User blog:ToPhu31/Wiki Backgrounds

The Wiki Background. Always conflicted in what it should be, what should be in it, and most controversially, who should be in it. This is a problem that plagues the entire wiki's background competition, and frankly, it shouldn't be a thing at all.

Inequality and Bias
Now, this is definitely a step up from Lucario pornography, but, let's be honest here; would you feel positive if you've been left out on something quite significant on the wiki? I doubt that you would feel pleasant. Don't get the wrong idea here, I do enjoy it when I'm included, and I'm sure that if you're talking to people kilometres away from where you live, you would want to feel included, too, but when people are discluded, then it's another story.

People get jealous of others, and users begin arguing who is more entitled to the right to be on the Wiki Background, with one side talking about edits and the other talking about activity outside of adding categories or changing templates pixel by pixel or constantly changing the wiki badges etc. What this causes is an unnecessary and stupid argument which could be avoided entirely, and even though I love arguing, an argument this miniscule isn't something I'd be happy to participate in or see.

Some of you might say that this problem won't exist if EVERYONE was on the background, something which I'll address later, but it also wouldn't exist if no one was on the background. Think about it, something which allows total equality, and allows us to look at something more interesting than a clock that constantly point at 7:00 which is wearing a christmas hat (sorry).

However, many would simply add everyone onto the background, but this wouldn't work out as when we are browsing pages, the background is always covered by a clean, sheet of cyan with a touch of imperceptible transparency, and in most cases, letters typed in Arial font. To put in a simple way, if you're going to include things in the middle of your background, people are likely not going to see it. And this brings me to my next argument.

Visibility
I already talked about why visibility is a problem, so I'll cut to the chase; all of the wiki backgrounds we see have their main focus somewhat centered, whether it's text or profile pictures, it's all in our blind spots. And this is a problem, since we'll only be seeing less than 30% of the background, most of which is the background of the background. This means that only a small fraction of the work artists put into will be appreciated when the background is actually applied. Not only does this consume artists' efforts, but it also doesn't allow the full content to be displayed, unless you'd prefer minimizing to 20%, and let's be honest, no one's eyesight is that good.

We can prevent this simply by putting everything of significance in backgrounds to the side, which allows everything the artist(s) want us to see be seen. And no, I'm not suggesting for you to put every profile picture to the side.



Take this background for example, this is the background of the Harry Potter Wiki as of December 23, 2020, 6:18 PM PDT time, and it seems pretty empty, right? But, if you were to go on the Harry Potter Wiki right now, it would fit near-perfectly with the information. Even the discussions page, which allows most of the wiki background to be shown, looks decent.

https://www.harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

https://www.harrypotter.fandom.com/f/

Relevancy
This is insignificant, but using the Harry Potter Wiki background as an example again, what is the information given to us from the background? That's right, the Crimes of Grindelwald movie characters, indicating that the last major event in what their wiki is about was the movie release.

When we put that logic to our wiki, we could make the background the events of the current drama, like how the Gen 1s designed their background to be Poll War II (except don't put all of that in the middle of the picture). We also don't want to upset our inner MartySayz, so it is essential that we do not show any sides in the background, such as favouring Spyroclub over Swasimcool during the Summer Cup of 2019. Essentially, don't be bias and don't be useless.