Template talk:ImageCaption

==I've deployed this template at Ordona (Spirit), Tingle Tuner and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for now - I'd appreciate some oohing and ahhing (and hopefully an absence of "we already have a template for that!") before I use it any more. It's not a template that I anticipate being used terribly often, but occasionally there are situations where we have an image with a transparent background that requires a caption, and it seems a shame to put it in a frame and undermine all that lovely transparency. 12:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * While I agree, you can add "hover-over" message which gives a caption when your mouse is placed over the images. Personally, I find this template to make the page look more disorganized. 14:39, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm also not completely convinced on this. While it's a nice idea, we need to consider the overall article style at the wiki. Although this isn't very well documented at the moment, we'll be fixing that soon. Then we'll need to have a discussion about whether something like this should be used and, if so, how. With templates, it's generally a better idea to discuss your proposal before creating it, since there can be other factors to be taken into consideration. 14:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I look forward to the forthcoming style guide with baited breath. 17:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I kinda like it. The issue I foresee is if the article text crossed to the image caption, the reader could get disorientated. I'd suggest a frame around the caption tho; or maybe a snazzy font and font color (just thought of that). I've seen many cool pics reduced to thumbnails either just to get a caption in or bc of the editor not knowing all of their options. 00:05, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Adam, it'd be too much of a hassle to convert all these images to sue this template, and furthermore the image frames already support a caption, so really this template just seems redundant. 19:09, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Deletion
OK, so I've moved this ahead to a full deletion discussion. We need to reach an agreement on whether this method of displaying images has a future at the wiki or now. I'm for deletion, and Steve seems to be too. I'm assuming Axiomist and Pete would rather keep it, in some form. So let's discuss this here and decide what to do. 18:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not really fussed. If people like it, we'll keep it. If not, we won't. It sounds like of those who have expressed an opinion, the consensus is to delete. I've removed it from the three pages where I had added it. 21:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it gives the wiki a professional look; I've just recently used it on the Keese article - to great success, and even look at a previous version the Ordona (Spirit) article. It's the best for pictures with added transparency, because it removes the need for the enclosing "thumb" frame, letting the image sit free of borders while still captioning it. It's a nice touch. However, I wish the template wasn't so bulky - I only seem to use it for right-alignmented pictures anyway. 22:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I kinda like it, too. When I first saw it used in the Shield article, I thought it looked pretty nice... I wouldn't mind keeping it, but hey, majority wins. *shrugs* Dany36 22:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The point is, if we decided to use this, it means that we have to use it for every page that uses a png with a caption, and I seriously doubt that anyone is prepared to go into pratically every single article and switch them out with the new template. 22:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I never thought it was meant to be a replacement for every page with a png image, I just don't see the harm in having one more option to display pngs. This is the wiki with more flexibility than most of the others. :P 01:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Consistency is an important thing, though. If only some pages have some of the images using it, it makes the wiki look like a total mess. 01:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've probably trawled the entire wiki over the past few months, looking for images that need transparent backgrounds, and there are surprisingly few transparent PNGs with captions. It wouldn't be a huge task. 09:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, there possibly aren't all that may images which need changing over. But how do we identify them all? The best I could do is produce a list of every article containing a PNG (that's 1372 pages at present), which would then need to be manually edited as Steve said. While I like the look of the template, I just don't see a practical way to deploy it while maintaining a consistent look to articles, which to me is a high priority. 13:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If that's your only concern, one way would be to change the definition of the template so that it apes the current look, but with some distinguishing feature that makes it easy for a trained eye to tell the difference between the occurrences that have been changed, and those that need changing. Once all occurrences have been found and updated, the template code can then be reverted to the new look. I'll happily oversee this entire process. 14:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine to me. I've redesigned the template to mimic the standard thumbnails, with the small difference that the image is mirrored. Personally I'm happy for any transparent PNGs to be changed over to use this template now. We can make a decision on if/how to implement the look you were going for later on, but as you say the first step is to get the template used everywhere. 00:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and if you need it, here's the list of all pages containing at least one PNG: Template:ImageCaption/List 14:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Are you able to generate a list of all pages which contain PNGs or GIFs that are embedded with the "frame" or "thumb" attributes set, excluding pages that already contain a call to Template:ImageCaption somewhere? 14:12, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

The Next Stage
I think that now would be a good time to go forward with this process. Hopefully I have now switched all images with transparent backgrounds and captions over to use this template. I can't guarantee that I've caught every single last one, but I think that the best way to catch the last few stragglers is to revert the template to the "new look" so that other wiki editors can get used to it and pick off the leftovers as and when they are encountered. 09:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

It's been a week since I posted the above. If nobody has any objections, I will revert the template in the next few days. 17:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)