Template talk:R from Twitter username

Regarding text to use "surname, given name" format for redirects that target biographical subjects

I think the following text in the template:

"...but instead that it is sorted by either the first letter following the at sign or by the surname of the subject – the preferred sort key for human names..."

...should be changed to read the following:

"...but instead that it is sorted by the first letter following the at sign..."

...The reason for this is that we are not sorting these redirects by the name of their target, but rather the name of the redirect. This category currently contains a mixture of redirects which target not only biographical subjects, but also companies, television shows, and other various forms of media. For this reason, the text should be readjusted as I propose so that readers are not confused why, for example, a redirect that starts with "@J" shows up under the "B" section of Category:Redirects from Twitter usernames. (Pinging Paine Ellsworth.) Steel1943 (talk) 19:32, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Not sure why you would think it would cause any more confusion for readers than when we sort an article or other redirect by the surname?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  19:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

The sorting by surname regarding redirect and articles that include the name of the subject itself make sense to be sorted by surname first; this is common with other forms of sorting that have been done for decades and/or centuries such as using a phone book, listing people by surname in alphabetical order, etc. However, in this case, the subject that is being searched for specifically represents the Twitter username. For example, let's say a redirect such as "@92lLookMyNose" is the Twitter username for someone named "Lenny Foo"; with the current wording, the redirect would be sorted by "Foo, Larry" and thus under "F" rather than as "921LookMyNose", and thus sorted under "9". I suppose my point is that in the template's current state of wording, in addition to the fact that category lists do not also list where a redirect is going, it is confusing for someone attempting to locate redirects in the category list sorted by the surname of the subject rather than the second character in the redirect if the reader doesn't know what subject the redirect represents in the first place. Steel1943 (talk) 20:11, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Makes sense, so the text has been altered. And you might want to consider being more than neutral about this template, or else it just might be deleted. To me it appears to serve a useful service and is an improvement of this encyclopedia. We need to try to make the deletionists understand that.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  02:08, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

To editors Steel1943, QYYZ and Compassionate727: just fyi, all the redirects in Category:Redirects from Twitter usernames have been correctly sorted by the new criteria, that is, by the first letter/number/symbol that follows the @ sign, and all unnecessary hard category links have been removed from them.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  08:08, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: Sorry for the late reply, I was until today incapacitated by an ill-fated experiment with anti-depressants. Anyway, I understand why we sort them in Category:Redirects from Twitter usernames without the @ sign, and I apologize for forgetting to sort it when I create @itsamike. But why do we categorize it the same way Category:Unprintworthy redirects, or anywhere else for that matter? It makes sense to delete it Category:Redirects from Twitter usernames because the @ sign is redundant and interferes with sorting the redirects within that category in a meaningful manner. But I think the @ sign is entirely reasonable at Category:Unprintworthy redirects; indeed in some cases it is the reason the redirect is unprintworthy rather than a simple {{R from modification}}. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 02:30, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

That is an excellent point, Compassionate727, because as you may know, default sortkeys in articles can be altered by individual categories. If the default sort is {{DEFAULTSORT:Murals, Ancient}} and we want a certain category to sort to the A's, we would use [[Category:Murals|Ancient Murals]] to override the default sortkey. I know of no way to do that with redirect categorization where templates are used to categorize each redirect (I've tried). I would surmise that the creators of template categorization probably didn't think this would result in any major problems for the bots that monitor the categories.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  10:18, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: Just add [[Category:Redirects from Twitter usernames|name without @ sign]] to the redirect. Omit the DEFALTSORT key althogether because it should categorize with the @ sign in most categories. The category with the sortkey would need to be added manually, but so does the DEFAULTSORT, so it's not any extra effort. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:38, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

If we stick to the guideline, then we should use templates (rcats) to categorize redirects. Again, the creators of the system didn't think it would be necessary to circumvent the default sortkeys for individual categories. Can you think of any particular reason that they were wrong?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  22:27, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

I think it is more of a technical restriction than "original people thought sortkeys were unnecessary." We could very easily use the templates for this if we were trying to do something else: for example, if we for some reason wanted to create a category that categorized talk page archives by the name of the parent talk page, we could add [[Category:Category for talk page archives|{{BASEPAGENAME}}]] to {{archive}}. The problem is that there isn't a magic word that omits a specified character from a title. But I don't see how any of this is relevant. Categorizing via templates is preferred because it's easier and tells searchers and editors what the redirect is and does, which helps with maintenance. We can add both {{R from Twitter username}} and [[Category:Redirects from Twitter usernames|Title without @ sign]] with no more effort than adding {{R from Twitter username}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Title without @ sign}} and to the exact same effect, save for the benefit of properly categorizing in other categories. Is there a page somewhere explaining why we cannot use directly transcluded categories that I'm missing? —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 23:05, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, Compassionate727, I think I resist this because for many years it has not been an issue, since almost all of the maintenance categories are watched over by bots, and bots don't seem to care how the redirect sorts are made. So adding a "hard" category link just to be able to specify a certain sortkey seems like overkill to me. I could be wrong.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  01:37, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Steel1943 and QYYZ, do you have any thoughts? —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:39, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

To editors Compassionate727, Steel1943 and QYYZ: just fyi, I have to thank you, Compassionate727, for urging me on to make this more correct! Couldn't get it off my mind, and as I kept thinking about it, I remembered a template I had used for a different application. I used it in this template to make the category sort automatic. After altering this rcat, I removed the unnecessary DEFAULTSORTs from all the redirects, so they will now be sorted to the @ sign in categories other than Category:Redirects from Twitter usernames. In that Twitter category, they will all be sorted automatically to the second character in the PAGENAME of the redirect. Be well.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  23:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Ah, just when I was beginning to wonder if we'd need an RfC to resolve this. Thank you for continuing to watch this and for clearing it up. I was not aware that we had templates that broke strings into components like this, and that will be incredibly useful in future things that I do with templates. I recall that I could have used this for something in the past, though I don't remember what for. Thanks for finding it. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:34, 17 July 2018 (UTC)