Category talk:Profession:

Image Sizes

Hello forcide, i notice you've silently reverted my edit. When making a reversion, you're asked to give a reason if the edit was not vandalism, you did not provide any reason. Please explain things before undoing someone else's work

I made the images larger sizes intentionally, in a previous edit, the idea is to make the item icons more legible, because the main purpose of having images on this page at all is to allow an at-a-glance comparison of the professions (and now, their items) for aesthetic purposes.

At the sizes you've reverted them to, most of the item images are difficult to see clearly, and thus to appraise visually. This is especially notable on the images with complex colours, like the cosmogone spectacles+ the violant ink, and also those with fine details, like the bone harpoon, shrine to joshua, and the crooked cross.

Page space is not exactly at a premium here, given that these categories can be collapsed, and zooming out is a lot easier than zooming in, as zooming in doesn't even enhance the images, because they're rendered at a low resolution.

I really think it was best the way i put it. Please discuss the matter with me

NanakoAC (talk) 04:04, January 24, 2016 (UTC)

The small icons are, litterally, meant to be small.  They are, as you noted, low resolution, and are blurry messes when displayed at the scale you've set.

Concerns about the clarity of the Violant Ink, Bone Harpoon, Shrine to Saint Joshua, and Crooked Cross seem unfounded, as in all of those cases the appearance of the item are identical to that of the relevant profession quality.  While the Cosmogone Spectacles' appearance is distinct from that of the profession quality, I feel the Spectacles' icon demonstrates this sufficiantly; if someone wants a closer look at the Spectacles, they can click on the link and view the appropriate page.

Forcide (talk) 08:19, January 24, 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, I have no qualm with increasing the size of the profession quality icons on the far left. 

Forcide (talk) 08:38, January 24, 2016 (UTC)

You said:

"The small icons are, litterally, meant to be small.  They are, as you noted, low resolution, and are blurry messes when displayed at the scale you've set."

This is patently wrong. They are not "small icons", and they're not "scaled". They're dynamically downsampled versions of the full size image on the appropriate item's page, and those images are natively at 100x130 resolution. You can test for yourself by doing something like this: http://i.imgur.com/cKLHlT8.png

The image displays fully and perfectly, like so: http://i.imgur.com/vDaCzSk.png

That is of course, excessively large, i feel half of that size is fine for the purpose, but it makes my point. This was your reason for reverting my edit a second time, and i have conclusively disproven it. I'll await farther discussion before making changes, but this edit warring is rather rude.

The spectacles aren't the only one where item appearance differs from the profession icon, there are a number of others with the same problem. Again, my point in adding the images to this page was to allow an at-a-glance visual comparison of things, which is not so easy when you have to switch back and forth between tabs. And also to dispel the mistaken illusion that all the profession icons are the same as the item icon, i was under this impression for a long time and it turned me off choosing glassman.

Going to the individual page is inconvenient, even if only mildly. The larger images remove this inconvenience and make it slightly easier to use.

The question for you then, why should a reader have to go to the individual pages? Why NOT have everything in a sufficiently large size for viewing here? As i've already mentioned, page space is not at a premium here because the categories are collapsible. Pagespace is rarely an issue on a desktop monitor anyway.

But what about mobile, i hear you itching to ask? Have a look, here's a comparison:

With your small icons: http://i.imgur.com/UymOSMD.png

With my larger icons: http://i.imgur.com/xT4vU6u.png

Mobile browsers are typically used vertically, and hence horizontal space is far more of an issue than vertical. Both versions suffer some ill effects from long item names, but that can't be helped. The larger image sizes have a neglible impact here.

So why DO you have a qualm with the larger sizes?

NanakoAC (talk) 16:48, January 25, 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I'm also in favour of using small icons for items, for several reasons:

1. The icons are meant to be just that - icons. A small visual representation of an item. The small size used is the default of the "IL" template, and defaults should be used for consistency.
2. Look at the first table on the page - for tier 0 professions. This table also includes profession images and items gained. It makes little sense to increase the item sizes there - these are "common" items and qualities, such as Whispered Hints and Watchful. Here you can see that the icons are indeed just to make the item name stand out and look better visually. Any change in the other tables should match visually also the tier 0 professions table and also the unafilliated professions table at the end.
3. Using larger images needlessly makes the page less readable and less visually coherent (and less in sync with the rest of the wiki). You can use the same argument for any other wiki page - if an action provides an item (e.g. Touching Love Story), why doesn't the Touching Love Story icon appear bigger where the reward is listed? Why not put a big image so the wiki user can see the details? The reason is that the actual reward is what's important, and the image is means as an icon, not as more detailed info. If your'e interested in the image, you click the link and go to the Touching Love Story page to know more about this item (and its image). Since this is the way the entire wiki is presented when listing item rewards, there's no reason for this page to look differently.
4. The images are not there to compare how they look. If you want to see the actual image, go to the image page (or the item page). And if you really feel people specifically want to compare profession items, you can always create a new separate category page called "profession items" where you can put them side by side for anyone to compare.

Jut my $0.02.

Adnoam (talk) 14:32, January 26, 2016 (UTC)

Hi Adnoam. Points one and two are linked, so i'll address those together: The small icons all over the wiki are mostly used for common items and qualities. The key here is common, 99% of them, you've already seen ingame at a larger size, you know roughly what they look like, a small icon shows just enough to make your mental connection with the ingame item picture. The same applies to qualities, especially the four main attributes, which are displayed prominently ingame at this size http://i.imgur.com/JX4GmFR.png

The opportunity to see those ingame is not available for profession items, because you don't see them until you convert to that profession, which typically has a cost.

Third point, ties into first. You've already seen those items before. You know what they look like, a small icon just reminds you, it's not suitable for appraisal, it's suitable for melding into text simply. This page is for comparing professions at a glance, i'd expect similarly large items on a page designed for displaying a list of all equipment

I disagree that it affects the readability of the page, either on desktop or on mobile, did you check the images in my previous post? They make a tiny difference to screenspace, which is negligible because categories are collapsible.

Fourth point; Yes, the images are put there to compare how they look. The reason i know that is because I am the one who put them there,

That was one reason for it, the other was to dispel misconceptions about the various professions that have a different item from the profession icon

All of that aside, i think this is a silly thing to be arguing over, my changes aren't vandalism, they have good reasons, i'd argue they provide far more benefit than the neglible negative imact of taking 0.25 seconds longer to scroll to the bottom of the page, which is easily bypassed by using the contents, or collapsing categories.

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1. I disagree that image use should be defined by how commonplace an item is. As I've mentioned, visual consistency is of most importance. It's visually unappealing to have in the same page some items in some tables show large versions, while other items on other tables show minimal icons (just because those items are more common).
2. This is common for *any page which provides items*. Are you also advocating that, e.g. the Become a Glassman page (where you get icons for your gains of Persusasive, Glassman, Cosmogone Spectacles, and loss of Circle of Acolytes), should scale all these images' sizes inversely to their commonality? (i.e. Persuasive with a small icon, then Circle of Acolytes with a slightly larger icon, etc.)
3. Yes, I'm repeating myself partially: the wiki's overall visual style is such that an item's name is preceeded by a small icon for visual clarity. These icons *as a rule* are not there to show the details of the images. To see the image, you click the link to go to that item's page (or even image page).
4. I understand that you've added the images in this page with a different goal in mind. That doesn't change the fact that this contradicts the visual consistency of the page specifically (compare to the other tables) and of the wiki as a whole.
5. Whether this makes the page "messy" is subjective. It looks better for you. It looks worse for me. Specifically, I don't like how this intruduces line-breaks in the text of an item's name, just becase of a large image. (it's about the visuals, not about how many seconds it takes to scroll done. Lines breaks in the middle of an item's name are bad for readability).
6. I never thought of your change as "vandalism". I've made an update which I believed made the page more visually consistent. I've also mentioned to you (on the forum) that my updates can be undone if needed.
7. It's good to have such a discussion here. It's also not the first time that wiki editors have different opinions. This issue should be decided by a wiki admin.

Adnoam (talk) 09:26, January 31, 2016 (UTC)

Hi Adnoam

1. The icons which are small are not items. they are money and stats. That's a fairly important distinction

2. Not true. See here: Companion

And also here: Category:Hat

Those pages, which like this one, are for listing and comparing things, shows ALL the items on it in a far larger size than ususal, because they're not expected to fit into text. Same applies to all the equipment listing pages, and many other lists and reference pages. I think this brings point 3 and 4 into doubt too.

5. I want to point out that without the larger item images, there are huge holes in the tables, full of wasted space, because the profession icons (which have always been large and rightly so) stretch table rows vertically, making them far too large to be filled by a tiny icon and a single line of text. Making the item images larger is simply using existing space more efficiently

6. As per the warning issued by the site when you're reverting a page, it says if this change isnt vandalism you should mention a reason. I'm not always being given a reason for reverts

7. I literally can't argue with an admin, call one if you feel the need

NanakoAC (talk) 23:57, February 2, 2016 (UTC)