Rather than have all the content for item stats and the like saved as a .png, wouldn't it make more sense to have it as a template, which is supplied a few inputs and generates an interface identical to the one ingame? The advantage is that you wouldn't have to upload images or anything whenever a patch is applied, only update one or two values.
Also, is there any word on when Steam connectivity with the wiki will work again?
I agree that pictures are probably more helpful to most players, than a verbal description. But I think that Danjen is talking about making a template that generates graphics identical to (or similar to) the ones in the game. I don't know the wiki markup well enough to do this well.
Some work was done on that, but it's easier to take a screenshot of stats than it is to sit and count pixels for length. It probably isn't practical to try to make it look exactly like in-game either. If I find the link to what was done before, I'll post it.
Shango worked on a template for this. To explain why it never got adopted: In addition to the tedium of counting pixels for length, in those days equipment was being frequently rebalanced, and the few people with access to all the recipes were overwhelmed just keeping up. To add to the frustration, stat bars really aren't very good at conveying the stats of an item in the first place, so in the end we just went with the path of least resistance- screenshots. (creating templates based on bar length required taking screenshots anyway, for measurement purposes. It turns out that uploading those pictures was less work than extracting the numbers we needed)
Nowadays, things may have settled enough to make the stat bar template an option. Just remember that stat bars may not be very meaningful. In particular, the scale is apparently nonlinear: a 10% increase in the length of a bar is not the same as 10% more defense. That's an argument against trying to get exact numbers.
I tried playing with Shango's bars quite a while back (still in my sandbox). If you're interested in playing with the template the pixel lengths of the template versus the in game images are still listed. I don't think the Avenger example is still relevant since that image has been updated since I dropped that project.
The only data we have is "the pixel length of bars" which is so vague (and probably hard to comprehend to new editors) that pictures are a better option.