Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of highest-grossing films/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by The Rambling Man 15:41, 28 February 2012.

List of highest-grossing films

 * Nominator(s): Betty Logan (talk) 04:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list status because I believe it gives a comprehensive overview of the topic. It is as complete as it I can make it without more information being made available. Betty Logan (talk) 04:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Just curious. What's up with no 1917? No source for it? Jhenderson 7 7 7  14:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * None of the sources have 1917 down. The Numbers and Variety really start at 1920, and the AMC Filmsite starts at 1915 but misses out 1917 and 1924. Wikipedia's film year article reckons it was Cleopatra and they have been right in most cases, but they don't have a source for it or any figures. Betty Logan (talk) 17:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * As I reckoned was the reason. That's a bummer too. I am not really a reviewer so I will give you the summary of what I feel on the article. I feel the list article is well organized and taking care of (by you I might add). The article is very reliable at telling the source's side of the story and the notes are really appropriate when there's two or more different sides to the story as well. I don't feel I should vote yay or nay on supporting it as a featured list article because I have edited it but I do feel that you (as a editor) deserve a thumbs up for all the work you put over it. Congratulations on that. Jhenderson  7 7 7  20:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Support. I'm happy that the data meets FL standards, and that the lead covers the right points. For the director's benefit, I should point out that I haven't covered criteria 1. —WFC— 16:56, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Comments from RexxS: I hope you don't mind, but I've updated the † symbol to the dagger template, because † is often unreadable by the screen readers used by the visually impaired, while the template is intended to be universally readable.
 * In general, this is a most impressive collection of related lists and the nominator should be congratulated for the work put into it. I have a few comments to make about accessibility:
 * The images all have sensible alt text which greatly benefits accessibility.
 * Three of the All four of the tables have captions, which is a real bonus for anyone using JAWS or similar screen readers.
 * I have problems with distinguishing blue/green hues, so I find the colour "lightblue" (#ADD8E6) a poor choice as background against a wikilink (#0645AD). It's not too bad for most folks, but it would be nice if a different colour were picked that gave better contrast with the blue wikilinks.
 * The accessibility of tables generally benefits from marking the column and row headers with scope="col" and scope="row" respectively. The section at WP:DTAB gives examples, or you could look at List of ministers of law and human rights of Indonesia as an example of where the row header is the second column (in this case the Title would probably be a better row header than Year or Rank).
 * The table "Highest-grossing franchises and film series" is interesting as it contains collapsible tables within the main table, and some of the collapsible tables contain multiple sub-tables. The mechanism works well for sighted visitors, but is clearly not designed with screen readers in mind. All of the content is available in the html delivered to the browser, so a screen reader could work through all of the information one item at a time. In that sense, it is not inaccessible, but since the headings at the top (Rank, Series, Total worldwide box office, No. of films, Average of films, Highest-grossing film) are actually in a different table from other pieces of information, the visual appearance of a single table is an illusion (This can be seen at 800x600 where the columns no longer line up - I know we don't support 800x600 but this is only to illustrate what is happening). The result of this is that none of the headings can be connected with the data to which it should be related (other than visually) - and this means that a screen reader will be unable to navigate around the information in the way it could if this were a single table.
 * I'd recommend scoping row and column headers for the first three tables, as this is easy to do and produces quick benefits. The fourth table is a problem, as I can understand the visual appeal of its structure, but I believe it falls short of our best practice for accessibility of data tables. Perhaps someone like Graham87 could be persuaded to look at the table and comment on how it sounds to him through JAWS. If he found it acceptable, I'd be willing to set aside my reservations in this case. --RexxS (talk) 16:44, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of the dagger issue so thanks for sorting it out. I've added a title to the chart that was missing one and I'll get onto the row and column scoping tomorrow. Have you got any suggestions for the color highlighting? I'm not that precious about it so I'm happy to go with more or less any color scheme. As for the franchise table, I appreciate it is unorthodox, but there were some very good reasons at the time for its construction, namely all these reboots and spin-offs blur the lines between what is in a series and what isn't, so the soft groupings we have more or less solved that problem—interestingly we haven't had a single edit war since we created it over the summer.  Rather than getting side-tracked by accessibility issues, it may be simpler to make the whole chart "go away" and port it into Film series since technically "highest-grossing films" is a topic distinct from "highest-grossing film franchises".   Each of the other charts explicitly deal with the subject of the highest-grossing film, so the franchise chart is a bit out of sync and it may be more appropriate for it be in an article that actually covers film franchises. I think we'd still have comprehensive article without it, just a bit more focused and tighter in its scope. Betty Logan (talk) 20:54, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for adding that caption; every little bit helps. If you need any help with the scoping, just ping me. Generally, yellows give the best contrast with the blue wikilinks and something like #| #FFFF66   meets WCAG AAA standards. However, you're using yellows for the sub-tables in the last section, so it might be confusing.
 * I still like the "Highest-grossing franchises and film series" and it would be a shame to get rid of it. If you were willing to remove the collapsible stuff, it could be written as a normal wikitable and improve its accessibility. Let's not worry at the moment and see what other reviewers say. If you want, I could make a version of the table in a subpage so you can see if you like how it would look? Let me know. --RexxS (talk) 21:25, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem with removing the collapsible elements is that we either have to ditch all the stuff in the sub-tables i.e. giving the table a permanent collapsed form (thereby sacrificing about 90% of the information in the table) or we construct it to have a permanently expanded form retaining all the information that we have in the sub-tables, but by doing that we lose the distinction between the primary and secondary content which will make it look like one huge muddled mess (just expand all the tables and sub-tables and see what a monstrosity it would be). The first option gives us a table that is drastically reduced in its information value, the second a table that will be so unwieldy it will be virtually unreadable. Both options dramatically reduce its effectiveness for the vast majority of readers. If there was a good alternative solution we probably would have thought of it, but the choices seem to be between incoherence and reducing the information we can provide. The current table allows a reader to make comparisons at franchise level, at series level, and in some cases such as the Bond films at actor level, and I don't see how else we can do that, and if we don't do that we fall short in what we currently offer to most readers—it seems perverse to offer less to everyone because not everyone can have more. Could we do something along the lines of an appendix for the screen readers if they can't read the table? I appreciate all the article content must be available to everyone, but I honestly think that the collapsible table delivers the content in a way that is of maximum effectiveness to the majority of the readers; I think if we can include the content in two forms then no-one is penalised at the expense of someone else. Betty Logan (talk) 22:30, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a shame that nobody else has pitched in on the issue of the "Highest-grossing franchises and film series" table. I do understand your desire to present the table in the most usable form for sighted readers as they will be in the majority. I wanted to make sure that you understood the trade-off that it entails for the visually impaired, who are actually presented with the expanded "monstrosity" as a sequence of tables, and can't navigate sensibly within any table. Anyway, you've done your best to make the rest of the article as accessible as possible, so I expect that reviewers will recognise that in this case, we can't achieve perfection. --RexxS (talk) 18:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, honestly speaking, I can't 100% appreciate the trade-off because I don't exactly know what a screen-reader does with the table. However, I still think an appendix that renders the table into list format is a viable way around the problem for readers not in a position to comprehend the table, since if the information is available elsewhere in the article, then I think the accessibility of the table isn't such a big deal. Betty Logan (talk) 22:48, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Support: Although the last table is not as accessible as the others, any visitor using a screen reader would still receive all of the information, and would really just be lacking the convenience of navigation that sighted users have. It's a problem that we ought to be looking at, but by no means a reason to oppose this list being considered among the best that Wikipedia has. In all other respects, it's an excellent list, with masses of "lookup" information for film aficionados as well as an interesting commentary in each section. It's a piece of work to be proud of, Betty. --RexxS (talk) 15:33, 28 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Support I regularly visit the page to see the ranking... and seeing the other day that it had evolved into this detailed analysis impressed me. igordebraga ≠ 03:52, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment Refs 22,64,65 don't point to any citation.-- ♫GoP♫ T C N 15:09, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've sorted it. Thanks for pointing it out. Betty Logan (talk) 20:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments First of all, good on you for taking on this list. It covers quite a significant topic and receives thousands of views each day. The comprehensiveness and detail of information is amazing. Just a few picks: —  Andrew s talk  22:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * "The superhero genre has also seen a revival" - revival from when? Source?
 * In the 'High-grossing films by year', what do the figures in brackets mean?
 * I suggest anchoring the asterisks like you have the other notes.
 * The Bond 'Eon productions' sub-set and its sub-sub-sets are a bit confusingly laid out. Not sure if much can be done about it, though.
 * Thanks for your comments. I've initiated the changes you have recommended:


 * 1) I've altered the wording as per this edit. It's hard to track down references that analyse the emergence of the superhero film in recent years, it just kind of happened. I've worded it so it comes across less as a claim/analysis and more like an observation of the data with a link to a list of superhero films (as you can see from the wikipedia list of superhero films, there were only two feature length movies prior to 1978, and since Superman 4 there have only been two calendar years where a superhero film hasn't been released).
 * 2) The grosses from the original theatrical runs are included in brackets. This is done because many of the Disney re-releases have seen the Disney films take over the record. On one hand it speaks of the enduring popularity of these films, on the other it isn't a straight fight when other films from the year where more popular in the original market, therefore I feel it is best to present both perspectives. The bracket notation is explained in the introduction to that section in the first paragraph, but I guess many readers (myself included) sometimes look at charts without reading the accompanying text, so I've added an explanation to the key for the chart.
 * 3) I've anchored the asterisks.
 * 4) We're kind of limited with what we can do with tables. I think being able to expand and collapse tables aids the reader in indentifying what belongs to what because the reader can just study one entry, and the expansion helps to make it clear what films belong to which series. The Bond franchise entry is the most complicated table, because you have three separate series, and within the Eon series we've divided by actor too. We could get rid of the actor divisions and maybe simplify it slightly, but I think we would be losing information if we did this. Each Bond actor's set of films tend to be regarded as a cohesive serial, and covered in those terms by published literature.
 * 5) On another note, I'm in two minds over the inflation map caption. The map looks like it is updated periodically, so I'm not convinced we should label it as a "2009" map, since it will possibly be updated to a 2010 or 2011 map at some point and the article caption will become incorrect. The aim of the map is not to really show inflation rates of a particular year, it's just illustrating the concept that they are different across the world. Anyway, it's not a big deal, and I can live with it either way, but if anyone else has a view on that I'd like to hear it. Betty Logan (talk) 09:41, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Re the inflation map: yes, fair enough, it makes sense to remove the year. Also note per WP:CAPTION that there should be no full stop/period at the end of the caption. —  Andrew s talk  03:38, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Support Very comprehensive and well-written. Well done. —  Andrew s talk  03:38, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I still have some reservations over the unnecessary bolding and embedded collapsed tables, but won't oppose at this stage. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.