Talk:Totem (Cirque du Soleil)

Tour itinerary

I reverted the page back to the way I had originally set it up, but did include one of the edits made by 190.173.162.53 (bolding the current location). If someone has a suggestion for a better formatting technique I'd like to discuss it. If you look at the Alegría page, you can see how it was formatted with an extensive history. I took into account type of tour (grand chapiteau, arena, residency), year, and geographic location. (Brent.austin (talk) 03:19, 12 January 2011 (UTC))

I was admittedly neutral on your use of the colorbox scheme until I saw how it greatly improved the readability of the longer list at Alegría. The anonymous editor who often appears from IPs beginning with 190.*.*.* is the most frequent updater of these Cirque du Soleil itineraries, so convincing him or her to adapt to the new scheme might be your most immediate challenge. The only thing I would personally change to make the lists easier to parse would be to switch them from reverse chronological to chronological order. Maybe it's just me and how my brain works, but I have the damnedest time trying to find a date in a backward list! AtticusX (talk) 03:41, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

It certainly helps on the longer lists, although I can see how it can be seen as a bit much for short lists, but I like consistency. I was debating on showing the list in chronological order, but my thought is that people would probably want to see where the show is, or is going, which if that assumption is true, would merit being closer to the top of the page. I could go either way on this though. (Brent.austin (talk) 16:25, 12 January 2011 (UTC))

You're right, of course: many readers will approach these lists wanting to see where each show is and where it's going next. I think the lists can also serve valuably as a concise, complete history of each tour's trajectory, as Alegría already nicely demonstrates, for readers who want to know "Was it Totem I saw in Montreal on May 10, 2010?" for example. I am inclined to prefer chronological order in part because of its accessibility for the latter type of usage. Nonstandard presentations of data can slow down the average reader/editor, and in a simple vertical timeline of events, I'm pretty sure the "down" = "later" arrangement is the more standard layout. I feel that the distance between the top of the list and the bottom of the list will not be so large, even in worst-case scenarios, that a reverse chronology would significantly emphasize more recent tour stops, if that is indeed desirable. A reverse chronology doesn't even help single out the current location (perhaps the most important list item) by putting it at the top: in these cases, the current date would almost always be preceded by an arbitrary number of future dates. I do think you are correct in retaining the idea of bolding the current location to emphasize where the show is now; that formatting makes a lot of sense to me.

But actually, I think the strongest argument for preferring a straight chronological order is simply the principle of consistency, i.e., consistency with how virtually all lists of timeline data on Wikipedia are presented (as in articles about years and "Timeline of..." articles). AtticusX (talk) 23:07, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. I'm not fully schooled in the norms of WP, but really appreciate standards. I'll make some changes across the pages I've edited accordingly. Thanks! (Brent.austin (talk) 23:52, 12 January 2011 (UTC))

Re: the bolding of the current location, a small but inevitable problem with that is that its accuracy relies on an editor's willingness to continually update the entries in a timely manner, which is a bit much to expect indefinitely from a Wikipedia editor. So far, our anonymous editor has been very good about regularly updating the lists, but if at some point these lists find themselves without an active caretaker, I trust some future editor will eventually spot the issue and go through and unbold the out-of-date entries in all the Cirque show articles. AtticusX (talk) 01:09, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Tags I added

You will notice three new general tags I added. Obviously, these are only my opinions, but I thought that thos etags matched the problems this article has (especially the one about the article containing too much intricate detail. --Thehistorian10 (talk) 17:28, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I did see the tags you added. The advert portion you mention I feel is inaccurate. Yes, most of the material does come from Cirque press materials, but the additional embellishments in those articles have been removed in the article. For instance, saying something such as "Totem's storyline is a beautiful interpretation of the evolution of mankind" was re-worded to "Totem's storyline is about the evolution of mankind." The one item you mention is that there is a significant amount of detail, which I thought is a good thing in the latter portions of the article (not in the summary section, obviously). I do agree that there are a lot of details, but the details are in the sections of the article to which they pertain. Where would you recommend finding that balance of incorporating information and when not to? Also, in regards to the lack of opinions, there aren't any opinions, just referenced facts. Are you recommending review sites be referenced, or something else? I'm just trying to better understand your thoughts. Thanks for bringing this up and making Wikipedia better! (Brent.austin (talk) 01:33, 28 November 2011 (UTC))