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Talk:Phineas Gage

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Former good articlePhineas Gage was one of the Natural sciences good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
On this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
December 20, 2005Good article nomineeListed
June 14, 2007Good article reassessmentDelisted
June 19, 2013Good article nomineeNot listed
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on September 13, 2009, September 13, 2011, September 13, 2012, September 13, 2014, September 13, 2016, September 13, 2018, September 13, 2020, September 13, 2023, and September 13, 2024.
Current status: Delisted good article

Odd citation style

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Is there a reasoning behind the strange citation style of this article? Why are some references demarcated by their "difficulty" while the others are listed as usual? Besides this, surely the letter system does not work as well as a normal style, as you cannot click the citation in the References section to see where a source appears in the main body? Medarduss (talk) 23:18, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

All I know is this is EEng's child. – The Grid (talk) 23:46, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I assume that defaults to "not going to be changed"? ~StyyxTalk? 00:44, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
More accurately, it means "will be changed if the editors who actually care about the article reach a consensus that some other approach will better serve the reader's understanding, but won't be changed just because some drive-by editor thinks all articles should look the same." As to the original question:
  • The For general readers section, the For younger readers section, and the For researchers and specialists section identify sources which will be particularly useful to readers in those groups who want to learn more about the article topic. The Other sources cited section lists sources which, well, will not be particularly useful to those who want to learn more.
  • The {{ran}}/{{rma}} referencing system allows sources to be organized in logical, useful ways instead of the chaotic, random mish-mash seen in most articles.
  • Where a source appears in the main body is trivially found simply by text-searching for e.g. [M].
Quite substantial discussions (found primarily in Talk:Phineas_Gage/Archive_2) led to the decision to do things the way they're done. Any other questions? EEng 09:03, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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I first encountered {{ran}} on this page and see more discussion of it here than on the template page.

The template which creates the manual superscript has a bug on the Minerva theme used by the mobile site. You can see it if you use these links:

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage?useskin=Vector2022
  2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage?useskin=Minerva

In each link try clicking the superscript callout links. In the first link, the desktop site has a tooltip and a functional link to References. The second and third links show the bug.

On the second link, the mobile site callouts for {{ran}} do nothing when clicked. The superscript callouts created by {{r}} and {{refn}} on this page will cause a popup with the reference. The popup is the expected behavior. The links from < ref >, {{efn}}, and {{sfn}} all create popups. The {{citeref}} template is slightly different and works on mobile the same way that it works on the desktop site (visible in the Notes section on: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse ); the superscript works as an in-page anchor link with {{citeref}}.

In the third link, the mobile skin (Minerva) is used on the desktop site. The tooltip still works, but something in Minerva breaks the link regardless of the desktop or mobile version.

I hope that this helps and that it is not a strange place to post a bug report. Rjjiii (talk) 02:27, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is above my pay grade. I suggest you post this at WP:VPT. EEng 04:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! Rjjiii (talk) 04:25, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just updating this thread. The rma/ran references now function on mobile. To implement a workaround, I needed to add "CITEREF" to the handwritten links on this article's references. As an unplanned bonus, those links now create the popup reference on desktop themes/browsers.Rjjiii (talk) 00:21, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A belated thanks for taking care of this. EEng 01:22, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:SANDWICH

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A recent edit to resolve MOS:SANDWICH issues[4] causes confusing placement on widescreen monitors. For example, it pushes the "Distinguished Arrivals" newspaper clipping (about a living Gage) down into the section where his skull is exhumed. And so in fixing one MOS issue, it causes a new one (MOS:SECTIONLOC). Wikipedia:Image use policy says, "The relevant aspect of the image should be clear and central." Sandwich concerns probably have to be waved on image-heavy articles like this to ensure the relevance of the image is clear to the reader. Rjjiii (talk) 16:07, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rjjiii, you took the words right out of my mouth. ActivelyDisinterested: re your edit summary here [5], I wrote SANDWICH so I don't need to "see" it, and the article's had this exact same layout for at least 5 years, and very much the same layout for 10 years, and you're the first person to claim there's an actual problem. If you'll specifify at what platform, resolution, and zoom level you're seeing the issue, and describe it more precisely, then maybe we can solve it. But the current layout it looks fine on laptops (with two different browsers), on WP's mobile simulator, on my own tiny-screen Iphone, and on a friend's Android just now. We're not going to mess that all up because you preceive the text column as narrow on one particular configuration you haven't specified. EEng 19:35, 2 September 2024 (UTC) P.S. I appreciate your fixes to the cite formats![reply]
Not really, as I said spacing Eth images out would likely be the best option. But I'm not invested enough to stand in the way if you want to go another route. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:33, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Spacing the images out seems likely the best option until you actually read the article and see why the images are where they are, at which point you realize that blindly spacing everything out in obeisance to a cookie-cutter guideline meant to be applied with common sense solves a trivial problem seen by, apparently, one person in ten years, but introduces a serious problem for everyone else. Unfortunately there's no route to go in if you won't tell us what you're seeing, on what platform. EEng 01:32, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the article's had this exact same layout for at least 5 years, and very much the same layout for 10 years, and you're the first person to claim there's an actual problem

I think that the sandwich has become thinner recently despite no changes to the article, with the deployment of Vector 2022, and then the deployment of increased font size on it very recently. For example, here are two screenshots taken on a 1920x1080 screen, which is still the most common desktop resolution according to [6], as a logged-out user with all default settings (I tried to find the most sandwiched parts of the article):
I agree that just moving all images to the right side is not a good solution, for the reasons you said. Perhaps you might come up with a better one, though. I would consider moving some of the wider images to galleries, or making the images and pull quotes centered, instead of having them float around text. Matma Rex talk 22:13, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, MOS:SANDWICH should be understood as a guideline but not a policy, because that's what it is. For this particular page, there are a lot of images, but they all serve good encyclopedic purposes. And they don't really lend themselves to being grouped into galleries. (Perhaps, there might be a few places where Template:Multiple image could be used to good effect.) But I don't think this is an urgent problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Sorry, I missed these later posts until now.) Matma Rex, I appreciate the screenshots; leave it to the geniuses at WMF to throw away 30% of the screen real estate on some stupid buttons. The density of images is greatest in the accident/treatment/injuries section, and the challenge there is it's tough for readers to understand the circumstances of the accident, and the mechanics of Gage's injury, without these images at hand -- if they're somewhere else I fear the reader is lost. Nonetheless I mocked up a gallery for the early sections, but it came out awful [7]. I just don't see how to do it without some images being too big or small, and far from the relevant text.
    Tryptofish, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about how {multiple images} could be used. EEng 03:01, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dimensions

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Hello eeng, I think the edit I did on this page was perfectly reasonable for readers who live outside the USA. The number I corrected was the diameter of the “tamping iron”not the hole. It’s normal to have a whole number which is the reason the Wikipedia MOS has centimetres for height instead of metres or millimetres, which is also the norm worldwide, so 32 mm instead of 3.2 cm would be normal outside the USA. The point of the tamping iron in the article is in millimetres. 6.0 kg suggests a very accurate conversion, You would not say I weight 200.0 lbs if it were converted the other way around, It’s a superfluous zero. Avi8tor (talk) 10:25, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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