Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Tables/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Protected

Due to the recent edit warring this page has been protected for 1 week. Please use the time to discuss the matter here and come to a consensus on what should and shouldn't be included on the page. If an urgent edit needs to be made during the protection, please place the template {{editprotected}} here with details of the edit that needs to be made and justification for the edit, and an administrator will come by to make the edit. If you have agreed and resolved the dispute before the expiry of the protection, please make a listing at requests for unprotection. While it is also possible to make such requests on my talk page, it would be quicker for you to use those previous methods. Thank you. Stifle (talk) 11:21, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

This was a version that was not even edited by me. And this version was made after the rfc expired. So:

• I did elicit comment.
• You are reverting (mind you, at least) an edit that was not only agreed on by consensus, but was not selfwritten.
• Protecting this page for 10 days... shorter than when I left BOTH requests for comments up, before I made an edit. If I need only 10 days to wait, then why was I blocked, and why was this blocked?174.3.98.236 (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the protection. 174, you were making large edits without consensus (while you claim that consensus was established at the talk page, the only people I see discussing it are you and Collectonian, and Collectonian did not agree with your edits. As for my opinion, I think your edits introduced a lot of material that was unnecessary both because it was already obvious (stuff like "columns should have clear labels") and beyond the scope of what this page is. If you want to write a new MoS page for tables, you are welcome to do it (although I can't guarantee it would be kept, since personally I don't think such a page is necessary). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:55, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

You even helped me write a few of the sections. Ok. I've already put in a message at wp:policy and guidelines.

Even if I had no consensus for any changes, there was no consensus to promote this into a guideline in the first place.174.3.98.236 (talk) 16:53, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Guidelines always have the possibility of being renamed.

I've encountered a lot of tables with very extraneous and long-winded titles. I'll give you a few examples:

• [1]:

• The problem with this table is it's title: "Top twenty green coffee producers — Tonnes (2007) and Bags thousands (2007)" and here is the revised version: "2007 Top twenty green coffee producers". The title is more succinct; both "Tonnes" and "Bags thousands" are already column headings, so it is just redundant to include them in the title; The time sensitive information common to both titles and columns of data are combined in the title. This helps to make the title more READABLE.

• Here, the title is "Attacks on Oil Pipelines, 2001-2004" instead of "Attacks on Oil Pipelines". The latter is preferred because it is obvious by the information in the lower hierarchy (that is, the column headings) which years will be presented. It is a kind of generality, (good faith though it is) and redundant.174.3.98.236 (talk) 17:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
• [2]

• This is one reason why the clause about determiners ('do not use a, an, the')and 'do not end titles with a period' is important.174.3.99.176 (talk) 23:50, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
• This is one reason why the clause 'do not end titles with a period' is important.174.3.99.176 (talk) 23:53, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

One thing you should keep in mind is that even if you add something to a rule page, that won't stop people from doing it. People will use table and column headings just as dumb as ever regardless of whether you "prohibit" it on this page. If you do want to say something about it here though, I'd go with something very simple like "Table captions and labels should be succinct and informative, following the general rules for captions." The general grammar rule that sentence fragments do not take periods is covered there.--Father Goose (talk) 03:28, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Revision

I've looked carefully at the edits. There is one objection that I have with the version:

• The section == Content forking == should be taken out because it can not be categorized as what should be combined into one table and what shouldn't. Sometimes, there are so many parameters to a topic that a set of more related criteria should have their own article.174.3.98.236 (talk) 16:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The content forking section isn't in the current version of the page. Is anyone lobbying to put it back in?--Father Goose (talk) 00:25, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I was actually the person to write that section.174.3.98.236 (talk) 16:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

In that case, I don't understand what it is you're suggesting.--Father Goose (talk) 06:54, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I'm just suggesting we shouldn't have that in my version.174.3.98.236 (talk) 09:21, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's no longer protected, at any rate. If you've got some ideas for changes in the guidance, pitch them. If you've got minor fixes in mind, make 'em, preferably with edit summaries (summaries are that much more important on guideline/policy pages given how skittish people are about changes to them).--Father Goose (talk) 09:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to give just that much more time. I'm working on another project currently. I really exhausted all the discussion boards for comment wp:dr. The only one I haven't tried is centralized discussion.174.3.98.236 (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, dispute resolution starts with talking directly to those with whom you have a dispute. Your ideas for changes may prove to have consensus, but you need to persuade those who are watching this guideline and talk page why they're a good idea.--Father Goose (talk) 22:36, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

No Consensus To Have This Essay Promoted Into A Guideline

Here is the diff of this essay's promotion in to a guideline.

Here is the talkpage that proves no discussion took place about policy.174.3.99.176 (talk) 05:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Be aware of the principle that silence often equals consensus. In the three years that it's been marked as a guideline, no one has apparently sought to contest its status as a guideline.

I take it that you feel it would be better for Wikipedia if this were an essay page instead of a guideline. Why?--Father Goose (talk) 06:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

1. This page is great as a guideline, but the only reason this page exists is to limit it's use. If this was a guideline, we should see more clear guidance on tables.
2. If this guideline just limits the use of tables, then we should just scrape this page and put a notation in one of our broader guidelines.100110100 (talk) 06:20, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice if everyone followed the essay you linked. All of them reverted my changes even though changes were built upon my changes. Also, the essay is not binding, so noone listens to it. Thanks for the encouragement tho.174.3.99.176 (talk) 06:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, we could rename it to Wikipedia:Tables, along the lines of WP:LISTS or WP:LINKING and have option of broadening its scope. What more do you think ought to be said about tables -- bearing in mind that Help:Table is the right place for technical guidance?

One thing that you should also be aware of is the general principle that Wikipedia's rules are meant to be "descriptive, not prescriptive" -- ideally, this means that they describe existing community practices, and that they should not be used to try to compel everyone to do something according to your personal notion of how things should be done. (WP:UIAR is a good page to read for more details on this subject if you're interested.) That said, it is sometimes possible to pitch a new idea that just about everybody agrees with right away. Possible, but rare.--Father Goose (talk) 08:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Great point!:-) Here, I've mentioned the problems of this page, which were same as your concerns:-). I'm just taking a lot more time on this guideline b/c I am trying to read other guidlines to see if a move/changes would be appropriate for this socalled guideline.174.3.99.176 (talk) 15:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed move

Anybody got a problem with renaming this page Wikipedia:Tables? I'll leave the question open for a week to see if there's opposition before attempting to perform the move. (I intend to import a bit of the disambiguation text at the current Wikipedia:Tables page into this one when performing the move.)--Father Goose (talk) 23:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Note: Wikipedia talk:How to use tables174.3.99.176 (talk) 04:29, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Move performed. I'm also redirecting WP:TABLES, aka WP:How to use tables (which was just a disambiguation page about table use) to this page; all of its disambiguation links are now found somewhere on this page, in relevant sections.--Father Goose (talk) 04:16, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Objections?

Are there any objections to the inclusion of:

==Format== There are 2 table formats: *sortable tables *unsortable tables (this includes tables with merged cells) The reason there is a clear division between these two types of tables is because even when just 2 cells are merged in any direction, the table becomes unsortable. *There are tradeoffs for both formats, so use the one that: **conveys the most information **is the most clear ==Contents== *The title of a table, row or column should **be unambiguous, specific, and terse; **be [[noun]]s or [[noun phrase]]s ({{xt|Effects of the wild}}, not {{!xt|About the effects of the wild}}); **not explicitly refer to one another, unless doing so is shorter or clearer; and **not use {{!xt|''a''}}, {{!xt|''an''}}, or {{!xt|''the''}} as the first word ({{xt|Economy of the Second Empire}}, not {{!xt|The economy of the Second Empire}}), unless by convention it is an inseparable part of a name ({{xt|The Hague}}). *The final visible character of a title should not be a punctuation mark, unless the punctuation is part of a name ({{xt|[[Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!]]}}) or an abbreviation is used ({{xt|[[Inverness City F.C.]]}}).

?174.3.99.176 (talk) 06:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

It' easier to understand what you were proposing in this form than in the form above.

The "Contents" section you added seems far too creepy. How necessary is it to instruct people to do all that stuff that way? Can you point to any examples of tables where people are doing it "the wrong way"?

Definitely:

• [3]:
  • The problem with this table is it's title: "Top twenty green coffee producers — Tonnes (2007) and Bags thousands (2007)" and here is the revised version: "2007 Top twenty green coffee producers". The title is more succinct; both "Tonnes" and "Bags thousands" are already column headings, so it is just redundant to include them in the title; The time sensitive information common to both titles and columns of data are combined in the title. This helps to make the title more READABLE.
• Here, the title is "Attacks on Oil Pipelines, 2001-2004" instead of "Attacks on Oil Pipelines". The latter is preferred because it is obvious by the information in the lower hierarchy (that is, the column headings) which years will be presented. It is a kind of generality, (good faith though it is) and redundant.
• [4]
  • This is one reason why the clause about determiners ('do not use a, an, the')and 'do not end titles with a period' is important.
  • This is one reason why the clause 'do not end titles with a period' is important.174.3.110.108 (talk) 22:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Also cf. [5]174.3.110.108 (talk) 22:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The "Format" section has some promise, though I'd rewrite it as "sortable and unsortable tables", as a sub-section of Wikipedia:When_to_use_tables#Recommended_table_syntax --Father Goose (talk) 22:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

==Recommended table syntax== was removed in this edit, which I agreed with. We might need to "keep" it in it's own section...?174.3.110.108 (talk) 00:16, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I've rewritten and renamed it to Wikipedia:When_to_use_tables#Standard_table_formatting. That's a good place to put information about sortable vs. unsortable tables.--Father Goose (talk) 03:52, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

---

Are there any objections to me changing the html table to a wikitable?174.3.110.108 (talk) 19:09, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I gather that html was used in the example because html tables were actually being used in the field. I suspect we can just rip the section out altogether -- image formatting is just about completely standardized by now and whatever usage the section is trying to address is no longer seen anyway.--Father Goose (talk) 22:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Do you feel that way? Doing a ctrl+f finds that they are still using tables for page positioning.174.3.110.108 (talk) 22:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

hhmm i noticed the table is wikitable.174.3.110.108 (talk) 23:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

---

Any objections to me removing the blockquote format? It doesn't appear anywhere else on ANY page.174.3.110.108 (talk) 23:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Major rewrite

Prompted by 174.3.xxx's suggestions, I've rewritten the page almost top-to bottom. It contained a lot of out-of-date advice, like not using tables to position images (I've never even seen someone do that on-wiki), and did not do a good job of providing a general overview of table use on Wikipedia. I've also moved it to "Wikipedia:Tables" (from "Wikipedia:When to use tables"), as proposed earlier. We don't need multiple pages on table use -- just one guideline (this one) and Help:Tables for technical guidance.

It could use additional rounding out and expansion, but that will come in due time.--Father Goose (talk) 05:55, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes! Motion finalized! We DON'T need 20 pages on how to use tables!174.3.110.108 (talk) 22:22, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Nor eight paragraphs on why you shouldn't use tables to position images.--Father Goose (talk) 03:33, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

== Recommended table syntax ==

I love your new section. I understand what you mean by writing (in guideline pages) what is already done-by-editors (describing vs. prescribing) instead of telling what editors should or to do. And it just love how it reads.174.3.110.108 (talk) 22:26, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Sortable and Dates?

When a table uses wiki dates, such as the ones here, sortable doesn't sort as expected. My date format is DD-Month-Year, and sortable sorts by day first, then alphabetically by month. — Nahum Reduta [talk|contribs] 10:19, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

To me, that's not surprising; I'd expect it to sort any column alphabetically (or alphanumerically). You could try a post on WP:VPT to see if technical changes might be possible.--Father Goose (talk) 14:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

General style guideline?

This has been and still is a useful page, but it's never had a lot in common with the other pages in Category:General style guidelines. Since the page was relatively stable and short and served a purpose, I didn't mind including it in this cat almost two years ago. Now the page changes from month to month, and focuses almost entirely on how-to and editing rather than style questions. I'd prefer to remove it from CAT:GEN for now, with no prejudice against re-joining the cat when the page seems largely stable and largely focused on style questions. - Dank (push to talk) 15:32, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it changes that much from month to month, although last month it did undergo a complete revamp, since it was badly out of date and unfocused. At that time, I removed the {{MoS-guideline}} template and replaced it with {{subcat guideline|style guideline}}, following the model of Wikipedia:Lists. I'm not really sure what CAT:GEN is or isn't supposed to be, and as I result I have no stance as to whether this page belongs in that category.--Father Goose (talk) 19:28, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work on the page, btw. - Dank (push to talk) 19:31, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. 174.3.* also deserves credit for spearheading the changes.--Father Goose (talk) 06:11, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you:-)174.3.113.245 (talk) 01:20, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

thead, tbody & tfoot

I'd like to be able to use thead, tfoot and especially multiple instances of tbody in articles and templates, for their added semantic richness, and particularly to assist in wrapping groups of table rows in an HTML class as part of a microformat (this will also faciaite more specifically-targeted styling). Can we do this; and if not, do we need to enable an exiting; or request a new; MediaWiki extension? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:VPT might be a better place to get an answer to that question.--Father Goose (talk) 19:15, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll try there; thanks. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:19, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Positioning surrounding text

Here we use a table. Problem: the surrounding text (in the example: following section-title "references") does not start under, but next to the table. Any hint how to solve, or to find help? -DePiep (talk) 20:35, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Weird. At any rate, fixed: [6].--Father Goose (talk) 19:12, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Request for status update

Hi, folks. As part of the broader Manual of Style rationalization effort, we'd like to prepare to move all accepted MoS pages to consistent MoS naming (please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposed speedy move of non-MoS-titled style guidelines to MoS title style and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Rationalizing MoS page titles). I know this page has been undergoing a taskforce audit. What do you see happening with it? Demotion to essay? Consolidation into another page? Worthy of speedy move to MoS naming? Thanks.—DCGeist (talk) 20:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I can't see why it should be consolidated with another page. Nor have you suggested why it would be changed into an essay. Offer a rationale.--Father Goose (talk) 21:48, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Offer a rationale for what? I'm asking the members of the taskforce nominally auditing this page or anyone else actively involved in its maintenance and improvement what they see its destiny as. Didn't you happen to notice the multiple question marks in what I called a "Request for status update"?

So, what do you think about the page? Does it incorporate enough unique information to justify its existence as a stand-alone page? Is it currently of high enough quality to be a full-fledged Manual of Style page? In sum, are ya happy with it or not?—DCGeist (talk) 22:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I regard it as a "stub guideline" -- offering finite, but useful, advice. I can't see how merging it with any other page would improve it, and I don't particularly care if it's considered part of the MoS or not. That doesn't change whether it should be a guideline.--Father Goose (talk) 03:15, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

MoS naming style

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 21:01, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

When the use of Tables are Appropriate in a Wikipedia Article

Manual of Style Team (Tables), the WT:GAN group recommended that the below discussion about when tables are appropriate use in a Wikipedia Articles be brought to the Manual of Style Team.

There has been a lot of discussion in the WikiShips Project pertaining to when the use of tables are appropriate in a Wikipedia Article. One side seems to be arguing that there is never an appropriate use of Tables in Wikipedia Ship articles. I strongly disagree and believe there are certain occasions when tables are appropriate use in any and all Wikipedia Articles regardless of what area or topic. My understanding of what I've read about the Style Guile and the use of tables is that the manual of style clearly indicates there are always cases where the use of tables is appropriate in any and all Wikipedia Articles.

What I'm seeking is a ruling by the "guiding force" on tables as to whether the use of tables can be banned by a work group or whether the use of tables in a Wikipedia article is based on applying the style guide rules (i.e., if the use of the table meets the guidelines then it is appropriate and may be used).

I'd also like the group to indicate if possible if the following statement is true. Tables are appropriately used in an article when; 1) The information is best represented in a row/column format (i.e., is more readable/legible in row/column), 2) When the amount of information is large and does not lend itself to a narrative format, 3) When the use of narrative would leave the information scattered throughout an article, 4) When the information is historically significant, 5) When the information can to be shown to be commonly represented in table format (i.e., common use), 6) When the information contained in the table is related/correlateable (i.e., not random).

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations" Ussrangercv4 (talk) 19:01, 25 May 2010 (UTC) Ussrangercv4 (talk) 11:04, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Centered table

When would it be appropriate to center a table with "<center></center>"? Is it a case-by-case basis or simply judgment as to whether it looks esthetically good? _EricLeb⁰¹ (Page | Talk) 20:29, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

RfC on WP:Consensus

Given WP:CONLIMITED, to what extent and under what circumstances can individual WikiProjects and users customize article appearance with individual styles that deviate from site-wide style guidelines? (Relevance here: the question arises particularly in context of the use of color in tables.) Interested contributors are invited to participate there. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk)

Citations for entire tables without intro text

I was working on a table-only section (in Working time) that had a deficient reference citation, when I discovered that there seems to be no style suggestion for how to place a citation for an entire table when: (A) the section it belongs to contains no prose to markup, and (B) the table itself doesn't seem to have a good place, like a caption or a primary column heading, that should receive the citation. I couldn't find any recommendations in either WP:TABLE or WP:FOOT, so I'm punting it ([7],[8]) to regular editors of these two project pages. Any thoughts? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:05, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

table titles?

I'm used to tables in research reports being treated like the title of a work (thus all the important words capitalized). What gives here? Just curious. TCO (talk) 04:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Collapsible tables

Wikipedia:Collapsible tables. Any thoughts on when a table should be collapsed? SilkTork *^YES! 12:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

reading MOS:COLLAPSE seldom - but "Collapsible sections may be used ...in tables which consolidate information covered in the prose." GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:44, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

That's a handy link. It refers more to sections and text, though it does make that reference to tables that you quote. SilkTork *^YES! 12:59, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Rarely. It's apparently a problem for some users of screen readers, and clicking on stuff can be painful for some people with carpal tunnel and similar repetitive stress injuries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

RFC: restructuring of the Manual of Style

Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:

Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages of WP:MOS?

It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved. Noetica^Tea? 00:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion add a SIMPLE table example

Suggestion: add a very simple example table. (like a plain white 3 x 3 table with just text in it). All of the examples are more complex sophisticated tables which hide the basics. North8000 (talk) 11:08, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

There are simple examples (some extremely simple) of table markup in Help:Table, which this article links to. Since this article is a MOS article about when and how to use tables in Wikipedia articles, not about the technical details of creating tables, the examples used are "real-world" ones taken from actual articles. I think that makes them much more appropriate than any sort of contrived example.

That being said, perhaps the current examples do make it seem that tables are only "for" the presentation of larger or more complex datasets. If you can find a good real-world example of a "simpler" table, one which appears in an actual Wikipedia article and does a good job of communicating the information it contains, I don't think it would be inappropriate to add it to the top of the Examples section. FeRD_NYC (talk) 02:08, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I punched in lots of searches and never found that help article. What I was suggesting might be in there. North8000 (talk) 03:28, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Anchors within Tables

I'm currently working on a list article which has a table (I think it's a legitimate use of a table, several columns of information, no block elements in the table, most of the cell text isn't huge), but it occurs to me, that another editor might want to link to many of the subitems of the table, which while not notable enough for an article, are notable enough for a mention and reference in another article. This could be done if this was formatted as a section by section article, but then you'd have an immense number of sections. I'm wondering if it would be useful or wise to add anchor templates into one of the columns (this is the sort of table with one column with the name of an item and then several columns of information about the item). I'm also wondering if it might be useful to have a template "Anchored Table". An advantage with that strategy is we could do things to prevent abuse/simply adding anchors to tables, for example, this could be restricted to only tables where each row is sort of a section about one of the columns, and that column (and only that column) could be auto-bolded and auto-anchored. The "Anchored Table" approach also aligns with precedent since we have a template "Anchored List"

Beyond my personal use, I think that this could be useful for things like tables of episode summaries. Say an article on Joe Smoe wanted to say his last performance was in the episode "Joe Smoe Guest Appearance" on "That Show", well, if, like many tv shows, "That Show" had an episode list in tabular form, while we could link "Joe Smoe Guest Appearance" without having to reformat the list into an "Anchored List" (which might lose information) or a sectioned article (which may be unweildy)

By the way, if this isn't the appopriate place to talk about "Anchors within Tables", could someone point me there? Since this isn't a formal Wikipedia construct, but rather just an aspect of Mediawiki Wikitext, it's hard to tell where the right place to talk about this is. Jztinfinity (talk) 20:23, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Table Captions : Whether we use Links or not in captions

The project page Manual of Style/Tables does not provide information about whether the use of internal links in table captions are allowed or not. Shouldn't it be discussed in the page? Valchemishnu 08:05, 3 September 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valchemishnu (talk • contribs)

The current set of examples in this guideline do include some with such links. This implies that they are acceptable. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:37, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Should a key to a table precede the table, or follow it?

Should a key to a table precede the table, or follow the table. The discussion is here. Thoughts there would be appreciated. Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 00:26, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Can someone help me with a table?

Can someone here help out with the List of Pawn Stars episodes article, specifically fixing the Season 5 table so that it includes the colored lines separating each episode cell? This is present in the Season 1 - 4 tables, but I can't get it to show up in the Season 5, even though I tried copying the code from Season 4, and changed only the color code. Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 01:35, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Sticking the main row and Comparisons

I suggest developers stick the main row of the table while scrolling down until the main row of the table reaches the bottom row by scrolling... because in pages like Comparison of programming languages, We have to go back to the top of the table to revise the columns names even before we reach the middle of the table...

Also, We may need to make comparisons between specific rows like the one in the page mentioned before, that will make Wikipedia an easy, interactive source of information...

Thanks for listening.. --نديمك (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

rowspan and sortability

As of a couple releases ago, MediaWiki software fully supports sortable wikitables which use rowspan. Therefore, I believe the following sentence is obsolete and should be stricken: Sortable tables cannot contain any merged cells using rowspan; Elizium23 (talk) 05:58, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I know this is a month old but I concur with the above statement, I only noticed it on accident but as long as you put "wikitable sortable" at the beginning of the table, you can use 'rowspan' and the table will still be sortable. Just saying. :) xx Xpinkxcasualtyx (talk) 00:06, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this was ever acted upon, but it would make sense to tweak the wording. I'm fairly certain that even tables with rowspan have difficulty in that the entries in the cells within the row are only sorted within the row, and whichever row has the 'highest' sort, that simply goes first. Perhaps a change to "rowspan functions with sortable, but is not recommended". --Izno (talk) 22:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

strange error when wikitable and Template:Location map in the same article

I added a Template:Location map map to the German Air Force article and now the wikitable with the aircraft is all the time on the left and overlapping with other content. The map is at German Air Force#Air bases and the wikitable is at German Air Force#Aircraft inventory. Before adding the map the wikitable was in the center and the layout was fine as can be seen here. If I move the map to a random position near the beginning of the article, the wikitable moves again to the center... does anyone has an idea how to resolve this error? thanks in advance, noclador (talk) 21:36, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Maximum table widths

I'd like to know if anybody can give me a figure on how wide I should limit my tables to. Some users have complained they are too wide for them to see all of them. Fuse809 (talk) 08:56, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion on when statistic tables may be excessive

Discussion at: RfC: When is the presentation of statistics, such as with Weather box and Climate chart, excessive?. This concerns use of {{Weather box}} and {{Climate chart}} in most settlement articles, down to small town and village level. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 11:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

References

Something ought to be said about references for table information. I didn't find anything at Wikipedia:Citing sources or Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Tables. Here are some discussion points:

• The guiding principles are, in descending order of importance:
  • All information in a table must be referenced, as with any other information in an article.
  • For any given piece of data in the table, it should be as easy as possible for the reader to identify the relevant reference.
  • References should not clutter up the table.
• References can apply at the level of the whole table, a row, a column, or a cell.
  • References at table level should be in the table caption. If there is no caption, the end of the last sentence introducing the table may work; otherwise, add a caption.
  • References at column level should be in the column header.
  • References at row level should be in
    • either the "name" column of the row — i.e. the column (typically the first column) which identifies the subject described by the row.
    • or a dedicated references column (typically the last column). This is often tidier, but may make the table too wide.
  • References at cell level can be either in the cell itself, or in the references column for its row.
  • Note that adding references to a cell may affect its sort order within its column.
• If it is necessary to clutter up a table with lots of references at different levels, this may be an indication that the data is better presented in another format (a simple list, or running prose).

jnestorius^(talk) 14:31, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

consensus to remove or change a statement

I suggest to remove or modify:

Sortable tables cannot contain any merged cells using rowspan; extreme caution should be applied if colspan is used.

because rowspan is compatible with sortability. I'm unfamiliar with the subtleties of sorting tables with colspan, but this table is perfectly sortable while being complexly rowspanned:

Year	Result	Category	Award	Recipient
2008	Won	Choice TV Show Drama	Teen Choice Awards	Gossip Girl
		Choice TV Breakout Show
		Choice TV Actress Drama		Blake Lively
		Choice TV Breakout Female
		Choice TV Breakout Male		Chace Crawford
		Choice TV Villain		Ed Westwick
		Choice TV Show Drama		Gossip Girl
	Nominated	Choice TV Actress Drama		Leighton Meester
		Choice TV Actor Drama		Chace Crawford
				Penn Badgley
		Choice TV Breakout Female		Leighton Meester
				Taylor Momsen
		Choice TV Breakout Male		Ed Westwick
		Favorite New TV Drama	People's Choice Award	Gossip Girl
2009	Won	Choice TV Show Drama	Teen Choice Awards	Gossip Girl
		Choice TV Actor Drama		Chace Crawford
		Choice TV Actress Drama		Leighton Meester
		Choice TV Villain		Ed Westwick
	Nominated	Choice Music Soundtrack		Gossip Girl
		Choice TV Actor Drama		Penn Badgley
		Choice TV Parental Unit		Matthew Settle
2010	Won	Choice TV Show Drama	Teen Choice Awards	Gossip Girl
		Choice TV Actor Drama		Chace Crawford
		Choice Scene Stealer Female		Hilary Duff
		Choice TV Actress Drama		Leighton Meester
	Nominated	Choice TV Actor Drama		Penn Badgley
		Choice TV Actress Drama		Blake Lively
		Choice TV Villain		Ed Westwick

Xaxafrad (talk) 01:29, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Sporting results not optimally accessible

I question the consensus on the Sporting results table having the Outcome column be the first column. It doesn't describe the row. No. would be the best first column for this particular table, since neither Year nor Championship is sufficient in this case to uniquely define a row. Thisisnotatest (talk) 22:48, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

citing tables

Where do you put references in tables?--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 22:21, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I prefer inline references. They go with the data. Xaxafrad (talk) 09:50, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Consensus building RfC

There's an RfC regarding table layout at WP:FILMOGRAPHY. Any input would be appreciated. Xaxafrad (talk) 06:05, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Tables look different in different browsers

Tables look different depending on the browser. The current MOS:TABLE style will render with invisible borders in mobile browsers. The editors of Talk:2015_Formula_One_season found a way to fix this, but the fixed version will have black borders in Firefox. According to user User:Prisonermonkeys this broken by a update in the wikisoftware. This is wikipedia wide issue with all articles that have tables. See discussion at Talk:2015_Formula_One_season#Different_table_looks_in_different_browsers for examples. --80.223.129.187 (talk) 20:23, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm at a loss with regards to the question. What are you looking to accomplish with this RfC? Atsme☯^Consult 17:01, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

This is not relevant anymore. User:Tvx1 made a bug report about this and seems like this issue will be dealt over there so I removed the RFC tag.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T92913

--80.223.129.187 (talk) 18:03, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Not quite. The bug with the border= parameter I reported looks to be about to be solved. But the main issue that the MOS:TABLE style has almost indistinguishable inside borders for no apparent reason still remains. Tvx1 18:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

MOS:TABLE#ACCESS and infoboxes

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Accessibility#Accessibility_with_infoboxes on whether MOS:TABLE#ACCESS is applicable to infoboxes.—Bagumba (talk) 07:20, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Complex tables and Wikipedia

You are invited to join a discussion: Complex tables cannot be made accessible in Wikipedia and what to do about it Thisisnotatest (talk) 21:11, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Chronology?

I see nothing about ordering the items in the tables that are used within articles.

• I think that in tables where the date isn't relevant, items should be listed alphabetically. Randomly adding items out of alphabetical order is just a jumble.
• In tables where date is relevant, my preference is for listing items in chronological order, though others may prefer reverse chronological order. Even if no style is specified, I think an article should be consistent within itself. I just came from the article on actor James McAvoy. There are four tables inserted ---

  
1.) Filmography: Chronological order. 
  
2.) Stage: Reverse chronological order. 
  
3.) Television: Chronological order.
  
4.) Awards: Reverse chronological order.

Personally, I find the chronology flipping to be awkward and silly. Shouldn't the direction of chronology be consistent, at least within each article? Thoughts of others....? Thank you for your input, Wordreader (talk) 22:28, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Numeric sort order of column, bug work-around for mixed numbers and text columns

There may be a better fix for sorting mixed numbers and text column. But the "{{sort|##x|x}}"" template as hidden sortable string works.

This follow Tcncv's fix numeric column sort order work around -

>The problem is that a numeric sort is used only if the first non-blank cell in a column is numeric. Otherwise text sorting is used. In tables with a mix of numerics and others (such as the dashes used in the subject table), mixed results may be observed. The first sort may work fine, but once the non-numerics appear at the top, a subsequent sort will order the column contents using text sorting (1, 10, 100, 11, 2, ....). The only solution I know of at this time is to wrap some of the values with the {{sort}} template, specifying a hidden sortable string such as "001" that provides the needed leading zeros for consistent text mode sorting. For example, in the Rank column, replace "1" – "99" with "{{sort|001|1}}" – "{{sort|099|99}}".". Tcncv (talk) 08:37, 21 January 2009<

Use the (widest) leading zeros for consistent text mode sorting. For example, for sorting 0 to 999, replace "0" – "999" with "{{sort|000|0}}" – "{{sort|999|999}}".Yohananw (talk) 19:21, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Alignment of tables on page: policy sought

It seems that Wikipedia does not have a style policy on the alignment of tables on a page. Should this be explicitly specified as left alignment preferred (which is the default behavior with the wiki table markup anyway)? I just came across an article with a mixture of left aligned tables and tables set within <center> ... </center> tags and was looking for some guidance. Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 10:40, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Adjacent tables

Apologies if I skipped over it, but how do you create tables directly next to one another, on the same line? They are both two rows; one has two columns and one has three. If you need a visual, here you are:

Overall record	Last Meeting	Result
First meeting

Pregame line	Over/under
TBA	TBA

That's as close as I've been able to get it, but I need the table with white headers to be directly to the right of the table with red headers.

Any help is massively appreciated.

Thanks, PCN02WPS 03:06, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

I believe the css associated with the floatleft HTML class also includes clear: left. This is why you were having issues. I've removed that and added some inline float styling. Also, please do not use the align attribute. It is deprecated. For the use you are trying to use here, a CSS statement on the table element will do: text-align: center. --Izno (talk) 04:49, 3 September 2017 (UTC)