Template talk:?

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I've changed it from ??? to ? (3 to 1 question marks), to make it easier to discern from "Yes" and other multi-character table entries, just by glancing at the word-width. Or is there a specific stylistic reason behind using 3? --Quiddity 21:14, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Why is this template being considered for deletion? Of course it is not useless. It indicates that a field is unknown. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Althepal (talk • contribs)

More over, a lot of articles uses the template, and they are... (excuse the language) pretty fucked up right now. --[Svippong - Talk] 02:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Explaining the purpose of this template

It was requested that this template be explained here, so I will have a go. The purpose of this template is to make it easy to maintain tables, generally comparison tables. It is used in conjunction with other table cell templates. It indicates that a certain value is unknown. -Fadookie ^Talk 00:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Bad Tile

If you get the Bad Title page with the following text it means that you tried to enter the url "yoursite.com/wiki/Template:?" instead of searching for Template:? then clicking on "create page":

The requested page title was invalid, empty, or an incorrectly linked inter-language or inter-wiki title. It may contain one or more characters which cannot be used in titles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Holygamer (talk • contribs) 21:43, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Not a table cell template

Hi. This recent change has broken the template where it is transcluded in hundreds of uses dating back years before this note. (For instance, many of these: [1]; whatever the recently written documentation may assert, this template was not designed for use in tables; it was designed by User:EFD and first used here. Footnote 4 at Template:Table_cell_templates/doc#Notes acknowledges this.)

Changes to the template should accommodate other usages - which are legitimate - or the broken usages should be fixed. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:10, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

This has gone for too long. As far as I know, the vast majority of uses of this template are as table cells, so the markup in those cases needs to be fixed so the standardization can be completed.

Shared documentation says about it: "Does not take a parameter; not really a table cell template at all, but here for completeness" and we ought to fix that inconsistency with the actual use.

For reference, here are past attempts to convert the template into the table cell format:

• rev. 361102785 by Waldir at 16:16, 9 May 2010: standardize format
  • reverted by Moonriddengirl at 14:03, 2 June 2010: standardizing style seems to have messed up its display, at least in the four uses I've checked.
• rev. 484982697 by Czarkoff at 11:45, 1 April 2012: Centered, made accept a replacement argument
  • reverted by Moonriddengirl at 16:11, 8 April 2012: reverting change, which has broken template in many hundreds of instances. See talk.
• rev. 584241683 by Codename Lisa at 18:40, 2 December 2013 (merged to {{dunno}}: These templates are too similar and this template is used exclusively in tables. Its bold effect makes unfeasible to be used when a ? is required. If any problem occurred, please let me know.
  • reverted by Diannaa at 21:50, 2 December 2013: Undid revision 584241683 by Codename Lisa; this broke all the transclusions. making them appear as "style=" vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="unknown table-unknown"|?"

I am going to start replacing the usages by {{dunno}} (which actually has a fairly established history and is even older than {{?}}, not to mention having a nicer name for use in URLs), then I'll redirect this template to {{dunno}}, as Codename Lisa attempred last year. Don't worry, I won't perform a blind replace. I'll make my best efforts to check the replacements so that the layout isn't broken. --Waldir ^talk 17:53, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

@Waldir: Hi. Diannaa's revert was followed by a very pleasant conversation about the merits of {{dunno}} and {{?}}. I think it mentioned that {{?}} had its own use cases too and cannot be entirely eliminated. The bad news is that the discussion is either in my talk page or hers. (Back then, I had not realized the importance of holding all content-related discussions in associated talk pages and avoiding user talk pages.)

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 18:06, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, @Codename Lisa:. Would you consider copying the contents of that discussion here? I know that sort of digging up can be a bore sometimes, but unless it's a very long thread, it should only take a few minutes :) --Waldir ^talk 18:10, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Previous conversation is here. In a nutshell, we use the {{?}} in copyright cleanup case pages, for example here, to indicate that we are unsure whether or not a violation has occurred. Copyright cleanup, already a time-consuming job, is sped up by the use of this template. Because these instances do not place the template inside a table, replacing {{?}} with {{dunno}} will cause all of these instances to display as "style=" vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="unknown table-unknown"|?" rather than as ?. You may not see many active applications of the template for this purpose, as the case pages are courtesy-blanked when the cases are completed, but I would like it to be left intact for this important usage. -- Diannaa (talk) 18:19, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Okay, it seem Diannaa beat me to it. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 18:23, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

As would I. I'll note again as I mentioned above, the conversion of this to use in tables was a later imposition. This was not created for tables, not originally used for tables, and is actively and regularly used in other contexts. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Right, thanks all for the clarifications. In that case I'll clean up uses of this template within tables, and afterwards I'd request your help to update the documentation, for example {{Check mark templates}}, {{Done/See also}}, the pages with instructions about copyright cleanup, etc. I'll update here after the cleanup is completed. --Waldir ^talk 18:59, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

@Diannaa and Moonriddengirl: I've reset the documentation page to prevent confusion. Looks like both of you know the use cases. So, perhaps you could suggest a better category for this template. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 19:55, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm halfway through the substitutions. I've done most of the easy ones, now dealing with the trickier instances. Please take a look at the current version of a random sample of pages from Special:Contributions/WaldirBot, to see if you find any special case that might have escaped me.

Also, I'd like to propose making this template throw an error if included in the article namespace. It is very ambiguous for the reader unless there is some written or unwritten convention being followed (as is the case with the copyright investigations, for example), and something more specific should be used instead, such as {{citation needed}}, {{clarify}}, etc. What do you think? --Waldir ^talk 21:11, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Codename Lisa. :) The way we use it, Category:Resolution templates would certainly work. We use it to mark that an issue cannot be definitively settled. Waldir, unless Diannaa (who does much more with WP:CCI) knows that I'm wrong, I think that this template should never be used in article space for copyright work, but always in Wikipedia space. I think your idea of having it put up an error message if used in articles is a good one. This template is all but useless to readers, as the actual templates for article issues lead somewhere that helps explain the problem. I'll spot-check your list. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:17, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this template should never be used in article space, as it does not tell other editors what the perceived problem with an article might be. I don't know much about categories, but Category:Resolution templates looks like a good fit. -- Diannaa (talk) 22:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I'm, done for today. I think I managed to process pretty much all uses in articles, and I also fixed a bunch of pages in other namespaces. In the articles (when not on a table) I had to deal with each instance individually, having replaced {{?}} by various templates depending on the context: {{citation needed}}, {{clarify}}, {{elucidate}}, {{verify source}} or simply nothing (when the template was used, say, to indicate an unknown value for a field in an infobox). That not only demonstrates how ambiguous the template can be in a generic context, and seems to invalidate the ability to suggest any specific template as the most likely replacement when presenting the user with an error. I suppose we can link to Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup or Template:Citation needed#Inline templates and let the user pick up the right one.

Anyway, below is the list of pages --all of them outside the main namespace-- that I didn't process (that is not to say all others have been correctly dealt with, but I did my best to ensure so). Feel free to process a few of them and remove them from the list below. Otherwise, I will later come back to this. --Waldir ^talk 23:24, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Rename

Diannaa, Codename Lisa, Moonriddengirl: This template continues to bug me, since people continue to use it in tables or in other places where its meaning is unclear. It would be quite hard to clean up its uses unless we outright deprecate it. Since {{q}} is taken for wikidata items, would it work out for those of you working in copyright investigation cases if this template was renamed to {{qm}}? Unfortunately {{Question mark}} is taken with the rather ugly, image-based ?, but perhaps it could be made configurable and qm would be a custom call to {{Question mark}} with the appropriate parameters to maintain the current output of ?.
What do you think? --Waldir ^talk 23:32, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
P.S. - An additional argument for the deprecation is the fact that the qustion mark is problematic in URLs, since it's a reserved character to indicate que query string, which makes links sometimes fail in an unexpected manner.

We could use a simple question mark for copyright investigations, omitting the template altogether. -- Diannaa (talk) 23:38, 27 February 2015 (UTC) I've used it here so people can see how it looks (compare Ramnagar Fort: ? versus Book of Fatimah: ? on the next line) -- Diannaa (talk) 23:43, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate that you'd consider that :) but I'm afraid that obtaining the buy-in we'd need in order to enact such a change without backlash would entail much more work than seting up a replacement template and salting this one, don't you think? Also, to be honest I can see the point of making the question mark bold and italic, since it matches better with the Y and N in terms of style and visibility. --Waldir ^talk 00:01, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi. I believe Waldir is right: Action is required. I do support aggressive deprecation and salting. I have no problem with Diannaa's suggestion either.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 19:54, 28 February 2015 (UTC)