Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Color/Archive 10

New (currently stub) article at color science
Per discussion at Talk:Color, I created a stub at color science, since this topic is not inherently co-extensive with existing articles colorimetry, color, etc. I put a list of some books there, but didn’t yet bother filling the rest of the article. Others should feel free to WP:BOLDly add to / change that article, or discuss potential organization and scope at talk:color science.

If anyone wants to create and start writing an article at color reproduction, also feel free. (I also red-linked the names of a bunch of prominent color science book authors in the references section there. All of these people are notable enough for Wikipedia articles IMO.) –jacobolus (t) 21:26, 15 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks . I think I will have some time to add some content to this later. I'll put it in my list. given that this article is literally the topic of your phD according to your user page, you may be interested in this. Curran919 (talk) 17:45, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I put together a stub for color reproduction. Curran919 (talk) 21:18, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

merge color volume to color solid
I've proposed merging young stub color volume to color solid. I would do it boldly, but not 100% on definitions. If you have thoughts, join the discussion. Curran919 (talk) 14:16, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Tricolour (flag) listed at Requested moves
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Requested move at Talk:Tricolour (flag)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Tricolour (flag) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 19:04, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Web color section headers in "Shades of..." articles
Recently I stumbled across the Shades of pink article. I then realized that almost every "shade of" article has a section horrendously named "Computer web color pinks/greens/...". That sounds very informal. Is there a specific reason that these sections are named like that? If not, can I change them to "Web color shades" or "Web colors" or should I change them to something else? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:51, 7 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I think just taking 'computer' out of each header already vastly improves it. Also note the huge discussion that happened this summer concerning a revamp of the 'shades of' articles. Curran919 (talk) 09:40, 10 November 2022 (UTC)


 * A "huge discussion" that hasn't resulted in any action as far as I can see. Shall we start a request for comment on whether to adopt the ISCC–NBS system in order to reach a definite decision? SpinningSpark 16:53, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we already reached somewhat of a consensus on that point. I just argued that the article-level organization should reflect basic color terms, which is just the top-level ISCC-NBS colors minus 'olive' and 'yellow-green', which are not terms in natural language. They only exist in ISCC-NBS to (ostensibly) increase perceptually uniformity between the colors, which is irrelevant for wikipedia's purposes compared to reflecting natural language. All other subdivisions should stick with the ISCC-NBS secondary colors. Curran919 (talk) 21:36, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
 * But it was Olive that triggered much of the problem by an editor insisting on moving olive shades out of green and into yellow. To me, one of the attractions of ISCC-NBS is that it explicitly puts an olive group at the top level thus resolving that issue. SpinningSpark 15:58, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

merge monochromatic colors into monochrome
If anyone wants to weigh in on discussion here. I proposed merging monochromatic colors into Monochrome. Curran919 (talk) 23:23, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

merge CMY to CMYK
I've proposed merging CMY color model to CMYK color model. It seems pretty obvious. I almost did it boldly but thought to hold off. If you have thoughts, join the discussion. Curran919 (talk) 20:14, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Grey listed at Requested moves
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Splitting discussion for Zinc oxide


An article that been involved with ( Zinc oxide ) has content that is proposed to be removed and moved to another article (Zinc white). If you are interested, please visit the discussion. Thank you. AngusW🐶🐶F ( bark  •  sniff ) 17:36, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Pigment articles in need of development
I am teaching a course in the coming months on the history of color, and I will require each student to improve a Wikipedia article on a single pigment. I welcome suggestions for articles in need of development. Ideally, these articles would be stubs or start-class. Here is my current list of articles for students to choose from. What else should be on the list? Owunsch (talk) 00:01, 1 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Sienna is about the same class as Umber. Since this is a history of color class, considering dye articles would also seem warranted. -- 00:30, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * One of your students may find it interesting to research the economic/social history of the production of carmine from cochineal (a parasitic bug that lives on prickly pear cactuses).
 * During the colonial period, the (extremely exploitative of indigenous people) export economy of big areas of Guatemala/Southern Mexico was substantially organized around cochineal production and trade, which was extraordinarily profitable. –jacobolus (t) 09:10, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Great suggestions @Mark viking and @Jacobolus. I've added them both to the list. Thanks. Owunsch (talk) 15:09, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

First step for color cleanup: classify definitions
There is a frustrating, yet unavoidable trend in this digital world of ours to relate everything colorful back to a core CIEXYZ (RGB, CMYK, etc.) color space. For digital colors, this always makes sense, but which colors were actually originally defined in this digital space? Sites like [colorhexa.com] attempt to standardize all color by linking it to standard color spaces. Many of the wikicolors use this website as a source, but it is hardly authoritative and completely sourceless... probably starting as some grad student's side project. This isn't a post to decry a single source though, but to start a discussion on how we can better organize colors according to how they are defined.

The bottom line is that not all colors can be described with a sRGB hex, no matter how attractive the universality. Imagine trying to describe vantablack as #000000. In fact, describing any physical colors this way can be argued against, but we known this is not practical. What really gets my goat is the attribution of hex codes to pigments. The link between ultramarine as a pigment to ultramarine as #120A8F is subjective at best, and wholly undefinable.

What we need before we can begin to clean up the mess of color definitions that has infiltrated wikipedia is a way to classify the definitions of colors. Here's my first attempt:
 * created freshly within the CIEXYZ basis, such as most brand colors (e.g. Android green)
 * based on a pigment, defined chemically (e.g. vantablack or mummy brown)
 * based inextricably on a fixed natural reference (e.g. uranian blue)
 * based on some vague natural reference (e.g. sapphire), that may be best represented by a range of colors
 * a basic color term, (e.g. dark blue) that is vague by definition and can be related to a range of acceptable colors
 * based on a proprietary reference (anything pantone, crayola, RAL, Munsell, etc.) that can be transformed rather reliably to CIEXYZ; though whatever happened to disallowing proprietary color definitions on wikipedia?

If we can agree on a set of definitions (maybe someone else can find something in literature?), then we can continue the discussion on how to best organize colors, and how to define the color infoboxes in a more meaningful way. Curran919 (talk) 15:42, 16 November 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree with @Curran919 about the need for a more rigorous classification system. I especially agree about the need to distinguish between CIE XYZ color space (based on light) and color terms that have material referents. I would suggest one change to the categories that @Curran919 proposed. In some cases, I think it's important to distinguish between a pigment and a chemically defined color. For instance, it is valuable to have separate articles on Minium (pigment) and lead tetroxide. Minium is composed of lead tetroxide, but the history of minium's use as an artist's material is sufficiently distinct to merit separate treatment from its chemical definition. This approach also allows for the inevitable chemical impurities that arise in artist's pigments, which may share the same name as a single chemical but actually have more complex character in practice. For these reasons, I have proposed separating the discussion of zinc white (pigment) from the chemical zinc oxide. Owunsch (talk) 18:12, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I continued this discussion in the infobox color talkpage. Curran919 (talk) 11:29, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Rewriting color
I've made a new outline for the article color at User:CactiStaccingCrane/sandbox based on my very limited knowledge of color. What do you think of it? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:47, 7 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Can you explain your motivation for rewriting the color article from scratch? There are some interesting additions that could complement the color article nicely, but I disagree with most of the changes. For example, I do not see the point of a history section. Color does not have a history, unless we are talking about Evolution of color vision in primates. A history of our understanding of color belongs in color science and/or color theory, as it currently is. If you want buy-in on some of your changes, then probably it would be better to focus on the changes one by one and make a better case for why the change is better. You can always boldly implement the change and hope that others like it, but for such a "central" article like color that is the product of lots of historical effort (despite its current apparent shortcomings), there will likely be resistance to efforts to "start over". Curran919 (talk) 10:32, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * As you might see from my bio, I want all of vital articles to become GA, and I found that color is a great choice since it is not too abstract, controversial (like abortion) and it is relatively easy to find sources for the topic. My plan is to add or break out sections in the color article one-by-one, since I understood that big changes to such a broad-topic article is counterproductive. That's why I'm asking for feedback for the outline in the first place. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:06, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd be interested in being a part of this effort. Maybe a good first step of a GA goal is listing all the things that you think need to be done to this article specifically to qualify for GA? Curran919 (talk) 19:26, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Curran919 Here's my list of stuff that we need to do, in decreasing importance:
 * Fix the layout
 * Add content + citations
 * Ask the experts and other people for more perspective
 * Add images
 * Add notes
 * Fix the prose
 * Random FAC things (minor manual of style stuff, alt text, etc.)
 * CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Color mapping listed at Requested moves
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Project-independent quality assessments
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a class parameter to WikiProject banner shell, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to WikiProject banner shell, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass WPBannerMeta a new custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:41, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Color appearance model listed at Requested moves
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Faulty handling of colors
I used Gpick, an open source to capture color codes which are presented on screen and found that the colors listed in the hex code field do not match the presented color. It seems toe there must be some color clipping / out of gamut conversions. Another example is that in Twany (color) the color presented in the colour coordinate box and in the swatches section are slightly different. Amirber (talk) 11:30, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Indian red listed at Requested moves
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Proposed: A custom citation template for Maerz and Paul's A Dictionary of Color
Greetings and felicitations. I've noticed that while Maerz and Paul's A Dictionary of Color is very often cited in color-related articles, the formatting of the citations tends not to follow any standard citation style, as in "Lavender". I propose that we create standard citation template, one that follows Citation Style 1, to make it easier to cite Maerz and Paul, both to use to clean up existing citations and to add new ones.

I recently checked, and a copy of the first edition (mislabeled as the second) has been uploaded to the Internet Archive. Some customization would be needed to link to/cite the appropriate pages and plates, but I think it might be doable.

As a start/example:



which yields:



would be more correct than, but I don't know how to link to both the entry and the encyclopedia in.

Fields that would need to be added:


 * page no. with the optional label "(color sample of ___)", including an automatically generated link to the appropriate page in the Internet Archive copy of the book
 * "plate [no. ]" (optional)
 * "color sample [no.]" (optional)

I will need to find help to add the custom fields and field options, as I am not sufficiently skilled in the necessary markup, but that shouldn't be to difficult (I hope). The template's documentation would also need to be written, to detail the usage of the custom fields/field options. —DocWatson42 (talk) 06:38, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, I find these single-source citation templates (for instance or ) to be generally a pain to deal with, and significantly prefer just using  or  as appropriate for an article [the only issue with that of course being bot-like editors who come try to "helpfully" "upgrade" the citations to use the template]. The problem is that the single-source citation templates typically don't quite match any particular page's style (which citation style to use, whether to spell out author first names or just put initials, etc.), are a dumping ground for every piece of possible metadata anyone can ever find, and are never quite flexible enough.
 * It's really not a big deal to just copy/paste the duplicate citation metadata from one article to another, in my opinion. –jacobolus (t) 09:19, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Part of the reason for my proposal is that the current "standard" doesn't follow either CS1 (Citation) or CS2 (Cite book)—it's basically this:
 * "Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Color New York:1930 McGraw-Hill See color Sample of Lavender—Page 109 Plate 43 Color Sample C5"
 * copied and pasted across many articles, with the color, page, plate, and color sample numbers changed to fit. Also, unless an article uses Vancouver style, I've never seen an article be particular about whether to spell out author first names or just put initials. —DocWatson42 (talk) 10:11, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You are welcome to make a template. I just personally have found them to be not that helpful. As one simple example, I think it's a big waste of space to spell out "New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company" when just "McGraw-Hill" is equally unambiguous and helpful to anyone trying to look the book up. I'd use the space on the author names instead, and write something along the lines of:
 * It would be even better if if A Dictionary of Color, Aloys John Maerz, and Morris Rea Paul were all blue links. –jacobolus (t) 10:43, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * We aren't limited (much) in space, and while I agree in principle that live wikilinks for the book and its two authors would be good, I do wonder if any of them are noteable. Also, while I am aware of the authors' full names, I rendered them as they appear in the book. —DocWatson42 (talk) 09:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The book is certainly notable enough for an article, and the authors probably too but it would take some effort to track down sources about their lives.
 * There's no inherently right way to abbreviate authors' names, or publishers, no inherently right choice about which metadata to include, wiki-link, etc. (especially red links), which is my point: conventions on this differ from field to field, journal to journal, and between Wikipedia articles based on the preferences of the authors and local conventions established. That's why I personally dislike these kind of single-source citation templates, because they always adapt poorly to their context.
 * But as I said, go ahead and make one if you find it helpful. For a template you definitely would want to leave out the red links. –jacobolus (t) 13:12, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * For the number of times that it is cited, it would be helpful, and I will leave out the red links. —DocWatson42 (talk) 03:29, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
 * According to Kelly & Judd 1955, Munsell renotations for the first 20 pages of Maerz/Paul were measured in: Nickerson (1947) "Interrelation of color specifications", Paper Trade J. 125, 153. But I can't find that source (I didn't look too hard though). Kelly & Judd apparently compared the rest of Maerz/Paul swatches to the Munsell Book of Color to find appropriate Munsell renotations for them, but they unfortunately only print the ISCC–NBS category in the book, not the raw data. If we could find a complete data source, we could make a much better representation of the colors from the book than the currently available scan (which has mediocre color accuracy). –jacobolus (t) 13:30, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Aha, here's Nickerson: https://archive.org/details/sim_paper-trade-journal_1947-11-06_125_19/page/224/mode/1up –jacobolus (t) 13:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Aha, here's Nickerson: https://archive.org/details/sim_paper-trade-journal_1947-11-06_125_19/page/224/mode/1up –jacobolus (t) 13:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)