Template talk:Currentmonthday

Requested move

This is a usefull template. I have considered it some times in the past, but now I need it for Template:Day+1/doc which I have fixed. My template {{DAYMONTH}} is nice, but the name "CURRENTMONTHDAY" goes better with the names of other templates in Magic words#Date & time. Debresser (talk) 12:09, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. Since it generates Month Day, why not call it {{CURRENTMONTHDAY}}? 199.125.109.102 (talk) 03:04, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

You're right. I'll make that change in the proposal. Debresser (talk) 18:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC) Please notice that this change is now incorporated in all pages relating to this request. Debresser (talk) 23:19, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, where do these templates {{CURRENTDAY}} and {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} come from? Wikipedia has no templates with these names that do these things! Nevertheless, they work! Debresser (talk) 23:30, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Debresser. You asked me to come here and comment.

1: When you make templates, always make sure that the start <noinclude> tag begins immediately after (touches) the template code. Don't leave any whitespace or newlines between the template code and the noinclude tag. Otherwise you often get whitespace problems in the places you use the template. I fixed that for this template.

2: I added documentation for this template. You should read that documentation, since you might not be aware of that a page normally will show the same date for one week at a time when using a template like this. Due to that Wikipedia only re-renders each page once a week.

3: {{CURRENTDAY}} and {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} are not templates. Instead they are magic words. That is, they are hardcoded variables in MediaWiki (the software that runs Wikipedia).

4: I think you should not rename this template to the upper-case name {{CURRENTMONTHDAY}}. Since that makes it look like a magic word, and might even create a name collision with a future magic word with that name. But it is a good name for this template, so instead I suggest you use the lower-case template name {{currentmonthday}} for it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:27, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I was aware of #1, it must have slipped my mind. Thanks a lot for writing the documentation. I was aware of #2, of course, but... Since I did not understand #3 until you explained it, I hadn't paid attention to this. I of course agree with your recommendation in #4. Actually, I would propose a #5: make it a magic word and not a template. How should I do that? Debresser (talk) 06:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah good that you understand the details.

5: And yes, since we use month+day frequently (at least here at the English Wikipedia) it would be a nice addition to the MediaWiki software. And as far as I understand it would probably be easy for the devs to add this feature to MediaWiki. (But there might be some trouble like that different languages write MONTH+DAY in different ways...)

The official way to suggest a new feature is to open a Bugzilla account and suggest it as a "bug", but that is a bit much work just to suggest one small feature. So an easier way is to bring it up for discussion over at the technical Village pump, and if people there like it then some of the experienced Bugzilla users usually take care of reporting it to the devs.

If people really like the feature and it is easy to code for the devs, and it doesn't affect any other parts of the system etc., then it can sometimes be added very quickly. I once suggested an addition at the Village pump and it was coded and deployed to all Wikimedia projects about 12 hours later! (But that fast is pretty unusual, some months is more normal.)

But before you do any of that: I suggest you first do the move of this template to {{currentmonthday}}, since the current naming is somewhat confusing and a lot of people will come here looking at it when you bring it up for discussion. And perhaps change the documentation to be a green /doc box, just so it looks good. (Although technically a template only needs the green /doc box when we protect it, so non-admins can edit the doc and add interwikis etc.) And perhaps add some example to the /doc of usage of this template, like when we feed month+day to the clean-up templates.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I have moved the template over here. I have made a documentation page. The proposal is up at the Village pump (technical). Debresser (talk) 14:37, 15 March 2009 (UTC)