Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Article message boxes

There is a standard and consistent design for article message boxes — templates which are inserted into articles/sections, and identify problems or issues with the article. The design was standardized and implemented in September 2007.

Scope
The scope of this effort is the design of article message boxes ("amboxes"). Article message boxes are template messages, in a rectangular frame (box), which are placed in articles, and are also about articles. They identify issues or important information about the article, but are not part of the article content itself.

The following are presently outside the scope of this effort:


 * The wording (text) inside article message boxes (present focus is on appearance/formatting)
 * Other kinds of article templates, such as navigation boxes and infoboxes
 * Talk page templates, which were standardised in 2005 by Talk page templates
 * Project namespace templates, used in the Wikipedia: namespace

Terminology

 * Template: A page which is transcluded into other pages, typically to re-use the same content in multiple pages. See Help:Template.
 * Message box: Any template that looks like a box and contains a specific message about a specific issue with a page, section, or other thing on Wikipedia.
 * This is in contrast to templates which are used for info boxes, to automate processes, or any of the other myriad things templates are used for.
 * Article message box: Message boxes about articles
 * Info boxes, nav boxes, and such are part of an article, not about the article
 * ambox: Short for "article message box"

Design


The ambox tags that we use to notify people of problems within an article are on thousands of our pages. Our readers see them and judgements are made not only about the article at hand, but about the project itself. In the past, we had a myriad of templates that often shared some level of consistency, but still looked very mismatched.

This effort aims to address these issues. Design principles include:


 * Colour-coding is good, but avoid excess
 * Coloured/shaded backgrounds can make text hard to read for some people, especially those with color-vision deficiencies
 * Consistent widths make multiple adjacent amboxes easier to read
 * This is a deliberate design effort, while the old templates evolved organically over time
 * Easily implemented
 * The use of CSS allows appearance customization/override on a per-user or per-skin basis

Categories and colours
Amboxes are divided into various categories. Each category has a corresponding colour code. The colour-coding helps to inform of the severity of the issues at a glance.

The choice of colour is partly inspired by the ANSI standard safety "Signal Words" and their corresponding colors: Danger (Red), Warning (Orange), Caution (Yellow), and Notice (Blue).

Most amboxes have a background colour of #fbfbfb (slightly off white), which is intended to contrast slightly with the full white (#ffffff) used for articles, while still being easy to read. The exception is the Speedy category, which uses a pink background (#fee) to highlight the immediate nature of the problem.

Implementation
Most article message boxes use this design.

The design of these article message boxes is controlled by the Ambox classes, which are styled by MediaWiki:Common.css.

The meta template ambox makes it easy to create article message boxes in the new design. It has usage documentation and examples. Note that is just a thin wrapper for the classes.

The classes can also be used directly within a wikitable or HTML table, especially when special functionality is needed. Ambox CSS classes describes how.

Alternate skins
It is possible to customize the appearance of ambox templates on a per-user basis. To do this, you need a named account. Then add to or alter the code in your common.css page (or vector.css, monobook.css, etc. as appropriate). There are several pre-made "skins" available for this at Ambox CSS classes/Skins.

Examples
Please note:
 * The wording (text) of these message boxes is outside the scope of this effort. The wording in the examples below is for illustration purposes only.
 * The following box has a white background to mimic article pages.

