted? It's ridiculous to see my sandbox page listed under all of these color categories along with pages about colors. Liz Read! Talk! 20:25, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Confusing spacing
Can the spacing be fixed on the grid that this template produces? It gives alternating rows of text and colour boxes, but the spacing between each row is the same above and below. If you look at the middle of the grid, it's very easy (and possibly more natural?) to read any given caption as referring to the colour box above it, rather than below. Can we reduce the bottom margin on all the text? I had a go at changing the padding in Template:Shades of color/10, but it didn't work. --Lord Belbury (talk) 18:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Additional color shades
I think it would make sense if the sample had lilac and turquoise instead of cyan and magenta due to lilac and turquoise being "new" basic color terms, while cyan and magenta aren't basic color terms as cyan may fall under blue, azure, and turquoise, while magenta falls under red and purple, maybe even pink. Speaking of the color azure, I guess azure and beige should be here as well since both are also basic colors in Italian, Russian, and Hebrew and French, respectively. Just my opinion. IndieTheFurry (talk) 04:45, 16 March 2021 (UTC)