Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote: > Hi, > > A while ago I made a bookmarklet that blurs images in articles on > the english Wikipedia and reveals them when the user hovers over the > image. I now had a chance to test this as a skin.js extension.
For a start, users would have to opt in to this, which may not be appropriate for casual readers brought to us from Google and other external links. I'm not sure it's a good idea to make it a default for unregistered users, many, if not most, of whom, might not want to be presented with a pre-filtered version of Wikipedia, and would be surprised to be so presented. It also presents a "slippery slope" argument in that nobody is realistically qualified, nor would want to be tasked with, drawing the line as to what images should and should not be treated thus. A similar argument applies to textual content of articles; however we try to achieve neutrality, it seems that there will always be some POV-pushers who will argue the toss ad infinitum, and we don't accommodate them. Neither should we accommodate those who do not understand that a value-neutral, world value, is not the same as their value. These people have their own texts, and I think that our response should be that they are welcome to them. Nobody is being forced to use Wikipedia, after all. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BlurredImages/vector.js > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BlurredImages/vector.css > > To try this out you would have to copy or import this code into your > own skin.js and skin.css files which are available e.g. under > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MyPage/vector.js > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MyPage/vector.css > > This only works in recent desktop versions of Opera and Firefox and > only on devices where you can easily hover. It may show some images > that it ought to blur for boring reasons. Spoilers ahead if you want > to try it. > > Browsing around with that is quite interesting. Some findings: it is a > bit annoying when UI elements (say clipart in maintenance templates) > are blurred. The same goes for small logo-like graphics, say actual > logos, flags, coat of arms, and actual text, like rotated table > headers. I did expect that blurred maps would be annoying, but I've > not found them to be. Take http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagebüll as > example, the marker and text are overlayed so they are not blurred, > and I can recognize the shape of Germany fine. > > I note that there is a perceptual problem if you click around to > explore how blurring affects the experience as that does not reflect > what a user would do. I noticed that my impression changed a lot when > switching from actually paying some attention to the articles to > randomly moving to the next article just looking at the images. > > Pages, or parts of pages, that largely lack content (say all you get > on a screen is lone line of lead, table of contents, and image plus > map on the side, or a stub that has four sentences and an image). > There it's a bit odd, in stark contrast to an article like BDSM where > I felt blurring is very unobtrusive. > > Another thing I've noticed is that I pay a whole lot more attention to > the images when I focus them, decide to hover over it, reveal it, and > then look at it, maybe read the caption and so on. I also noticed I do > not really bother to read the captions before I hover and rather > decide based on the blurred picture itself (I ignore most captions > usually, so this is unsurprising). There are also many surprises, > where images do not come out in the clear as you would have expected > from the blur. > > My impression is that it actually makes it much easier to think about > if an image is well placed where it is. If there are several images, > you can focus more easily on just the one, and you remove to some > degree the "status quo" effect, where you may be biased to agree with > the placement because someone already placed it there. > > Images where red tones are used a lot seem to be rather distracting > when they are blurred. Blue and green and yellow and black and white > and so on are no problem, and the red tones are no problem when the > image is crisp. Not sure what's up with that, I have not noticed this > before. It would of course be possible to manipulate the colours in > addition to the blurring. > > Largely black and white bar charts and tree diagrams and illustrations > of data like them are also annoying when blurred, in part because > there is inconsistency as some of them are not blurred because they > are made not as image but using HTML constructs. They are perhaps too > much like text so unlike a photo with many different colors they are > harder to just ignore using one's banner blindness skills. There is > also a noise factor to this, > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction for instance > compared to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code -- in the former > the graphic in the infobox is fine blurred while the latter irks me > when blurred. > > Generally though the added nuisance is hardly worth mentioning, it > works surprisingly well (well, this was the first thing I thought > about when I learned of the image filter, but it does work a bit > better than I had expected initially, and some issues would be easily > fixed, like blurring only images larger than 50x50 would take care of > most of the UI graphics for instance). So having conducted this > experiment, I think the need to have some images hidden while having > others in the clear, where the com- munity as a whole decided to show > rather than hide, as in omitting them for all users, is not a > legitimate need. > > regards, _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
