Template talk:Ivory messagebox

Usage guidelines for articles? Are there any?
I was trying to find something in Wikipedia's Manual of style that covered use of message boxes in general and more specifically guidance on whether or not they should be used for article content versus notices or perhaps warnings. I did not find anything specific, although |Manual of Style/Accessibility does offer some general suggestions.

With regards to this specific template, on Wikipedia it is used |extremely sparingly so I am lead to believe it really is not intended for use for article content. Recently this template has become used in a number of articles and I am left to wonder if this is appropriate usage and whether or not there should be some guidelines within the documentation. There is not any guidance on Wikipedia's Template:Ivory messagebox? --Peculiar Investor 13:03, 30 October 2020 (UTC)


 * The difficulty lies in finding an appropriate template among the many available. This template meets our needs. If there's something more appropriate, we can consider changing to a different template. --LadyGeek 13:23, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Based on what I've read in BH wiki articles I would suggest there is not a need to using a template at all to add special formatting to the specific article text where this message box is being used. From my read it just adds colour for the sake of colour. Message boxes are generally used to provide appropriate notices or warnings about the content of the article, not to provide content within the article. My $0.02. --Peculiar Investor 13:35, 30 October 2020‎ (UTC)
 * For Non-US investors and ETF currencies and Simple non-US portfolios then yes, use here could be considered a bit unnecessary, and might be removed (though I'd argue that its use enhances readability even here).
 * In Non-US investor's guide to navigating US tax traps though, I used this template extensively to separate out mutually exclusive sections of the page. Unlike most (perhaps all) other pages, this one is constructed of sections that apply to particular investor types alone, and is expressly not intended to be read from top to bottom. The main objective is to indicate a clear visual separation of page areas. A thin line between sections does not, to my eye, provide nearly enough visual clue that you are moving from an applicable section to an inapplicable one. If you object heavily to the way it's done currently, I'm open to suggestions for alternative representations, provided they indicate clear and unambiguous separation of sections. --TedSwippet 20:51, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Addendum: If it is less the visuals than the use of this specific template that is the issue here, the same rendering effect can probably be created by replacing '{{Ivory messagebox| ...' with a single-cell table, for example '{| style="border: 1px solid #AAA; background: ivory; padding: 0.5em; width: 100%;" ...'. --TedSwippet 21:53, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Would {{tl|Mbox}} be an acceptable alternative? I have an example in Bogleheads:Sandbox (rev 23:33, 30 October 2020 UTC). The text borders are slightly different on a mobile device, but acceptable. --LadyGeek 23:45, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I suppose arguably these are not messages at all, just regular content set off a bit from other text for style and/or clarity. Also, the current implementation does not render links, references or notes well (see Bogleheads:Sandbox). For ease of future maintenance then, I have replaced all our (my!) direct uses of this template with a simple tabular representation, no templates required. --TedSwippet 23:58, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

{{outdent}}If you want to use this template in the future, I have revised the template to use {{tl|Mbox}} which is appropriate for use in a content page. A working example is in: Bogleheads:Sandbox (Revision as of 23:37 UTC, 31 October 2020) --LadyGeek 23:46, 31 October 2020 (UTC)