Template talk:HD/Archive 1

Template background color

I don't think the template's background color is a good choice. It brings too much attention to the template. Something like a white background might be more appropriate, and maybe with a colored margin, similar to {{cleanup}}. Gary King (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to do it yourself, my internet cuts out every 30 seconds (approx). ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 21:21, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

{{Cleanup}} uses {{ambox}} and I was just going to suggest its use. Something like:

Thoughts? It would also be nice if we could add additional text beyond the boilerplate. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I created a sandbox version. See Template:HD/testcases. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:40, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I beat you to it. I've changed the style of the real ones, but the parser functions needed for the additional text have got me stumped! ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 18:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how this is any less attention-attracting - if anything, the bright colors make it worse. The amboxes are HUGE when used on the Help Desk, and they seem to make things really cluttered, and blatantly obvious that these are boiler-plate responses. Could we knock this down to a simple icon + text like "question" and "note" are? That'll make it easier for people to add signatures afterward as well, which would definitely help with the presence of the "Please sign your posts" code. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 20:20, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

How about this: This page is for questions about using Wikipedia. Consider asking this question at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer any question in the universe except how to use Wikipedia, since that is what this Help Desk is for. Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. You could always try searching Wikipedia for an article related to the topic you want to know more about. I hope this helps. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I was going to say I thought the boxes (both coloured and white) were pretty obtrusive, but it seems Gadget850 has beaten me to it. ... I like the simple icon version Gadget proposes. Astronaut (talk) 23:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes- ambox did not work as well as I thought it might, but I would like more discussion and consensus before making more changes. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 00:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, what's proposed above was exactly what I was looking for - something like {{AIV}}, {{UAA}}, or {{RFPP}}. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:58, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Any thoughts on the view • talk • edit links? I like having these, but I suspect they will confuse new users. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I chose the least confusing style, and it doesn't seem too confusing (but I've been around a while). What do you suggest we do? ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 14:41, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted the backgrounds and resized the images. ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 14:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Hersfold has a good point- we should be consistent across a series of related templates unless there is a real good reason to deviate. I know what the vde links are, but many of the folks who come here are neophytes. I removed them in the sandbox- see Template:HD/testcases. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Done...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 15:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Blatantly obvious boilerplate responses: by all means, yes

I don't understand the objection to making our boilerplate responses blantantly obvious. I think we want to make our boilerplate responses blatantly obvious. Here are my reasons:

Transparency. Wikipedia's great strength is how easy it is to figure out what is going on. Canned responses should look different than hand-written responses, because they are different, in keeping with the general transparency of Wikipedia.
- One of the most annoying features of the World Wide Web in general is how most Web sites deliberately obscure how they work. In the early days of the Web, the HTML of a page told most of the story, making it easy to learn from other people's work. Wikipedia is like a return to that, and we should defend this principle by making it easy for other people to see what we did.
No shame. We should be proud of our canned responses. We are showing the world that we use Wikipedia's built-in tools to build more tools that help us make the Help desk more efficient. Wikipedia's efficiency is the key to making the whole project work. Wikipedia runs on a shoestring budget because we are incredibly efficient.
Lots of users have had these questions. A questioner should learn that he or she just asked a question that is a frequently asked question. Wikipedia is the world's largest do-it-yourself project. The only way it can work is if most users learn how to look up most of their own answers. Everybody must learn to pull their own weight here, and quickly, or the project will collapse. The sooner we alert users to the existence of frequently asked questions, and how to look up the answers, the sooner those users will become productive, self-sufficient editors.
Easier for the "regulars" to ignore. The person who asks a question is not the only person who reads the answer. Other Help desk volunteers also read the answers, to check for errors and see if there is more to add. Generally, canned answers require less oversight, because presumably we have already checked the canned answers. Help desk volunteers need to focus on the hand-written answers of other Help desk volunteers. This is easier to do when the canned stuff looks different than hand-written stuff. If we make the canned answers look like hand-written answers, then the canned answers start to obscure hand-written answers, making it easier for mistakes to slip in and escape notice. The presence of canned answers encourages other Help desk volunteers to stop paying attention, so we should help them pay attention to the stuff that still needs attention.
Training new volunteers. The Help desk must constantly attract and train new volunteers, to handle growth in questions, and to make up for experienced volunteers who move on to other work. New volunteers will generally learn how to answer questions by reading the answers of other volunteers. If we disguise our canned answers to obscure their canned nature, we make it a little harder for new volunteers to learn to answer questions.
- I think we could argue that training new volunteers is even more important than optimizing the experience for users who come to the Help desk for free help, because without a constant supply of new volunteers, eventually there will be no help available. Therefore I think it is more important to preserve the view-talk-edit links in our canned answers, because the benefits of training new volunteers outweigh the small potential cost of confusing a new user. New users are going to be confused by lots of things on Wikipedia anyway, so until we have some evidence to suggest the view-talk-edit links are actually hurting someone, we should keep them in. Or keep in some sort of an identifying mark.
  - Instead of the potentially confusing view-talk-edit links, we might add this text in a small font: "This is a standard response template" and link that text to a page that explains what our standard response templates are all about. If other editors like that idea, I can help write that page.

These are just my opinions. I don't want to fight a war over this. But I gave reasons for my opinions. I'd like to see reasons to support the opposing opinions. Not liking something is not really a reason - it must be possible to argue in terms of what is good or not good for the Wikipedia project. --Teratornis (talk) 20:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Sounds pretty good. Maybe a simple border, rather than a bright margin or background colour would be best? That's just my opinion - I only made the template, and have no control over it, but whatever comes out top here - I'll see it gets done. ...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 15:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I think a good point was made above that the class of help desk responses should have a consistent look. {{AIV}}, {{UAA}} and {{RFPP}} are all mature templates: I don't see an overriding need to deviate. The icon makes it pretty clear that is is an "official" response, and by not using the box it is easy to add supplemental text. In response to new volunteers: I've been on WP for almost three years and only learned of the Reference Desk a few months ago and of the Help Desk only very recently. Established editors may be only peripherally aware of these resources. A better solution would be to solicit an article in the Signpost. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:43, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I've alwars wanted to write for the signpost - I'll give it a try. (Or do I have a COI? ;) )...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 16:04, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Ref desk

Can the Ref Desk param be modified to indicate which Desk is perhaps most appropriate? Astronaut (talk) 23:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

We can add extended RD parameters: RDCOMP for Computing, RDSCI for Science and the like. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 00:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

It might be an idea to keep the plain RD as well in case the answerer doesn't know which desk is best :-) Astronaut (talk) 01:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Yep, and it is already in use. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 01:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

See Template:HD/testcases. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Done...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 15:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Subst

There has been some back and forth on substing this template. This template uses switches, thus the entire template is included making for a very long chunk of code in the reply. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:46, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Just throwing this out there, but this template is just about 10 kB and makes use of an array containing over 20 variables. That may not seem like much, but considering this: it's being transcluded 8 times just under today's current date header (assume that it will be at least 10 times by the time we hit the end of the day), when that day's questions are eventually moved to archives the transclusion depth of the template will double (a transclusion, inside a transclusion, wrapped in a 10 kB IF statement). That means we wind up with an archive page that is transcluding at least 100 kB worth of text (not counting the actual questions and answers) that bring us 1/4th of the way to the maximum recommended page size, and that page is being transcluded directly onto the help desk along with 3 other days worth of active questions (which in turn will contain 10 or 11 template calls per day, which brings us up to 400 kB. Add any actual questions or answers into the mix and we're way over the recommended size limit).--VectorPotential Talk 12:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

We had a problem many months back at the reference desk where our header had become so filled with mulitlevel transclusions and parser functions that Scsbot (talk · contribs), the bot currently responsible for archiving the help desk and the reference desk (preceded by RefDeskBot (talk · contribs), and before that by Vector Potential (talk · contribs) (I am of course not a bot, which is why it took almost a half an hour to archive the desks back then)), was incapable of processing the edits necessary to complete the archive. The solution we came up with was very simple, we temporarily stopped using our header(Which by the way, hats off to froth (talk · contribs) was a very well written template, complete with 10 layers of parser function, arrays and variables. The only reason it stopped working was because wikipedia changed the way it handled parser functions) and replaced it with a static version. This change was eventually reversed once we were able to reduce the density of the coding in the header, and everything worked out for the better. If you want to open this discussion up to a wider audience, I might suggest taking your template to WP:VPT, and asking if anyone there is willing to help optimize it.--VectorPotential Talk 12:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I've added a hidden comment explaining the template to new users (that is only seen when subst:ed) so they won't get put off, maybe we could substitute them now, and I would like to apologise to Vector Potential for the way I handled his changes...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 17:23, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Why is it necessary for these to all be on the same page?

The simplest solution I can think of is to just make each specific template a subpage of the main template. It doesn't take any extra work to type {{HD/RD}} instead of {{HD|RD}}. That way there wouldn't be any problem with subst'ing or transcluding.--VectorPotential Talk 12:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

You know, that's a pretty good idea! I'll have a go at that now, and when all the current transclusions have been archived, I'll delete the extra parameters...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 17:27, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Done...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 18:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted the parameters because all the transcluded versions are archived now...... Dendodge.Talk^Help 18:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest going through all uses of the previous version of the template and replacing them with the current usage. The point of archiving the questions is so that they continue to be accessible and readable long after the question has been removed from the help desk. Leaving a broken template transcluded from the archives is far from ideal. --VectorPotential Talk 17:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Updated links using AWB.--VectorPotential Talk 17:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I did not think of that! Well done...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 17:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

New HD Template: not-saved

Over the last few months, I have several times come across a query which basically says "I edited/created an article but I can't find it. It is not on the delete log, and it is not in my user space. Where is it?" (OK, the delete log and user space are normally found out by folks on the HD!) - and the reason is probably because they clicked on "Preview" rather than "Save", so I created a HDT:

{{HD/not-saved}} gives:

Did you click on the Show Preview button instead of the Publish changes button?

Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)

This is a minor edit Watch this page

By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.

Publish changes Show preview Show changes Cancel

If you didn't click on Publish changes, the edit wasn't saved.

Regards, -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 12:09, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

New HD Template: re-attribute

Another query that crops up from time to time is "Before I registered, I edited using an IP. How to I get my edits assigned to my user name?" (or "I forgot to log in, so I edited using an.....")

This template is for replying to that:

{{HD/re-attribute}} gives:

It used to be possible to re-attribute edits from IP addresses to named accounts, but not since 2005 (see this page). However, as that page says, you can list your contributions made with the IP address(es) on your user page.

Regards, -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:16, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

New HD Template: mobile

A query we also get from time to time is "I accidently clicked on 'permanently disable mobile layout' on my mobile device - how do I get the mobile version back?"

{{HD/mobile}} gives:

If you go to Wikipedia:Enable mobile version on your mobile device and click on the link there, you will re-enable the mobile version.

Centralize talk page

This talk page has fewer than 30 watchers, while Wikipedia talk:Help desk has over 3000. I propose that this talk page be centralized at Wikipedia talk:Help desk; that is redirected to keep discussions in one place. See Help talk:Cite errors for an example. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Support Sounds good, since serving the work at help desk is this pages only purpose anyway. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:32, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

wohooo

Great improvements since the last time I visited that page. Great job to all of you! For that reason I give a round cookies:

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