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Hey all!
I took it upon myself to redesign the Cleanup template.  Using Adobe Illustrator, I created a concept that I’d like to share with the wikiHow community and ask what you guys think of it.

I’m hoping that one day, more of the article templates will be redesigned (I’m planning to do more concepts, by the way!).  My goal is to simplify and modernize the template while retaining it’s functionality.  This concept isn’t final and I’ll modify it based on feedback.

Changes made:

  • Removed yellowish background color (I’m still not sure about this change, if you guys want it back or have an alternative color, let me know)
  • Changed the cleanup icon to modern icon, enlarged.
  • Added a small info button to the lower-right corner that links to the template page (for legal reasons).
  • Blackened and bolded the date that the notice was added to increase readability.
  • Note that any font changes are unintentional and I tried copying the font info directly from the site’s  CSS file .

Please provide feedback by replying to this discussion.  Thank you!

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I see no point personally to redesigning the template. There really is no pressing need for a redesign and unless the reasoning for something like this is explained, I won’t support it. What is the reason, anyway? Thanks for the concept tho - it looks quite nice despite the fact that I don’t know we need it. Maybe we could use it sometime in the future?

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I don’t understand why this needs to be changed to be honest. Would this mean every single template needs to be resigned, too? The template is working fine and there aren’t any bugs to it - I don’t understand what’s the point fixing something that’s working just fine. Sorry, but I disagree with this change. =/ 

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I’m on the fence about this - I’m not opposed to the idea of some aspects of the template being adjusted (although I personally don’t think I’d want the date to be bolded), but I’m not even sure why the template would need to be adjusted in the first place. As Joel and Nadia asked, what would the purpose of the redesign be?

In my opinion… maybe this is just my more art-oriented brain being a nuisance here, but I also think changing the background color to white wouldn’t work very well. It might make the templates easy to overlook. The yellow makes them easier to notice, in my opinion, since we don’t have a ton of yellow on the site.

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@Joe.Miles925 , @WikihowSaver , @Galactic-Radiance - I feel that almost all these templates should get a consistent redesign (not necessarily a major one).  What I mean by consistent is that some article templates have a background color and some don’t.  Some don’t have icons and some do.  Some have the “date notice added” in brackets and some don’t.

I’m also trying to incorporate an aspect of minimalism into the design (with the icons).

The part of this “project” that requires the most work is actually creating and designing the concepts, which I am definitely willing and happy to do.  Editing the actual templates in the future would be fairly easy.  I could provide the images used in the templates to the admins so they could place it in the future templates.

Of course, this process shouldn’t be rushed.  If you guys have any feedback, likes, and/or dislikes, I’d like to know them so that I can update the concept.

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Well, like I said, I’m not opposed to the idea - but I also don’t see any frequently-used templates that don’t stick to the yellow-background-with-an-image design that you refer to? All of our templates being used the most (e.g. {{attention}}, {{nfd}}, {{speedy}}, {{commercial}}, {{accuracy}}, and so forth) have images and background colors, and the ones that don’t fit with the usual template style or don’t have images appear to be long abandoned.

I’m sure that doing a quick sweep through the frequently used templates and checking for the date-stamp variable is something an admin could undertake very quickly, unless there’s something wonky about editing templates that I’m not aware of.

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@Galactic-Radiance - Sorry, I was mistaken about some templates not having any background color.  You are correct.

Regarding the template images, here is a list of templates without the image that are still used:

wikihow.com/Template:Attention

wikihow.com/Template:Illustrations

wikihow.com/Template:Screenshots

They’re still used by a lot of articles according to the categories that the templates marks the page with.

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I feel kind of in agreement. I’m not sure that as a whole, wikiHow has the resources to push changes to templates (like {{attention}} etc). I’d think that it’d be more logical to push out such changes in groups of two or three, rather then all over the place or all at once (God, you’d probably crash wikiHow if you changed them all at once).

I agree that the templates could use a round of polishing (I really love the bold text and simplicity about the new design), but I think that such a large design change like this shouldn’t be left to the small percentage of the community that’s on the forums, and should maybe be voted on by the larger group of active wikiHowians. Whether this is a talk page comment linking to a Google Forms page, or it is an email from support@wikihow.com , I don’t know.

As I said, I really like the new design, as it helps bring wikiHow out of the old 2008 clip art images, and into the new, but I feel as though more of the wikiHow community should be involved.

Just a few of my ideas for the design:

  • Instead of using CC images (typically clip art), why don’t we see if wikiVisual could whip up some specific wikiHow ones?
  • Expand on the first sentence (“You can help by improving it and removing this notice when done”), as I’d think it’d be the main descriptive phrase you’d want to be seen - Even stuff like changing “it” to “this article” could just emphasise the importance of that phrase. 
  • Change the colour of the background (maybe). Templates like this that remove it from search results are major - having articles of poor enough quality to be removed from search results (as to not reflect wikiHow poorly and as to be as helpful as possible) is something wikiHow shouldn’t want. Having it as a faded, low red (such as #fc7b7b ) can help to highlight the importance of having articles like such edited to be more helpful.

These are just my ideas - As with the spirit of wikiHow, feel free to comment and build on (even if that means destroying) my ideas, but please, let’s keep this discussion on-topic and respectful. Tension level <5% please.

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@ItsPugle - Thank you for the feedback. Regarding your first bullet point, do you mean that Wikivisual could design the icons? Also, I’m not sure how we could reach community consensus out of the forms (or that it’s even necessary, as long as the staff/admins of wH agree?).

Nevertheless, I’ll try to update this concept including some of your suggestions.

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@Batreeq - Yeah; Wikivisual (always forget the correct capitalisation) produces most of the images on articles (published ones, at least) so I’d think it’d be logical to employ their style and palet as to keep with consistency across the site. 

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Huh? Wikivisual themselves doesn’t have a consistent style across images - heck, look through all the articles on the home page that have Wikivisual images and you’ll see that there are many different artists working on this.

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@ItsPugle and @Galactic-Radiance : I’m not sure using Wikivisual is necessary. The clipart I found online is permitted for commercial use and modification, provided the page is attributed (that’s why the little info “i” icon is on the template - it links to the template page where the attribution would go).

But… if we do decide to go with Wikivisual designs, we should set some consistent guidelines (such as icon sizes, icon colors/monochromatic black, image and text alignment, and background color).

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True lol. Wikivisual is all over the place xD

Maybe it’s worth making the most out of this idea: Creating consistency between Wikivisual images. Pretty much everything else among wikiHow is consistent, from guidelines to correct English version, so why not Wikivisual?

What if we got one Wikivisual artist to create a range of images to use on templates like {{stub}} or {{attention}}? It’d ensure consistency and it might give wikiHow a tiny TINY bit of a design refresh. @Anna could possibly even do some analytics and see if it changes how eager editors are to do changes etc?

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I don’t think it’d hurt for anyone keen to go through the main templates and suggest any tweaks to wordings/text format or icons, if they aren’t for some reason representative of the task. I think most are okay myself, but maybe that’s just me! That being said, personally I’d caution against anything that makes the templates more cluttered (elaborate designs, new links or extra icons, etc). I think simple designs and fairly small, simple icons, like we have, do the trick pretty well for just representing the basic ideas without overwhelming or distracting from the main point. If someone finds a public domain icon they think would work better for a particular template, I don’t see any problem with changing it… but I don’t think Wikivis fits the bill for any changes here, since they specialize in making full illustrations in styles that fit the given article topic, not icons. Color is set at the CSS and site design level, and they’re pretty deliberately aimed to hit a happy medium for urgency. Turning them white would probably make them harder to spot, and turning them red would, I think, imply there’s something wrong with adding a tag, which isn’t the case. We actually want unhelpful stuff to be tagged and not untagged until it’s really ready, and the middle ground of yellow seems to send that message pretty well:slight_smile:I appreciate the wish to freshen things up every now and then, of course! So if certain icons or wordings need a face lift, I don’t see a problem with that… but change for the sake of it can sometimes have unintended consequences, particularly when it comes to a feature that’s already working fine for most people. So I guess we’d want to hit a middle ground here. And Tim, I think you overestimate the analytics I have at my disposal, but I’m glad you think I might have magic data on this one:wink:

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@Galactic-Radiance , @ItsPugle , @Anna - Thanks for all of your feedback.:slight_smile:I also believe in keeping the template simple and to the point, while being modern at the same time. The main purpose of this redesign “project” is to revise any bad template text and replace the icons with modern icons. I think the image size is perfect. This is what I will most likely do for my next concept of this:

  • Restore the original color to the template background ( # fdfcde ).
  • Removing the small information “i” icon in the lower right corner. Legal attributions can be placed on the image file page.
  • Align template text to left side of page.
  • Change “Notice added on {{{date}}}” to grey to match the text right before it.
  • Minor text change (underlined):

| This article may need to be  cleaned up  to meet wikiHow’s quality standards.

You can help by  improving it  and removing this notice when complete. Until the issues are fixed and the template is removed, the article will be hidden from search results. Notice added on {{{date}}}.
|

Now, I’m trying to decide whether to remove the small dots next to the broom in the icon. Should they be removed? Anybody have other feedback or disagreements with the changes listed above?

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(Off topic post, but still slightly on topic)

@Anna , If you want some magic data:

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Hah @ItsPugle - Oh thaaat kind of magic data. Sure, I have plenty of that:wink:

@Batreeq Personally, I like the broom! The dots seem good, too, but either way probably works. If you want to upload a version of it, we can always try it out in the template and see how it looks. I think the image just has to be pretty true to size to show up right in the template (vs a giant picture being condensed into an icon). 

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@Anna - Here’s your file:  i.imgur.com/PfYI3XO.png . Also, what do you mean by the image has to be “true to size”?

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Oh, I meant just the icon, not the whole template - if you can upload that on wikiHow, we can try subbing it out in the template, and see how it looks. I just mean it shouldn’t be a huge file, but pretty close to the actual icon size, like the current one is.

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@Anna : Images: