Template talk:Fb-rt

Similarities

Has anyone else noticed that this template is very similar...probably exactly the same...as another set of templates, which are {{<country code>>f}}, a la this:

England, Brazil, Italy, etc.

There's some for just about every single country, plus the reverse (flag and name swapped round, i.e. {{ENGf2}}, England ) and also a series for women's national teams. Personally I prefer that series - the code is much easier to remember, and shorter, although obviously other people may disagree. Does anyone see any point in having two templates for the exact same thing? Or am I missing something, and are they actually distinctly different? Falastur2 22:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Um, yeah. Please see the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football. My intent is to replace about 1000 individual templates such as {{ENGf}} with this small set of parameterized templates. These templates use the same underlying mechanism as {{flag}} etc., so the maintenance is significantly improved. Additionally, historical flag variants are automatically supported. There is no need for multiple templates per nation (look at all the "BULf" variants for each time Bulgaria changed it's flag). {{fb|BUL|1971}} produces Bulgaria.

As for the code being "much easier to remember", how is {{ENGf}} and {{ENGf2}} significantly different from {{fb|ENG}} and {{fb-rt|ENG}}? They are only 2 or 3 characters different. I would argue that these templates are easier to use because you don't have to know all the sometimes obscure FIFA country codes, nor do you have to use "invented" trigrammes for teams that don't have them. {{fb|Catalonia}} produces Catalonia.

Lastly, my intent is to apply this to all sports that have a proliferation of flag templates. In keeping with the tradition of short template names, I use two letter codes for each sport. So far, I've created:

• {{fb}} for football: {{fb|BRA}} → Brazil
• {{bk}} for basketball: {{bk|LTU}} → Lithuania
• {{cr}} for cricket: {{cr|AUS}} → Australia
• {{ru}} for rugby union: {{ru|RSA}} → South Africa

The "-rt" versions of these templates put the flag on the right (I thought that "2" wasn't terribly descriptive.)

This is still work in progress, so I have only replaced instances that I know are fully compatible "drop in" replacements. I have some coding work to handle variations in article names, team names, and flags, but it is all planned.

Hope this helps, Andrwsc 00:31, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Please ignore the "much easier to remember" - I tend to exaggerate naturally in speech, and it's transferred over to my writing habits. When I said it was "much easier to remember", naturally I meant slightly easier to remember, given the amount of work in typing being asked for. As for answering the question you actually raised there, my mind is one (for better or worse) which kind of picks up on the country codes, obscure as they may be, and so as I write out the template, it takes me a split-second to put in the right code, even for the more obscure countries. On the other hand, I see that "fb" means "football", but "rt" I couldn't interpret, and so I know that I will forget it, and take a number of attempts to recall it properly. Given my situation, I found it, to my mind, more time effective to copy-paste the other template sans the country code, and then spend a minimum of time filling in the code for every time I use it, compared to spending a few minutes looking up your code again to remember it, and then spending extra time writing out the full name of the country. Given that 99% of the time I use these templates is for writing out the endless lines of match reports for articles such as the World Cups and continental association competitions, where I can use the template with a different code each time upwards of 100 times for every edit, cutting corners tends to be on my mind.

However, that said, I see your point, and I recognise you as a longer-serving member at editting sports articles than I am, so I'm quite willing to support your idea and switch templates. Given the situation, and given other situations I've come across, I naturally assumed that these two designs had been running in parallel with each other, with both creators unaware of the existence of the other template. I guess I should have been more thoughtful, given how closely they resemble each other, but another tendency of mine is to make snap assumptions on stuff like this. Again, my bad.

Anywho, thanks for clearing that up. Falastur2 13:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you see the point of these templates now, but I'm still a bit confused at one of your comments. The {{fb}}, {{fb-rt}}, etc. templates still work with the FIFA country codes. That hasn't changed! If your mind works better with them, then please continue to use them. The only thing that has really changed (from an editing perspective) is that instead of putting "f" or "f2" after the country code, you put "fb|" or "fb-rt|" before it.

As for the choice of "fb-rt" for the right-side flag placement, I had originally proposed "fb2" for "name compatibility", but feedback was that the "2" wasn't terribly descriptive. Anyway, happy editing! Andrwsc 16:37, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah yeah, my mistake on your first point. I guess that's what I get for scan-reading. Falastur2 23:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)