Sticker Style Proposal

Question

Once upon a time, when stickers were first added to enhance profiles, I started to use the immigration one on my ancestors' profiles.  After experimenting to see how it looked best, I settled on placing the code immediately above the Biography heading, which causes the sticker to appear next to the Biography heading (see example labeled "Original"), where it fits in the same vertical space.  I am not a fan of using lots of stickers on a profile and like the way it does not change the formatting of the page this way.

Later, some rules were established that made my placement of this sticker incorrect, requiring all stickers to be below the Biography heading and only permitting project boxes to be above it.  I did not make it a personal project to go back to all the profiles on which I had used it to correct the placement, but now am going back to improve some of my ancestors' profiles and correcting the immigration sticker placement as I find them.  I'm really not happy with how they look below the Biography heading (see example labeled "As Specified in Style Guide").

The last thing I want to do is to open a whole can of worms to suggest that all stickers should be allowed to go anywhere (potentially making profiles look like a 3 ring circus), but I would like to propose that for cases in which there is only 1 sticker on a profile that does not take up more vertical space than the Biography heading, it be permitted to display next to the Biography heading, which requires that the code be placed immediately above that heading.

Examples:

Comments

I agree that it looks better with the sticker above the biography heading in this case.

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I tend to place my migration stickers next to the text where I say they migrated.  But I'm a rebel that way.  

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Placing a sticker next to the paragraph that describes the action highlighted by the sticker is what I have always done for the rare profiles that I use more than 1 sticker on.  In all case, they are a migration sticker and a military service sticker.  Almost all of these are the profiles I added for the Ritchie Boys, who were European Jews who immigrated to the US to escaped the Holocaust and immediately joined the US Army to go back there to fight the Nazis.

Usually, though, I am only using 1 sticker on a profile and prefer it at the start to emphasize that event in the person's life.

PS  I'll join your rebel brigade any old time, Melanie!

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I'm w/ you Melanie. I like stickers next to the paragraph they pertain to. Then again, I'm not big on stickers unless they are significant indicators of the profile i.e., Notable and what they are notable for. If more than one sticker is used, space is going to be used regardless of where you "stick" em.

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I also agree that the "original" placement looks better.

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I also agree with the commenters who place stickers next to the relevant text, and not above the biography heading.

I do not favor creating a style exception for individual stickers.

Like some of the commenters, I rarely use stickers.

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Lindy, the thing is that I fully agree that I would not want to see stickers above the Biography heading ... but that's on the view page, where I would like to have the only sticker on the page next to the Biography heading.  Putting a sticker next to the relevant paragraph shrinks the horizontal space for the paragraph text, which now wraps around the sticker, with a visual effect that I don't think looks pleasing.

Here's my problem:  the only way to have it appear next to the Biography heading on the view page is to enter its code above the Biography heading on the edit page.

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Another opinion here, adding to Rob's and Dennis's, in favour of Gaile's preference for placing a single sticker next to the Biography header (therefore just above, when the text is being edited). It looks much better that way. The rule (which is not provided with a reason or justification) should be relaxed, either formally or by creative innovation by profile managers.

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I understand that some of us prefer one view and others of us prefer the other view. I also understand that to get your preferred view, you must go against style guidelines. However, I neglected to state that I also favor a little rebellion ( ) against enforced adherence to our guidelines.

Unless your are getting flak for the practice, you should just follow your own style, Gaile!

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Which style looks better depends on the viewer, Jim. Some viewers may like Gaile's style while some may like the style that results from adhering to the guidelines.

If Gaile's proposal receives sufficient support, Sticker guidelines may be revised to include her proposed style as an official or acceptable-alternative style.

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I don't use stickers much but the one case when I do is the {{Died Young}} sticker. I have been following the guidelines and putting it immediately after the biography header (example Pavey-451). This makes it look like it is associated with the description of the birth (since the first paragraph is usually about that). I think it looks better when it is immediately preceding the biography header though.

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Rob, I usually place my {{Died Young}} stickers immediately after the birth statement - or any other biographical detail if they lived long enough to attend school, appear in a census etc.   This places the sticker closer to the statement regards death.

Erric, I tend to use {{clear}} when any image or sticker impinges into the Sources area.

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THANX to everyone for all the helpful comments!

Lindy - I don't agree with flouting the style guide, other than the exception permitted for profiles of close family members.  There is good reason for the guide - it ensures that:

• profiles have a similar look-and-feel across WikiTree, which gives warm fuzzies to viewers
• profiles do not have all kinds of fancy design elements that make them appear garish
• profiles do not include a lot of fancy coding that might be difficult for non-tekkies to understand and thus be intimidating to them when they want to edit an open profile

That said, my preference for seeing a sticker next to the Biography heading instead of displacing text when placed below it is intended to better achieve the goal of stickers stated in the style guide as "The purpose of a Profile Sticker is to highlight an important fact about a person or honor an important achievement.  Profile Stickers support and decorate the biography." 

The "important fact" is best highlighted when it appears at the start of the profile and, because stickers are automatically right justified, they would look terrible if they were above the Biography heading on the view page with blank space to their left.  Eric's suggestion to use the {{Clear}} template (or even easier, using an extra blank line or two) after the sticker creates the same blank space to its left wherever the sticker appears.

Placing the sticker lower down in the biography at the right of the paragraph which describes the event not only is less of a highlight then having it at the start and also has the effect of making the paragraph look awkwardly formatted, with the first few lines scrunched in at the left of the sticker and, if it is longer, then continuing across full page width below the sticker.

I am getting what might count as "flak" for profiles that I have done before the guide instructions were implemented.  Every now and then, a data doctor who makes some change to a profile I manage also moves the sticker location to what is shown in my "as specified in the style guide" example, since I have not made the effort to go back over hundreds of profiles to bring the sticker location into compliance with the current guide.

Rob - the case of the {{Died Young}} sticker is special, since the biography (at least of the ones where I have used this sticker) typically is very short stating only birth and death dates/places so that it fits nicely to the left of the sticker and, as you point out, that *is* the relevant place for it.

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I guess we can agree to disagree on this issue, Gaile.

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There is discussion about innovation and rules at this other G2G question. There has been a degree of support for innovation applied to profiles managed by the person who would like to innovate (not the other case of modifying profiles managed by other people).

Answer 1

You can put the sticker(s) anywhere in the text (immigration sticker next to the date they immigrated, for instance).

"They are usually placed directly below the Biography headline, but they can be placed anywhere in the biography section, such as near where the information being highlighted is discussed."
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Stickers#Location_on_profiles

So you're not a rebel, Melanie.

Comments

Oh, hush!  I want to be a rebel sometime!  

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I try to put them near the paragraph that shows the info that backs up the sticker.

Answer 2

François Charlu dit Chanteloup is an example of sticker use that I just worked on.  As you can see, I use more than one.  The migrations sticker is a bit annoying to me as it is unilingual English.  So far I've had no response when I ask if we could have it in more than one language.  Looks a bit weird when the bio is in another language.

A few things you might try:  as others have suggested, put it in the text where it is actually relevant to the story, ie when he migrates.  Another option is to put some space between the sticker and the text that follows so it doesn't impinge on the text format.  Or maybe put :: before the sticker, not sure what result that would give.

Comments

Danielle, I feel guilty of having missed seeing your post proposing multi-language versions of the migration sticker.  In fact, I think it would be appropriate to have all stickers available with the text in multiple languages.  It seems that it would be a fairly easy fix to add a language choice to stickers that include built in text.

I think this could be stated as asking for a new sticker and describing it as a French version of the existing English one (although it could certainly be implemented as a change to all the already existing ones to permit several language choices).  This way, if you propose it in G2G and it receives three replies from people who say they want it, that is sufficient to have the sticker created.  I promise to be one of those replies.

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done deed, now let's see what happens.

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I just answered it, but just to be sure it is seen as an official proposal, could you please edit the question and make it start with "Proposal to " and add the tag proposal (or maybe it's proposals).

Answer 3

In dark mode the positioning after the biography heading looks better because the sticker is not partly over the coloured bar indicating the heading. Some stickers are larger and displace text below as well.

When using a screenreader, the position before the heading means that the box is read before the subtitle Biography. As it is part of the biography it should be read after the heading. That is the way your eyes perceive it in either layout.

The after the heading position is therefore better suited to displaying Wikitree in different formats for accessibility.

Comments

These are good points, Andrew. They could be incorporated into an addition to the Help page text giving justification for why the policy is what it is. Policies with reasons given tend to be easier to accept.