User:Retro/Templates

My personal rule for templates is that if you can't find a template that does a certain function, keep looking. There's so many templates on the English Wikiped

User:Retro/Templates
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If my subpages inspire you to carry out an idea yourself or you have any questions or concerns, I'm interested in hearing about it!
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Goldilocks templating

My personal rule for templates is that if you can't find a template that does a certain function, keep looking. There's so many templates on the English Wikipedia that's it's quite likely someone else will have thought of your template idea before you. I do have an exception to this rule: if there's an obvious name for a template with a certain function, and the template's page doesn't exist, I will create that template. If there's an even better name, the template can always redirect to that name later.

  • Is there a header template for template docs that are related to deprecated WikiProjects? Templates related to deprecated WikiProjects should generally probably not be used.
  • I need a link equivalent of {{tl}}-style templates that displays a link with square brackets. {{Link}} is apparently ambiguous.
  • There must be templates for painlessly linking to sections with escaped characters.
  • There must be a template somewhere that allows for easily rendering "s///" style diffs.
  • There must be a template for formatting '{{{1}}}'; I wonder if I can find it. Ideally it would have a >=5 letter shortened name redirect for convenient use.

I really need an easy way to guess the name of the related category might be called. Category trees are so tricky to find exactly what you need unless you've looked at quite a few categories. Inevitably, there are too many categories for any single editor to ever keep track off.

Hopefully, I will become more adept in my knowledge of category trees, or improve the consistency of category trees myself.

"Not on article"

Here's something: with proper namespace conditionals, {{No articles}} could serve this function. I found it from looking at Category:Wikipedia categories that should not contain articles. (if this is expanded, Category:Category namespace templates will be unnecessary, and the addition of documentation would be ideal.)

While I was editing {{tqq}}, {{tqi}}, and {{tqqi}}, I found an issue I couldn't resolve; I was hoping to find a header template with the message conveying the template shouldn't be used in mainspace, but I'm starting to suspect the template either doesn't exist or is extremely obscure.

There must be a header template that has this message. I've tried quite a few names:

{{Non-mainspace}} follows an existing naming structure of Category:Non-mainspace quotation templates (though this only category containing the phrase "Non-mainspace"). I personally like {{Not on articles}}.

"Not on article" examples

Below, I'll start collecting some examples of how different templates handle this message.

{{Search link}} just uses a raw template similar to the below:

"Not on article" creation

If I created this template, I would want to ensure there is an option for additional information. I will study existing header templates to determine a good implementation for handling the coding and display of such information.

Merge-from/Merge-to redesign

The merge from and merge to symbols on Wikipedia

Appearing on:

I thought these symbols are inoptimal because they give no clear message of which is the merge from and merge to (an arrow with a diamond is easy to confuse, even if the direction and colors are reversed.) It should be immediately recognizable, even for someone who's only seen them a few times (I've probably seen them many times, so ...)

I wonder if size could be a better indicator:

  • small arrow into big size being the target article
  • big arrow into small size being the incoming article.

(I have figured out the trick; the symbol to the left indicate the page's status in regards to the move.)

TFDHOWTO notice redesign

TFDHOWTO original

TFDHOWTO redesign

A two column table is inideal to begin with. A header-section format would be better. The question is, should this then be split into columns for each track, or should track be an entirely separate section. I'll probably end up trying both, seeing which one I like, and maybe even proposing both at the TfD page, instead of only one. The ID's suggest I will want to go with a merged format, so that each step can be referred to by link. But there's also a hybrid format, with the overall section, but with the conditionals still placed vertically within them; that'll probably look ugly, though. But we'll see.

TFDHOWTO discussion drafting

I find the current TfD notice bloated and hard to read. Currently it's listed linearly, with several conditionals in each, forcing the reader to read irrelevant information, since a TfD can only meet one of the circumstances.

Template linking templates

"tl"-style templates may benefit from some merging. For example, {{tl2}} into {{tlx}}. To integrate {{tl2}} functionality into {{tlx}}, changing {{tlx}} to this will probably work:

  • {{{LANG|}}}{{{SISTER|}}}
  • {{{LANG|{{{lang|}}}}}}{{{SISTER|{{{sister|}}}}}}

I need to check the template parameter tool, though to see how often {{tlx}} actually uses those parameters. And I also need to understand if and how {{tl2}} substitutes (it includes some safe substitution tags).

{{tlg}} should have a shortened parameter set that allows bold, italic, and code as a simple |f=bic (where 'f' stands for 'formatting'). I'm unsure about unlinked, linked with subst (not quite sure what that means), linked including braces (weird, but I'd have to see an example), and linked with alternative text (this should probably just stay an alt parameter). I've also neglect to mention kbd

Some of them could probably be merged: {{tic}}, {{ti}}, {{ttl}}. According to their transclusion count, they are rarely used; they were probably obsoleted by some other linking templates.

The shortcuts link should report when the shortcuts are longer than the article title (silently in a tracking category).

If {{tl}} linked the braces conditionally on very short names, then {{tn}} would be unnecessary.

  • But it actually seems like it's been reasonably useful; 12370 transclusions.

why does {{Tlsp}} exist? What does It allows to specify a parameter mean? Why does this template show an error message when the sixth unnamed parameter is used? These questions and more will all be answered on the next episode of Meta Template Editing Trivial Pursuit.

Miscellanea

  • Design problem I notice in templates: Purple link on blue template header is unfortunate.
  • {{Planet}} should have a broader name if it's going to be used for asteroid articles. Perhaps it should be renamed to {{Astronomical object}}?
  • The TFD search says to search for Template:Example with square brackets, but the brackets have no effect on the search.
  • {{talkheader}} should have an option for hiding the bulk of its content so that it can be hidden when the talk page is rather full. It should always display the archive link and search. It might already have such an option.
  • {{User Talk Pages}} -> {{User talk pages}}: the standard sentence-case naming pattern. It's not that the pattern is required (as opposed to articles, where titles and sections titles are universally sentence case), but it makes it easier to remember the name of the template.
  • {{Polluted category}}: This should be moved to 'Suppress polluted category' because that's what it does. The name 'Polluted category' is uniformative and possibly misleading. Retaining 'Polluted category' as a redirect. Or perhaps I am mistaken, I need to look at this again and reevaluate. The issue with the name "Suppress polluted category" is that it's still ambiguous even if you know what a polluted category is; perhaps an editor could think it displays a warning when a category is polluted. I wonder if there's a more descriptive name to change to.
  • Template:Internal search templates common doc: This "template" is pretty obscure, particularly because of the name. I suspect this is reflected in the view count. It could probably be merged into the Search template's documentation (and the link to it removed from the search template).
  • {{Search links}} could probably use a module at this point, especially with all the anonymous parameter repetition in the template.
  • {{Tweet}} is interesting in the way it displays on the page.
  • {{NR}}/{{nr}}: A redirect uncommonly used for {{Unreferenced}}; I think it should target {{No redirect}} (but I suppose there's already {{-R}}/{{-r}})
  • {{No redirect}} should probably not be directly used on articles. It should also have the little redirect boxes that list all the redirects (I wonder if those can be placed by bot (with review), now that we have a redirect listing tool... One thing to check for is usage; obviously unused redirects should be removed, unless they really seem okay. I could check the source code of Rdcheck to determine that.) Shortcut should be placed high on the page, additionally (this should be a general matter of standard (it should always be placed the highest).
  • {{History}}: There's a better word to use than simply text; I would quality the second parameter with piped, so it would be "piped text".
  • {{Incorrect redirect template}}: The name is a bit general for its function. I wonder if there's a name that could better communicate its function.
  • {{Edit}} should have a notice discouraging use on mainspace (I can't see many cases where it would be applicable). I also think it might be good to relate {{Edit}}/{{History}}, and related together in some way on the template documentation pages, since they are closely related as fundamental Wikipedia links.
  • {{Edit templates}} and the rest of the Category:documentation shared content templates (an awkwardly named category, in my opinion) are interesting because they are meta-templates, and so don't directly contribute to content. Fortunately, it seems unlikely meta-meta-templates will be useful anywhere. I can imagine myself creating some templates in this category in the future where needed.
  • {{Startswith}} should be created; {{Endswith}} exists after all. It would probably invoke a lua module.
  • {{Base convert}} should exist as a redirect to {{hex2dec}}. But I guess base conversion is a bit more general than solely hexadecimal to decimal. This could actually be a root template, and {{hex2dec}} could become a child of sorts.
  • {{Substitution}}: This spread reminds me of a previous TfD, I think it was related to {{See also}} templates.
    • This use strikes me as problematic, because this is common enough that this functionality should be templated, not raw-inserted into a parameter.
    • It probably is commonly used; I wonder if it actually merits the currently existing separate template, or a parameter addition to {{Substitution}}.
    • I could add a parameter {{{r from}}} that creates the redirect notice if its value is 'yes'.
    • Actually, these should be using {{Nosubst}}, with such a custom parameter; {{Substitution}} is generic. I want to investigate this further.
    • These templates will probably eventually require clarification at TfD, especially with some extra parameters.
    • {{List of subst helper templates}} is used on {{Nosubst}}; it should be used on all subst-related templates.
  • I want to type {{Talk quote inline}} faster than simply using {{tq}} with parameters. {{tqqi}} already exists; it would be reasonably to also create {{tqq}} and {{tqi}} with See also links to all the parameter combinations. Oh actually, {{tqq}} is the only one missing.
  • On {{procedural policy}}, User:Coutin-Kelikaku is categorized as a policy. It should only categorize pages in userspace. I'll use the special error template that was on the Unicode redirect template.
  • Template:Technically indistinguishable: Based on this, it means technical evidence has found two accounts to be connected.
  • VitalArticles: I didn't know had existed before I stumbled upon it on 2019-03-05. It really needs more visibility. My main idea for doing so is having numbered bullet icons similar to how GA and FA have stars and plus sign bullet icons.
  • {{Talk page info}}: This often hides information that may be relevant. I suspect collecting more information in broader templates could mitigate some of the spacing issues. The see also highlights two pages where this is used, And they are long. At least I think it should be redefined to have 100% width-fit.
  • {{Tag}}: Is uncategorized
  • I wonder about green backgrounded quote boxes, like in Mao's article.
  • {{EP}}: This should be categorized better. Category:Image with comment templates seems vague to me.
  • {{Srlink}}: What does this template do that other templates do not? I think it may be outdated, but I have to investigate in detail. It has fewer than 50 revisions, and is not even template protected. I am gradually more suspicious that this is unused. But this is related to a guideline, so I might want to avoid TfDing it until I get my topic ban appealed.
  • {{Close}}: {{for}}
  • {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}: When there's only one template inside it, it's unnecessary. Like on Template talk:View.
  • {{Welcome to Wikipedia}} seems a bit excessive, but it may be difficult to find good things to remove. And excess might not be that bad; after all, it's a single talk message, not a banner that appears on the top of the talk page.
  • {{Infobox video game}}: |released= seems insufficient for games that are continually updated. Most games have a primary release date, with possible later patches that fix bugs, and maybe some later DLC that add content. However, other games are on a continual release cycle, where only including a single release date is misleading, and does not properly communicate that the game continues to receive substantial updates (the example I came across is Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.) Should raise issue on talk page, possibly, though maybe further investigation beforehand would be ideal.
  • {{Cite AV media}} has both |time= and |minutes=; I find this problematic because it's unclear when to choose between them. Also "Event occurs at <time>" is sometimes inaccurate or misleading; not every time stamp is an "event".
  • {{Overcolored}}/{{Overcoloured}}: Why are there two separate templates? I should TFD this with suggested merge with redirect to 'Recolored'
    • {{Cleanup colors}} seems like it could be merged with a more general accessibility template, and the category chosen here seems questionable.
    • Ah, but it's to automatically handle ENGVAR... I wonder if that's proper. Really, the self references are outside of the scope of the particular article's nationality to me.
  • Backlinks should be on WhatLinksHere as an external tool.
  • I wonder how used {{Links}} works? Since it's not template protected, good alternatives probably already exist. It only has 12 transclusions.
  • {{TC}} could have |ns= as an alias for something else.
  • There needs to be a link counting template. I've bookmarked a folder of promising names.
  • Portal:Mario: has a link to Wikiproject:Nintendo, but Nintendo is now only a task force of the video games project.
  • [1]: Why didn't my anchor work? The parenthesis seem to be the problem. Here's the thing, it *claimed* not to work, but I was able to get an actual article occurence to work, so I suspect it's an issue with the tool and parenthesis. Another Phabricator report. But I should work with it in my own test pages.
  • {{Pow}} should have a see also for mathematical powers formatting. {{Power}} doesn't exist. (I'm looking specifically at Symmetry in mathematics, but there are undoubtably many similar cases.)
  • Template:Update (was previously on GitHub)
    • The "needs update" tag title text is not general enough; it asserts an "event", but in a case I saw, it referred to Github changing management strategy
    • Or possibly it was not the most appropriate tag for that context.
    • Ugh, now I can't find the tag on the page; it's probably been updated. I need a way to search through revision history. I wonder if WikiBlame will work?
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games:
    • It seems to me that the majority of edits to this page are IP vandalism; semi-protection could help.
    • I should look up how to request semi-protection.
    • Also, it might not *actually* be worth it if edits are so sparse.
  • {{Unsigned}} should allow |date= as an alias.
  • {{Rdcheck}}: This should exist. I wonder if there's an external tools category.
  • The way this editing is going, we could just write a bot to automatically remove images without sufficient rationale: [2]
  • {{Composition histogram}} is not really a "progress template"; perhaps the rest of these supposed "progress" templates should be more specifically sorted
  • {{wi}}: Huh, interesting "soft redirect" to Wiktionary. It doesn't look like a soft redirect, but it is. I think the template could be slightly more explicit, since I as an experienced user should be able to easily interpret it. Or maybe I'm just bad at reading.
  • Template:ArbComOpenTasks
    • The template talk has multiple archive links.
    • Oh wow, the template is actually inconsistent, with three separate words 'Date', 'Posted', and 'Date Posted'.
    • Is there an actual rationale for this, or is it just inconsistent?
  • {{Disambiguation}}: Should display the related templates and parameters side by side to compare and note redundancies. Perhaps all such templates could eventually be merged, to just operate as parameters to the primary topic.
  • {{Overquoted}}: should probably be the primary page; at minimum, mention in the shortcuts list.
  • {{Maintenance category}} vs. {{template category}}: Are the phrasing differences warranted or not?
  • There should be a meta-meta-template to organize all the meta-templates.
  • Category:Talk namespace quotation templates: I find this category overly prescriptive in how the templates should be used in its description and name. I don't believe this is how they've actually been used; they're used quite successful in some (non-talk) project namespace pages. Perhaps a CfD is in order.
  • I find unnecessary italicized text makes a page harder to comprehend, because your eyes can just glaze over it, but {{Category explanation}} seems to encourage such text. I've only looked at this example so far.
  • {{BLP sources}} apparently doesn't support |section= (which could have a value of "=y", though I guess it's redundant when "section" can just be entered by itself to do the same thing), but other similar maintenance templates do.
  • Substitute template inline conditionals should be checked that they consistently have a subst notice and vice versa.
  • Category:Documentation shared content templates should probably be in Category:Wikipedia metatemplates
  • {{List}} should probably have a hatnote mentioning {{Ordered list}} and {{Unordered list}}.
  • The hide button for the top table of {{Template-linking templates}} scrunches the text in a weird way.
  • Should hatnotes be before or after header templates? I dislike the gap between hatnotes and prose when there are multiple hatnotes, but am fine when there's only 1 hanote. Ultimately, it's probably a trivial issue that's not worth standardizing.
  • I wonder if there's a way to generalize the display of cell-based templates and check it across the wiki. It probably can't be generalized with a template for technical order-of-execution parsing reasons, but there may be a way to check for cell templates missing bad displays like: Special:Diff/893586732, Special:Diff/893586724, Special:Diff/893586709, Special:Diff/893586707, Special:Diff/893586704, Special:Diff/893586695 Table cell templates should have a category tree, probably with Category:Table cell templates at the top. I wonder if such a category already exists.
  • Template:User A-class: Should have a userbox-specific category. It uses {{Userbox}}, so perhaps a category should be managed at that level. But even if that's not technically feasible, the use of {{Userbox}} still provides a convienant searching mechanism for userboxes missing categorization.
  • {{tfdnotice}}
    • You are invited to comment on the discussion
    • What else would we be commenting on? This text is verbose.

Templates requesting consultion before making changes

Mostly, this is for bot maintenance purposes; sometimes it's a WikiProject.

One search to start:

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