Template talk:DescriptionStatus

Color coding

As I experienced, editors/users are confused with status texts, it's a recurrent problem to understand what each status means. I think color coding can be easy to understand, so I introduced it half year ago. There was lots of edits since that, but as Frederik Ramm pointed out today, grouping of states was never discussed. So its time to discuss! Current colors (before Frederik's edit):

• approved
• inuse
• discardable, deprecated, obsolete, inactive, abandoned, rejected
• proposed, voting, draft
• defacto
• unspecified

Are these categories and colors correct? Frederik has changed every reds to gray, which I think was a bad idea. --BáthoryPéter (talk) 21:54, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

> Frederik has changed every reds to gray, which I think was a bad idea. Previous schema was okay, but deprecated - should be red; obsolete, discardable (?), inactive, abandoned - may be dark grey. Xxzme (talk) 22:18, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't see why "defacto" is yellow at all. As far as I understand it's even better than "in use" and pretty much at the same level as "accepted" or better. Since this color coding affect many pages and there is controversy about it, I believe it would be more appropriate to discuss this in the tagging mailing list, where discussions related to the meaning of these terms occurred recently. --Jgpacker (talk) 00:44, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I mainly object to the red which implies that there's something wrong or forbidden about these tags which is simply not true. --Frederik Ramm (talk) 16:05, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

What does mean "untrue"? If feature was deprecated by Proposal process or listed Deprecated features then this tag discouraged and should appear as red for mappers. It almost always means there better way to tag objects. Statuses "obsolete" and "abandoned" doesn't mean there specific voting to deprecate these tags, but there more modern tagging scheme. Xxzme (talk) 16:24, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

No, I think you are misunderstanding the proposal process. There's no way how a group of 15 people voting in a proposal process can decide that a tag should be discouraged when hundreds use it. A "deprecated" tag usually means "there are 15 or 20 people who think another tag might be better". Nothing more. I'm disputing your authority to decide what is "a better way to tag" and what is "a more modern tagging scheme". --Frederik Ramm (talk) 17:28, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Group of 15 can indeed deprecate inefficient tagging scheme by introducing new one. It doesn't matter if hundreds ignore Proposal process about tag deprecation. Who said that my authority? It is up to people who activly participate in Proposal process. It is nobody fault that masses doesn't not follow Proposal process.

Deprecated tag will be deprecated by majority vote or by being listed at Deprecated features (and de-facto replaced by other tag).

Your personal views about how many people should make deprecation succeed doesn't apply. Xxzme (talk) 17:37, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Let 15 people deprecate a tag if they want, but this needs to be shown as what it is - a footnote for the project as a whole, and not half a wiki page displayed in red. For example, the documentation of a tag that is used hundreds of times (but deprecated) is more important than that of a tag that is not deprecated, but rarely used. Nevertheless the current colour coding would make one look somehow more "correct" than the other. -- I do acknowledge that my opinion might be eccentric and have therefore requested participants on the tagging@ list to chime in. --Frederik Ramm (talk) 17:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

> and not half a wiki page displayed in red Ridiculous statement. You either misunderstood what I said or make attempts to influence readers by overstatements.

|status=deprecated only affects Category:Key descriptions with status "deprecated" and Category:Tag descriptions with status "deprecated".

At the moment of writing there 48 pages in total (including language versions). While most popular language (English) describes 826 key pages and 1867 tag pages (2693 pages including redirects)

You either terrible at math or want to force your unpopular opinion about Proposal process without proofs behind your words.

> the documentation of a tag that is used hundreds of times (but deprecated) is more important than that of a tag that is not deprecated, but rarely used. Then this page should use correct status! |status=inuse or |status=draft.

I strongly disagree that documentation about deprecated features is less important at wiki than newly proposed tags/keys. All documentation is equally important.

> Nevertheless the current colour coding would make one look somehow more "correct" than the other. I don't know what do you suggest in this vague statement. As I said before, "|status=deprecated" should appear with red color.

In fact, such color-colding was used before at wiki and it was perfectly okay to do so. See red banner about "obsolote" tag at Key:escalator. Xxzme (talk) 18:18, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I strongly dispute marking "de facto" status as clearly worse than "approved" or even "inuse". I strongly dislike some tags, but it is not changing fact that something widely used (both by mapper count and usage count) is no worse that proposal with formal vote (also, sorry for jumping into edit war with undiscussed edit - I noticed yellow infobox of an extremely popular feature and I followed template chain, and changed colour. I was not expecting it to be controversial. I though that this yellow colour was a bug, not an intended effect - and I failed to check history/discussion.). Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 09:41, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Interim summary

Because I am accused of forcing "my" opinion on everyone, here's a breakdown of who was participated in the discussion until now:

• Frederik: AGAINST red
• Andreas Goss (mailing list): FOR red but problem with defacto
• jgpacker (list): AGAINST colour coding whole box; request discussion about colour coding
• Andrew Guertin (list): mentions colour blind
• Bryce Nesbitt (list): AGAINST red
• Warin (list): AGAINST colour coding whole box
• Chris Hormann (list): against deprecation as a whole
• BáthoryPéter (wiki talk): FOR red
• Xxzme (wiki talk): FOR red

This is certainly not the final or authoritative picture but at this time it can be clearly said that "colouring the whole box in red for deprecated features" is a minority opinion. --Frederik Ramm (talk) 08:39, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

• Chrabros: FOR red (direct vote) Chrabros (talk) 11:59, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Definition in Text

Can we come up with a short text description of each status, to supplement any colour. Like "15 users voted to mark this tag deprecated, and suggest alternative tagging yyyyyy". There's not only a status, there's a "why". Brycenesbitt (talk) 18:41, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Quick note: supposedly the following text should be used as a reference to choose a tag's status: Template:Description#Additional information. I believe that your suggestion in specific wouldn't need to be added in a template and could be added to a tag page as normal text. --Jgpacker (talk) 19:18, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Note in particular "deprecated but still in use" is not defined there. Brycenesbitt (talk) 19:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

> "deprecated but still in use" what does it means? Examples? Xxzme (talk) 19:48, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

|statuslink= was here since the beginning. I don't see need in copying voting date or voting count as tag/key pages. If it was deprecated by majority vote this information is irrelevant to most key/tag page readers.

Deprecation status will lead to newer proposal. Xxzme (talk) 19:48, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Wiki deprecation does not mean project deprecation. That's the problem here. Brycenesbitt (talk) 04:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Clarify please? Nobody deprecates wiki, we deprecate tags and keys as written in Proposal process. Xxzme (talk) 15:54, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Please do not act naïve, Xxzme. Marking something deprecated on the wiki affects the mapping of features, even if the people using the tags are not involved. The wiki is just a small part of the OSM project. Brycenesbitt (talk) 19:23, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

So what? Tag/key deprecated by successful vote in Proposal process will be marked as deprecated even there marginals who avoid changes in tagging schemes. Xxzme (talk) 19:35, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Editors and tools use the wiki. That's what. Brycenesbitt (talk) 00:27, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Defacto vs. Inuse

The difference, if any, between these is unclear. Brycenesbitt (talk) 08:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

It was never defined by anyone. Based on actual usage in Category:Feature descriptions you may expect: unsupported by software features used by mappers (inuse) and actually supported by most software tags/keys (defacto) Xxzme (talk) 08:58, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

As far as I understand, "defacto" is what "inuse" becomes after the tag being around for a good while, becoming naturally well-accepted by the community, and having a large ammount of uses by a large ammount of different users (instead of by bots). So you could say that "defacto" is even better than "accepted" in most cases. --Jgpacker (talk) 12:40, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Those are reasonable definitions... let's state them somewhere. Brycenesbitt (talk) 16:06, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Statuses (generally speaking)

Just my 2 cents on that subject. I recently had a look at Deprecated features, noticed that there was also a Russian version, which was out-of-sync. I then decided to create a template to get both pages (as well as the future ones) in sync (and, by the way, created the French one).

Looking then to get the table as up-to-date as possible, using in particular the categories for tags and for keys, I noticed using sub-categories, that there were plenty of other statuses, some of them seemingly having similar meanings ("obsolete", "abandoned", "inactive").

So, question I asked myself, "is there a place where key and tag statuses are defined?" Well, as far as I looked around, there is no such place in the wiki. So, I think that, before talking about which color to use for which status, we should agree about the status definitions.

Here is my attempt - feel free to comment or amend. To define the status about a tag or key, let us ask the following questions:

1. Is the key/tag documented?
2. Is the key/tag present in the OSM database?
3. Are there "synonym keys or tags", that are more frequently used?
4. Is the replacement doable (without breaking anything)?

A1	A2	A3	A4	Action	Status
No	No	N/A	N/A	well, nothing to say ;)	N/A
No	Yes	No	N/A	Document it, with a good definition.	In use
No	Yes	Yes	No	Document it. Mention the synonyms.	Deprecated
No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Make the replacement in OSM database. No need of documenting the tag. This may be used for another specification.	N/A
Yes	No	No	N/A	This looks like a strange situation. (I never experienced that, did you?) Or maybe it is...	Imaginary
Yes	No	Yes	N/A	Probably a deprecated tag which has disappeared. (Redirection of the page, or even deletion, should be thought out.)	Obsolete
Yes	Yes	No	N/A	Check that all is correct.	In use
Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Check that all is correct. Mention the synonyms.	Deprecated
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Make the replacement in OSM database. Mention the synonyms in the documentation page.	Obsolete

Conclusion: 3 statuses (in use, deprecated, obsolete).

And what about the proposals?

Well, I suggest that, besides the statuses, there is a mention (or several), which states "This tag is part of the proposed feature Proposed feature which ... (either "passed/ failed the proposal process, or "is inactive/ is obsoleted by new PF/ has been cancelled / is currently worked out / ...").

Any thoughts on that? Bibi6 (talk) 16:31, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Edits since January 2015, consider reversion

I’m proposing rolling back related pages to the beginning of this year at Template talk:Description#Edits_since_January_2015.2C_consider_reversion.--Andrew (talk) 06:35, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Change text color for dark status

Since the black text on dark gray is hard to read, I suggest changing background:#777;color:#222 to background:#666;color:#EEE. See:
now  obsolete | obsoleted | inactive | abandoned | rejected 
new  obsolete | obsoleted | inactive | abandoned | rejected  --Chris2map (talk) 18:41, 9 January 2023 (UTC)