Good Afternoon
After consulting with one of the Community Outreach captains, we agreed this would fall under the tech team.
There's been some talk about our CSS theme, and especially how to modify it, and what things within it, actually do.
To action this, tech team already has a project to comment our main wiki CSS theme. This will be done by Q2 of this year, in order to allow users to better understand how to modify the visual elements of the wiki.
This brings me to another question: What about custom CSS themes in use by the site?
There's been multiple issues over the past few months/years with CSS themes breaking/being broken by wiki elements, using themes, etc.
Therefore, I'd like to get together a policy regarding CSS themes, and formatting such as external CSS files. After getting feedback from the community, this is an updated proposal.
Use
Just like anything else on the wiki, a CSS theme must be licensed under the same Creative Commons site license, if it is hosted on the wiki. This means that anyone is free to use, copy, and alter that copy.
What they may not do is alter it for you. It would be treated like any other article or work on the wiki (minus being subject to deletion at this time. A deletion policy is not currently something in the works.
What you can do:
- Change any of the style components of the wiki which do not violate the can't section.
What you cannot do:
- Remove, hide, alter, or "break" any navigation elements of the wiki.
- Significantly alter the look of the wiki outside of the article content pane. Break the 'structure' of the wiki. Don't move the top-bar to 50% to the right, don't change the sidebar to be in wingdings unless that's your specific format screw going on.
- Use the 'final' tag beyond what is required to override issues with the main CSS theme, or provide compatibility with your sub-themes or other CSS projects. Basically, don't make your theme be the only applicable theme.
- Remove the rating module
- Remove back/forward links from articles where they were created for.
Translation Module
The translation module currently can't be altered via CSS. If your css theme clashes with the visual style of the translation block you may instead maintain your own list of translations in either the comments section of the article, or an applicable hub. A fix may be coming in the future, at which point this may be subject to change.
What you are required to do:
- Comment your CSS theme to provide users with reasonable direction for elements you are adding beyond the basic site them. If you're adding a :before or :after, or some kind of element that isn't normally there, explain what it is.
- Comment your CSS theme if you are REMOVING an element from the wiki. If you're removing the border from the sidebar for example, comment to explain how you do it, not necessarily that you're doing it.
Existing css themes will have until 31 Dec, 2018 to add reasonable comments to their theme. What's reasonable? Explain what each section does, or affects. You don't have to explicitly define what a property does, but any reasonably intelligent author should be able to change the color of your header gradient if they wish.
If you don't feel like adding comments, or you feel this is an unnecessary burden, let me know. I can work with you to make this easier, or have someone from the tech team work with you.
All staff are free to comment on this thread.
What is missing here? What seems reasonable, or unreasonable? Let me know what you think.
(account deleted)