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It appears there is a minor edit war going on concerning to coloring. The major argument against adding coloring is from WP:Deviations. The argument for, is that it is the official colors used by the school. Unfortunately, often these colors have poor contrast, and are hence hard to read. Perhaps there is a compromise? Please discuss here. Thanks! Plastikspork―Œ(talk)02:20, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I assumed they were the school colours; so what? That's a feeble rationale for snotting-up the template code with presentational markup and to inflict overwrought colours on all the pages that must invoke these templates (see: {{University of Central Florida Presidents}} and {{University of Central Florida Athletics}}, and, of course, hundreds of others). Navboxes at the bottom of pages have to co-exist with others, so the best approach is for them all to be the same in order to avoid colour-clashes. And there's the whole wp:accessibility-issue; most ILIKEIT colours will not pass WCAG guidance for contrast. This is just another instance of the well-known skittlepedia effect; bringing the project into disrepute be making it look like a child's colouring book.125.162.150.88 (talk) 02:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. The reason that the template employs the given colors is that those are the official school colors per the university. Associating respective colors with what they represent, such as yellow with The Simpsons or crimson with Harvard, is standard procedure on the site. Not to mention, and I am not focusing my argument on it but merely mentioning it as a point of interest, that this is the standard procedure for university and university-related navigational templates. I reverted what I believed to be good-faith edits explaining my rationale in the edit summaries, including that "Deviations from standard conventions are acceptable where they create a semantic distinction" and that "In no way does adding colors violate either WP:Template or WP:Manual of Style." Again I would like to mention, only as a passing point of interest, that the editor, 125.162.150.88, is focusing specifically on these given templates, when there are dozens of other university templates that would also fall within this category. Given the notion proposed by 125.162.150.88, I simplified the colors and design used within the templates, as can be seen by comparing previous revisions, and kept his edit improvements in recent revisions. I believe that this no longer falls within "gratuitous colour" as they are the official colors of the university and thus should be associated with its respective navigational template. I would propose as a compromise, to keep using the university colors, but to utilize black text on a gold background, instead of vice versa which appears easier to read (See). --Nemesis63 (talk) 03:09, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Proposed revisions can be seen here. It is my opinion that the one template located on the bottom, which was the template previous to the edits by 125.162.150.88 is the clearest to read while retaining use of the university colors. --Nemesis63 (talk) 03:26, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
All this colouring is meretricious. These issues have been discussed time and again, and colour is mostly being removed; see here, for example. Yes, OTHERCRAPEXISTS; that's because we let anyone edit, here. I happened to notice these templates while randomly reviewing articles, specifically Charles N. Millican. 125.162.150.88 (talk) 03:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Except, the Manual of Style specifically states: "Deviations from standard conventions are acceptable where they create a semantic distinction (for instance, the infoboxes and navigational templates relating to The Simpsons use a yellow colour-scheme instead of the customary mauve, to tie in with the dominant colour in the series) but should not be used gratuitously." I acknowledge that the debate over the use of colors is ongoing, as it should be, but showing other edits does not prove a particular point. If a link could be provided to the discussion in question, or a particular policy showing that colors can no longer be used, I would be glad to read it. --Nemesis63 (talk) 03:56, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You don't win by default on this; I'm quoting the MOS and you're offering an opinion that is at odds with it and many other discussions. Easy-peasy.
This is one of the more bizarre discussions I've ever encountered on Wikipedia. I am unsure how this whole discussion was missed by the members of WikiProject Universities, WikiProject College Football, WikiProject College Basketball, WikiProject Baseball, and many others. You have completely misread WP:Deviations; as applied to navboxes, this policy is intended to discourage whimsically invented color schemes that serve no purpose other than a given editors personal preferences for colors. In the case of American universities and their sports teams, the school colors have not been "invented" by WP editors; they are officially sanctioned by the universities, and the colors are uniformly used on every navbox associated with a particular university. Of course it is permissible to use the school colors on the navboxes of a given university's sports teams, sports team coaching successions, presidential successions. Dozens of administrators and established editors have worked for hundreds of hours to coordinate these color schemes and enforce their uniformity for hundreds of different American universities. There is ample, well-established precedent for this; please have a look-see at the following example categories, which literally include hundreds of navboxes with the school colors:
These are only a handful of the many, many, many examples of using the official school colors for navboxes. If you attempt to bully the editors and administrators who regularly work on these related WikiProjects, based on your clear and obvious misunderstanding of WP:Deviations, as you did Nemesis63, you will find yourself unanimously opposed by dozens, if not hundreds of established editors. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:28, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
