Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion/Archive 5

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Split

Does anybody else think it's about time to split this into separate day-pages, like CFD? ~~ N (t/c) 03:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

See a couple sections up. —Cryptic (talk) 04:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Majority is in favor, and there's a 369 kb page size, and a page per day has been proven to work fine on CFD and MFD. Hence, page is now split, for easier archiving and to counter frequent edit conflicts. Radiant_>|< 11:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I sure hope you already have a bot arranged to maintain it properly. —Cryptic (talk) 18:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
According to my talk, he doesn't. Wonderful. I'm going to try to have something ready by tomorrow. —Cryptic (talk) 23:36, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it's pretty awesomely amazing that even though you aren't necessarily actually in favour of the change (per comments below), that you're going to try to do a bot to make it work more smoothly, and further, that you think you can do it in *one day*. How cool is that? ++Lar: t/c 05:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

How should move to log work now? I cant see the point no to have separate logs for deleted and not deleted, just move the actual day reference from the tfd page to the archive page →AzaToth 19:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we should simply tag closed debates with {{tfd top}} and {{tfd bottom}}. This provides logfiles similar to AFD and CFD give. Radiant_>|< 21:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I've got an (only slightly evil) hack put together at User:Cryptic/sandbox2 and User:Cryptic/sandbox3 that adds <noinclude> tags around these when substed. This'll let us hide closed discussions from the oversized main page (you know, the reason why it was abruptly split and all) while keeping them visible on the individual logs. Good idea? Not? —Cryptic (talk) 23:36, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
And while I don't hang out around CFD much, I've noticed they put the {{*fd top}} beneath the section header instead of above it (as at AFD and MFD). I assume this is primarily to avoid the confusion that results when someone edits the section above. Of course, this is something that should've been figured out before charging blindly ahead with this split, but never mind that. —Cryptic (talk) 23:36, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Great job, Radiant!. Good to see you listened to the majority who have opposed splitting over many months, and made this irreversable change without prior notification. We could have just moved User templates for deletion to their own wikiproject, just like stubs were moved. -- Netoholic @ 20:10, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, no problem. We can still split out userboxen for deletion if we really want, but the apparent fact is that it will be impossible to delete any userboxen using any consensus-related deletion mechanism for the forseeable future, so we might as well accept that. Radiant_>|< 21:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Good to know a two-person majority of "Support, yeah, that looks ok" against multiple long, well-reasoned opposing opinions is a consensus now. —Cryptic (talk) 23:36, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Ah, so it's the opposers fault for not jumping into the discussion fast enough, or for failing to bold their opposition? Was there notice that a key aspect of the TFD process was being formally proposed for change? Did you give sufficient notice that you intended to do this split? -- Netoholic @ 01:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
    • No, yes, and yes. Radiant_>|< 02:33, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Please provide links to where and when those notices were posted. -- Netoholic @ 03:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Netoholic's Law
As a wiki discussion grows longer, the probability of an accusation by one user of another acting unilaterally approaches one.
Look, I've made thousands of "unilateral" edits, so probably have you. It's a wiki. Get over it.
Corollary
One can substitute any of the following for "unilaterally", and the law still works -- "against consensus", "mindlessly", "carelessly". Any of these words indicates you might be facing off against a wiki-warrior.
I have heard that consensus is not required. In fact, I think that a consensus of two is a marked improvement over some of the behavior I've seen this last couple weeks. Avriette 04:10, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Majority? Voting? Democracy? Close some debates and remove the backlog instead of fiddling with subpages. -Splashtalk 03:58, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of adult content template?

Personally, I feel that we should mark articles as containing adult content. Otherwise, some ackward situations could arise at home, school, public places, etc. -Sparky 18:27, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

You'll need to propose a policy change then. WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_censored_for_the_protection_of_minors -- Sneltrekker 18:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Let me just point out again that having a label saying something contains adult content is in no way the same thing as censoring that content. I really don't get why 6 of the 12 votes on this template chose to cite NOT, which really has very little to do with the issue. I understand how such a template might not be useful, or desirable, etc., but calling it censorship seems like a knee-jerk reaction. Or do you consider movie ratings and the like to also be a form of censorship? Dragons flight 19:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
This has already been discussed at length before (and is, in fact, a perennial proposal). See Wikipedia:No disclaimer templates, which has links to some of the other places where this has been discussed before. --cesarb 19:21, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Notes on talk pages

Would those closing debates where the template survives please remember to put a note on the template's talk page? It makes handling renominations much easier. Thanks. -Splashtalk 15:09, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I've added that to the instructions in the header. Please review my edit. --Adrian Buehlmann 15:32, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
It was actually already there, but in its previous form (as {{tfd-kept}}) it wasn't particularly useful without a link to the actual discussion. —Cryptic (talk) 18:34, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Um. Yes. My fault. That was the one I've constantly overlooked in the past. Thanks for straighten this. --Adrian Buehlmann 00:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Now that What links here is working again, I see that there are quite a few for {{tfd-kept}} and {{tfd-keep}}. These need to be hand subst. And currently the directions for tfd-kept are commented out in the instructions. Wouldn't it be dandy to have a nice example {{subst:tfd-kept|entry=page#section}} to aid folks?

And I don't see the need anymore for the result parameter (it's always keep).

--William Allen Simpson 17:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Should this be a messagebox? I've seen some messageboxen for restoration of deleted articles (perhaps hand-built, as I cannot find a template), is there the equivalent for TfD?
--William Allen Simpson 18:35, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I see that folks are busily working on {{oldtfd}}, too.
--William Allen Simpson 07:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Oldtfd works better, it's better documented, and consumes less screen real estate. I've rd the others to this and restored the instruction, highlighting subst:. I prefer the template name tfd-keep but I'm not comfortable with the history mess a move would entail. Perhaps someone else will be bold. John Reid 11:49, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps you should have read a bit farther down the page. Moreover, these templates are for closers. I'm undoing the redirects, which don't work, as the parameters don't match! You were bold, and WP:BOLD is only for articles, not templates. Discuss first! Wait patiently!
--William Allen Simpson 15:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Disallowing userbox nominations on this page

WP:TFD is being overrun with nominations related to these. Very few last beyond a couple hours without either being speedy kept or speedy deleted. I would like to hear opinions about whether we should stop accepting Userbox nominations on this page. Like stub templates, these could all be moved to the WikiProject, so that that they can be policed by the members. -- Netoholic @ 23:04, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't like the notion of "policing" or "members" and I think we should keep them here as a result; it's a passing fad. However, a halfway house would to be quickly move such debates, when they grow, to transcluded subpages and leave just a link here. Yes, that gives transclusions in transclusions, but there will be few of them, they only stay active for about 7 days and the whole thing will go away soon anyway. -Splashtalk 23:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Honestly, I don't see that the number of userbox nominations is really threatening the TfD process, and suspect that the increased number of recent noms will settle down in the coming weeks, anyway. But I also don't see much of a problem in handling them in the same manner as stubs, and there is logic in doing so. – Seancdaug 23:10, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
I have real difficulty with passing this off on the WikiProject, as many of them have been voting en masse to keep most of these templates. While userspace-intended templates probably ARE different from regular templates, I agree with Splash for the most part. This will eventually die down again; a new procedure is not needed, though new policy may be. -- nae'blis (talk) 00:02, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I think we should disallow userbox nominations here or anywhere else. Free speech on user pages is a no brainer and the costs of transclusion are negligible compared to the benefit these users give the project. "The seed of revolution is repression." ~Woodrow Wilson *Peace Inside 00:30, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Keep them here. No userbox is sacrosanct. -- Dalbury(Talk) 00:52, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely should not be spun off into their own project, or the decisions will never represent the consensus of the broader community. Just look at what's happened with stubs. I don't see a problem with a moratorium on nominating them at all, though; it's clear that no userbox is going to be consensually deleted in the foreseeable future, between the counter-Martin revolutionaries, the deluded newbies, and the hordes of socks. —Cryptic (talk) 03:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. Wikipedia: Stub types for deletion has developed a good process. They work to rationalize every new stub template against the mass of others, and remove, combine or eliminate those that don't fit into the larger picture. Having nominations for Userboxes put onto this page misses out on that big picture. Stub templates, when they first became vogue, spread virally around the wiki, much like these userboxes have. Today, the stubs are managed quite well. Making WP:TFD the battleground for stub templates was the wrong leng-term decision, and that is true for Userboxes. -- Netoholic @ 04:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree wtih Dalbury and Cryptic that it is better to keep them here. Johntex\talk 04:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with D, C, J – keep consolidated. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 05:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Move it to the WP. Jimbo wants nothing to do with them; they're not encyclopedic, and the userbox thing is a hobby, and not seriously used on any article-namespace pages; it doesn't make any sense to keep this kind of stuff here. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 06:43, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Please keep them here; people are already nominating less userboxen on grounds of it being fruitless. Radiant_>|< 23:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that the whole concept of userboxes has lead to absolutely nothing of use to anyone. I use the language ones, but I am not sure even they are worth the trouble. PhatJew 13:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

The debate about them has certainly led to far more divisiveness than any userbox has yet caused. FWIW, I think that they should be kept here unless and entirely separate process-page setup is created for them, which to me seems a bit of overkill. Oh, and I might like to preserve Netoholic's comments above - it is very rare for someone not heavily involved in WP:WSS to say anything nice about SFD! :) Grutness...wha? 00:18, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Blech

Who changed the closing procedures and the header on the page so that it's horrifyingly long and a mirror of the obnoxious AfD process? Which is to say, who is going to yell at me when I put it back to the good method that's served us just fine? Phil Sandifer 05:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Do keep the subpage-per-day structure, though. That doesn't add to the closure process. (I say this just because hefting the whole thing back to a non-subpaged layout seems pointless now we are here.) -Splashtalk 02:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
It's still instruction creep on a page that was working just fine. Phil Sandifer 08:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
That's why I argued against it (and suggested people close debates rather than complain about how many unclosed debates are making the page long), but the work involved in undoing it is probably not worthwhile. -Splashtalk 08:56, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I am happy to do the work - I find undoing instruction creep to be almost inherently worthwhile. Particularly instruction creep that was instituted despite many editors saying "Umm, no, please don't creep this up." Phil Sandifer 08:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
If you do undo it, please drop a note on User talk:Crypticbot so that it doesn't try to update the subpages at midnight. —Cryptic (talk) 13:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
The new structure is actually also better to the servers as there are now only a limited number of revisions per day per page. Also the merging of conflicting edits (which still must be done by the servers if sections do not conflict) is reduced. And last but not least the work to archive the debates is trivial as the article page for that day is already its archive. At least we could continue using the new structure made by Radiant (per consensus) until we have some more experience with it. --Adrian Buehlmann 10:58, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Phil - I'm not sure what closing procedure you're actually referring to as the "good method", considering that this page has seen quite a lot of changes over the last year. That said, please keep the daily subpages. TFD had gotten very large before the split, and a 350-kb page is unwieldy, hard to use for some browsers or connections, and leads to edit conflicts. Radiant_>|< 23:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Not to quibble, but the subpage-per-day doesn't reduce the download size when you visit TfD. It does, admittedly, reduce it substantially when you are viewing a diff on a subpage or saving an edit, but that's all. -Splashtalk 23:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Template deletion threshold

The reason I ended up creating Wikipedia:Supermajority is because I asked what the deletion threshold for a template should be after seeing one deleted with less than 66% opposition. However, I asked in perhaps the worst place to ask that question, and didn't get any actual answers to the question.

Therefore, I am repeating my original proposal here and on Wikipedia talk:Supermajority:

A template should be deleted if it is opposed by at least:
  • 67% of voters when two or more editors are using the template;
  • 60% if just one editor is using it; and
  • 50% if it isn't being used by anyone.

Comments? Please post them on Wikipedia talk:Supermajority Thanks. --James S. 13:43, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

No. We do not close debates based simply on numbers, as has been explained in very considerably detail at Wikipedia talk:Consensus. That's a massive policy shift you are proposing, and I'm afraid it's quite out of the question to do it here. -Splashtalk 02:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • TFD is not a vote, but a discussion. The rule of thumb for deletion has always been somewhere between 67% and 75% support required for deleting anything, but that's really just a rule of thumb. If one side has better arguments, they can sway the outcome more than any amount of voting. Certain policies make very good arguments (WP:AUM comes to mind). Also, it kind of depends on the closing admin. Personally I'm a lot less hesitant about deleting a template than I am about deleting an article (largely because articles are content and templates tend to be metadata). Bottom line, you can't create a clear line for this. Radiant_>|< 23:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

closing instructions

They don't appear to be correct as they ask the closing user to move the discussion to the log, where they already seem to be. I haven't been active here so am not sure if I'm misunderstanding, which is why I'm not simply changing it myself. Tedernst | talk 23:26, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixed →AzaToth 23:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Tedernst | talk 00:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Bad What links here

preserved from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

The what links here (WLH) is still very bad. Articles accumulate on WLH of certain templates. This makes the TfD process very difficult. For example we have substed and deleted template:ll after seen that WLH had stabilized. But obviously WLH of template:ll is still not stable as articles pop up now that really include the now deleted template:ll. Example: Al-Qanoon (permalink). Side note: WLH doesn't mark Al-Qanoon with "(inclusion)" even though it actually should. This makes the cleanup even harder. I'm working to fix now the newly appearing broken articles. --Adrian Buehlmann 09:31, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's clear {{ll}} was deleted too soon. There are still lots of pages using it. I'm going to be bold and restore it until it's really subst'ed everywhere. --Angr (tɔk) 09:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
It only takes a few minutes for me to find all the instances of the template from the database dump, unfortunately the newest dump is a month old so it isn't much help. If a new dump does appear I can sort it out though. Martin 11:43, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks, Martin. I've fixed those newly popped-up articles on the WLH for now. I'm again watching that WLH. If that should be needed I will happily return to your offer. --Adrian Buehlmann 18:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

See bugzilla:4549 -- Netoholic @ 11:05, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. I've added also a warning note at the holding cell on the TfD page. --Adrian Buehlmann 18:40, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm having some luck in finding links by adding "<includeonly>[[Category:Something]]</includeonly>", where Something is a short existing category. A bunch of entries will show up. Still won't be listed in What links here. We could use a standard Category:Temporary and maybe Category:Holding cell.

--William Allen Simpson 15:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I added Category:Holding cell and some things showed up in it, and I orphaned them. However, according to "Rick Block" below, categories added by templates won't update article categories. So, why did some articles not listed in What links here show up in the new category? Were they already in some cache somewhere? Do we still have to wait for an edit to most articles before the rest of the changes are seen?
--William Allen Simpson 02:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
An excellent example is to compare Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:4LA with its Category:Ambiguous four-letter acronyms. I've eliminated virtually all What links here, but there are hundreds appearing in the category!
--William Allen Simpson 06:11, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Templates

preserved from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

Is it possible to have templates automatically "update" on every page they are utilized on once they have been changed? (sort of like how when a category is added/removed from a pages info the hyperlink to the page is added/removed on the Category page). I don't really know much about how Wikipedia works, so my apologies if this is a stupid question. --66.229.183.101 08:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Templates do update on the pages they are used on, so the behaviour you describe already exists. --TheParanoidOne 10:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes they do update and there is no way to say no to that besides making an own template for every new version of a template (For example version 1 of template:book reference could be made at template:book reference/1 and protected forever). Templates even break the promise of Wikipedia that you can always go back to an old revision of an article. Example: on article Bill Clinton, User:NetBot changed on this revision the parameters of the president box on the right side (diff). All revisions after that edit of that article now show a good president box on the right side. But all revision prior to that NetBot edit show a broken box (example: revision before that edit). See also this message on wikitech-l and my talk with Rick Block on this (User talk:Rick Block#Some toughts about templates). --Adrian Buehlmann 10:44, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
So do images. Superm401 | Talk 11:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the template only updates once the page where the template is used is edited. i.e. Even if someone changes the president template, a president page itself doesn't change to reflect the new infobox until someone edits some aspect of the page in question. Thus, for pages that are less often edited, the alteration of a template used on the page often doesn't occur until much later. --66.229.183.101 18:34, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I can't believe you. Can you provide any detailed examples and steps you have taken (with references to wiki pages). BTW: Please create a login for yourself. It does not hurt :-). --Adrian Buehlmann 18:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
That's only the cached version. Changing a template clears the cache of all pages linking to it. [[Sam Korn]] 20:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
There are some things in templates that aren't updated, like adding a category (if the template adds a page to a category, changing the category in the template does not automatically recategorize all referencing articles). So a more complete answer is formatting information is updated when a template is changed, but information contained in internal database records (categories, what links here, etc.) is not updated until the page is next changed. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for clearing that up. --66.229.183.101 01:00, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Closing by non-admins?

Since when are these to be closed by non-admins? It's left some spotty dates, where the first are closed by non-admins, and later are left unclosed....

--William Allen Simpson 02:46, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Whilst it's not usual for admins to close AfDs, since they can be rather more controversial than the average TfD, it is ok for them close to TfDs as long as they are careful and thorough. The deleting admin must necessarily check for themselves of course. If someone is not closing all of a day, please do leave a note on their talk page; day subpages should never be removed from the main pgae until completely closed. Could you list here the incomplete days? I'll try to finish them off. Do note that some templates have not been deleted, even though their debates have been closed. This is largely because they need orphaning first (see the Holding cell at the bottom of the project page), but this process has been held up on a number of templates since Special:Whatlinkshere is not working properly for templates at present. -Splashtalk 11:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
It was non-admin Tedernst that didn't finish them (on Jan 27), but AzaToth and Cryptic took care of the rest on Jan 29. I'll keep in mind that it's OK for a non-admin to close these next time I notice things are behind. Easy enough to list in Holding Cell.
--William Allen Simpson 04:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Deletion process non-admins can onlty close uncotriversial Keeps. But if it is OK for us to close deletions and move stuff to the holding I will help out.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 19:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Non-admin's certainly can't close debates as deletes, being as they have no capacy to actually delete the template or page. Closing the debate as a delete and then not deleting it would be counterproductive. savidan(talk) (e@) 02:14, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

User does not trust Jimbo

This userbox template was speedied, but it may be worthy of deletion review. If there is another user who feels that it ought to be restored, I will list it for undeletion - otherwise I'll just have to make my own. --Dschor 17:27, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll say this once, and I'll say it again and again: why in the hell are we still dealing with userboxes at TfD when there's a Wikiproject dealing with it? Let them handle their own cruft. TfD is for Templates that Matter, not Usercruft. Cernen Xanthine Katrena 19:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
The wikiproject effectively serves to promote userboxen, and it is unlikely that they would consider the conclusion that they are, in sum or in part, harmful to the project. TfD is the way templates are deleted, which includes userboxen. --Improv 21:01, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
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