Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

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Teban54
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Re: Do you enjoy researching tropical cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#41 Postby Teban54 » Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:47 am

Category5Kaiju wrote:Speaking of cyclones as they relate to Wikipedia, it looks like the website is doing a major overhaul with the Saffir Simpson colors. Category 5 storms are now labeled purple, while Category 4 storms are red, Category 3 orange, Category 2 yellow, and Category 1 light yellow.

Found the talk page regarding that decision in case anyone is curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... accessible

TL;DR: The change was due to accessibility concerns, as the old color scheme was often indistinguishable for color-blind viewers (and Cat 1-3 were hard to tell even for normal color vision, IMO). However, there were some controversy over the use of purple for Cat 5. They are in the process of designing and voting on a new color scheme that uses dark red instead of purple for Cat 5 - see the "Newest proposal yet" section.
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Re: Do you enjoy researching tropical cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#42 Postby AlphaToOmega » Tue Mar 22, 2022 4:45 pm

Teban54 wrote:
Category5Kaiju wrote:Speaking of cyclones as they relate to Wikipedia, it looks like the website is doing a major overhaul with the Saffir Simpson colors. Category 5 storms are now labeled purple, while Category 4 storms are red, Category 3 orange, Category 2 yellow, and Category 1 light yellow.

Found the talk page regarding that decision in case anyone is curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... accessible

TL;DR: The change was due to accessibility concerns, as the old color scheme was often indistinguishable for color-blind viewers (and Cat 1-3 were hard to tell even for normal color vision, IMO). However, there were some controversy over the use of purple for Cat 5. They are in the process of designing and voting on a new color scheme that uses dark red instead of purple for Cat 5 - see the "Newest proposal yet" section.


It would take me a while to get used to the new color scheme should they decide to replace the existing one. :D
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Re: Do you enjoy researching tropical cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#43 Postby Teban54 » Tue Mar 22, 2022 6:05 pm

AlphaToOmega wrote:
Teban54 wrote:
Category5Kaiju wrote:Speaking of cyclones as they relate to Wikipedia, it looks like the website is doing a major overhaul with the Saffir Simpson colors. Category 5 storms are now labeled purple, while Category 4 storms are red, Category 3 orange, Category 2 yellow, and Category 1 light yellow.

Found the talk page regarding that decision in case anyone is curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... accessible

TL;DR: The change was due to accessibility concerns, as the old color scheme was often indistinguishable for color-blind viewers (and Cat 1-3 were hard to tell even for normal color vision, IMO). However, there were some controversy over the use of purple for Cat 5. They are in the process of designing and voting on a new color scheme that uses dark red instead of purple for Cat 5 - see the "Newest proposal yet" section.


It would take me a while to get used to the new color scheme should they decide to replace the existing one. :D

The "Newest proposal yet" seems a lot easier to get used to, should it be accepted eventually. It does still make Cat 3/4 look like the old Cat 4/5 respectively, though.
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Re: Do you enjoy researching tropical cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#44 Postby Foxfires » Wed Mar 23, 2022 5:23 am

Teban54 wrote:
AlphaToOmega wrote:
Teban54 wrote:Found the talk page regarding that decision in case anyone is curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... accessible

TL;DR: The change was due to accessibility concerns, as the old color scheme was often indistinguishable for color-blind viewers (and Cat 1-3 were hard to tell even for normal color vision, IMO). However, there were some controversy over the use of purple for Cat 5. They are in the process of designing and voting on a new color scheme that uses dark red instead of purple for Cat 5 - see the "Newest proposal yet" section.


It would take me a while to get used to the new color scheme should they decide to replace the existing one. :D

The "Newest proposal yet" seems a lot easier to get used to, should it be accepted eventually. It does still make Cat 3/4 look like the old Cat 4/5 respectively, though.


I'd like to share my thoughts on the change.

First of all, I'd like to mention that it certainly caught me off guard because the day prior I'd gone through the articles for Typhoon Ida 1958 and Typhoon Vera 1959 with the old color scheme. While it does feel a bit weird, I'm personally not opposed to the change. If it's more accessible for colorblind people than the old colors, then that's great. I'm also fine with purple for cat 5, because that and some of the other color changes line up more with the scale colors for NOAA's Historical Hurricane Tracks (for reference: TD is dark blue, TS is bright green (somewhat similar to the new color for STS), C1 is yellow, C2 is bright orange, C3 is dark orange, C4 is dark pink, and C5 is purple), which makes it easier because once you're used to one you probably won't take too long to get used to the other (assuming that you weren't used to the old colors). Now this might be unpopular but I honestly don't really like the newest dark red proposal because well for one as I said it's very different from HHT's C5 color which is slightly confusing to switch between, and two, it's a bit too similar to C4 imo.

(Example of HHT colors on a track below)

Image
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#45 Postby Hurricanehink » Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:00 pm

So yea, it looks like the purple is going to be adopted for C5.
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#46 Postby Category5Kaiju » Tue Apr 05, 2022 8:07 am

I wonder when they will change the storm track plot colors to reflect the new design. The track images still retain the old colors for some reason
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#47 Postby ElectricStorm » Tue Apr 05, 2022 10:28 am

It's gonna take a while for me to get used to that new color scheme. All these years of Cat 5 being red. Now Cat 4 is red lol
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#48 Postby Category5Kaiju » Tue Apr 05, 2022 3:09 pm

Weather Dude wrote:It's gonna take a while for me to get used to that new color scheme. All these years of Cat 5 being red. Now Cat 4 is red lol


Image

Image

Image

If we got rid of the legends and showed this to people without context before the respective seasons, they would have freaked out :D
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#49 Postby galaxy401 » Tue Apr 05, 2022 6:14 pm

I'm personally not a big fan of the updated color schemes. Orange always seemed to fit for Category 4 and red for a cat 5. That's just what happens when I'm used to the original color scheme for well over a decade now.

During the next season, I'm going to do a lot of double takes for each storm since I'm so used to the original colors.
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#50 Postby DorkyMcDorkface » Tue Apr 05, 2022 6:26 pm

My personal favorite SSHWS color table is the one used on Weather Underground. Each color is distinct enough and the contrast between the categories works really well, and I'm surprised the WikiProject folks never considered using something like this (in particular bright pink looks much better for C5 than purple imo). Not sure how color-blind compliant this scale is but I find it better than both the table WikiProject is now using and the old one.

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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#51 Postby Teban54 » Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:41 pm

Since this topic is gaining traction again, I want to mention again that the WikiProject made a new proposal soon after the current one (C5 purple) went live. This is in direct response to criticisms of the purple color scheme that's live now. The latest proposal uses dark red for C5 and orange-red for C4.

They were voting on the latest proposal, but the WikiProject was involved in even more drama before a consensus could be reached, so the discussion has basically stalled. It looks like there was generally more people supporting the latest proposal (C5 dark red) than opposing it, but not overwhelmingly so.

IIRC, the idea of purple C4 and pink C5 was mentioned somewhere in the discussions, but was deemed infeasible because it violates accessibility again (which is one of the main reasons why the colors was changed in the first place).

Personally, while I agree that red not being C5 is kind of weird and will take a while to get used to, Cat 1-3 were difficult to distinguish in the old color scheme even with normal vision. I think both of the new proposals alleviated that concern to various degrees, and that's without even considering colorblindness.
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#52 Postby Foxfires » Wed May 11, 2022 9:28 pm

Teban54 wrote:Since this topic is gaining traction again, I want to mention again that the WikiProject made a new proposal soon after the current one (C5 purple) went live. This is in direct response to criticisms of the purple color scheme that's live now. The latest proposal uses dark red for C5 and orange-red for C4.

They were voting on the latest proposal, but the WikiProject was involved in even more drama before a consensus could be reached, so the discussion has basically stalled. It looks like there was generally more people supporting the latest proposal (C5 dark red) than opposing it, but not overwhelmingly so.

IIRC, the idea of purple C4 and pink C5 was mentioned somewhere in the discussions, but was deemed infeasible because it violates accessibility again (which is one of the main reasons why the colors was changed in the first place).

Personally, while I agree that red not being C5 is kind of weird and will take a while to get used to, Cat 1-3 were difficult to distinguish in the old color scheme even with normal vision. I think both of the new proposals alleviated that concern to various degrees, and that's without even considering colorblindness.


The newest proposal is harder to distinguish than the other one (the one with purple) imo, especially on a track map because the colors are closer on the spectrum. There's less of a difference between C3 & 4 that makes it harder to distinguish, and I'm not colorblind. I'm still boggled at how people keep using "I don't like purple, it's ugly" as an argument to try to override something to help colorblind people. As you said C1-3 were always hard to distinguish with the old colors both for colorblind people and people who aren't colorblind, and personally I think moving C5 farther away from red made some space to change C1-4 to be more distinguishable from each other. And now that they've moved it back to a more reddish color, C4 has to be a more orange color again, which doesn't help. I get that people are used to the old one, but things change, they always have and if they didn't we wouldn't be here on this site talking about it.

The thing about wiki TC colors on track maps is that I feel they need to be more different from each other than say, a track on HHT. This is because on HHT you can hover your mouse over a dot and get an intensity and time, while on the Wikipedia track maps you cannot. There is a legend, but that doesn't help when you cannot figure out if a dot is supposed to be the color of C2 or C3.

And one more thing: why did pink and purple not work for accessibility?
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#53 Postby aspen » Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:25 pm

I just noticed on the 2022 NAtl season page that all the storm colors went back to their pre-2022 colors (orange for C4, pale yellow for C2, white-cream for C1). And I was finally getting used to the new color scheme lol.
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Re: Do You Enjoy Researching Tropical Cyclones? Consider Wikipedia

#54 Postby Hurricanehink » Thu Dec 01, 2022 9:21 am

There is another discussion about the colors going on. We need to address this at some point, as the current color scheme still isn’t accessible to colorblind people.
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