The first post starts by some generic statement. In private communications in the past I have expressed some disagreement on some of the current guides regarding Calc functions wiki pages. Most of those pages by now have some content, so the original points I tried to mention back then would need much more work and multiple wiki editions now. Unfortunately, based on the lack of relevant replies in those past private communications, and based on the minimal feedback that this topic received until now, those general statements seem just some theoretical comment, perhaps some wishful thinking.
Now, regarding the specific wiki editions that were mentioned in the first post, it just happens that I am the “original author” of the wiki formatting that Ilmari removed.
For several days I’ve been awaiting for feedback on the specific mentioned editions in the first post. No objective reason was mentioned to remove the formatting. The editions seem to be subjective personal preference.
If someone would had contacted me to ask for objective improvements, I would had been open to explain the reasoning for the formatting that I used and, more importantly, to improve them.
LobaLuna summarized it correctly in the first reply. When I add some formatting, it is because I am thinking about diverse potential readers. It is not about some personal subjective artistic preference, and surely not to waste my time on some apparently random formatting.
The strike through is related to recent corrections to the RANKing functions in Calc (which I reported myself too, among others). After the modifications took effect, I could had removed the prior results for the examples in the wiki pages by replacing them with the new ones. But what about users of older versions (which are still in the wild, being actively used)? What about users of other implementations of the ODF standard? Do you want someone to report an error in the wiki, or to edit the page as if the newer results were to be wrong?
Instead of deleting the old results (which are still “valid” for most users), I used a common practice in most forums. In this case, I don’t want to make something “disappear” (especially when it is still relevant); instead, I want to communicate that there was something there and that there is something different now. I want to keep the old (still now and for several years relevant) information.
A new user will not care about the text that is formatted with strike through in this table, because the result that is clearly shown (just together with it) is valid and it can be reproduced with the very latest version of LO Calc and with the current examples in the wiki page.
I also don’t want to add details and explanations about the old results. Adding some reference note would be more distracting for most readers, unnecessarily. The strike through is enough for most readers to just skip it, dismiss it. OTOH, some reader that would notice that the current result is different in his/her own version of Calc (or with any other ODF implementation), would pay more attention to “that other result that is strike through”.
IOW, the strike through is enough but not more than needed for its purpose.
A potential improvement, considering its purpose, is to make the same old results smaller and with lower contrast against the typical background color of the “cell” in the wiki table. This additional formatting would be even less intrusive to a common reader, but would still be potentially useful for some other group of readers that can benefit of the presence of the old results.
Regarding the sorting features of the RANKing data table, it is also about the readers. It is an additional tool for someone that is having trouble understanding the different RANKing functions and how they work. Having a dynamic table can greatly benefit readers, because the RANKing functions provide a specific sorting order to unsorted data (generally speaking).
In order to understand the purpose of making the data table sort-able, you have to put yourself in the place of a reader that doesn’t know the RANKing functions and that is trying to understand them, with some difficulty.
In some cases, I have contacted wiki editors in order to improve wiki pages. I have made dozens (if not more) corrections to important mistakes regarding information in the wiki, and I have corrected typos and wiki formatting (so call “minor”) mistakes in the wiki too, always thinking about diverse groups of potential final readers.
Now I have spent some time writing this post (after I already explained it to Ilmari in private). Whichever negative objective point might exist to remove the wiki formatting, it has not been expressed to me, and I am not seeing it here either.
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