User talk:Alexis Reggae/Emoji proposal

Discussion

Hey @Alexis Jazz: thanks for including me on the draft. If this isn't the right spot to discuss, feel free to move it.

I think it's a really good proposal, I'm just trying to foresee any problems that others might have with it that would prevent a quick consensus. From a technical stand point, is it a relatively straight forward template? Compared to other templates of similar size? I'm worried about opposition from a maintenance/upkeep perspective? microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 13:47, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

What about pages where there isn't an image or readily available link in the name? Take for example Special:PermanentLink/1188610978 of 🧘. Is there a way to set a variable in the template such that {{Emoji info|image=no}} that could suppress the image if it doesn't exist? Or is this a case where the file on commons doesn't properly exist at [[File:|thumb|Person in lotus position]]? Forgive me, I'm not terribly familiar with templates. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 14:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

And if we follow up on the same example, could the template have a way of manually including the syntax from Special:PermanentLink/1188497486, for example {{Emoji info|page1=Lotus position}} could produce Wikipedia has a page titled Lotus position. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 15:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Lastly, I would be concerned about it handles zero-width joiner emojis, Special:PermanentLink/1188612464. I think those are all the test cases I could find that I had technical concerns about the template for. @Alexis Jazz: I think if these are addressed, I would be very eager to bring this to the VP as an RfC with unwavering support. Sorry if it feels like I'm throwing all the test cases at you at once. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 15:05, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Getting the codepoint of zero-width-joiner emojis can't seem to figure this one out myself. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:33, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: I wonder if you might get more help at WP:VPT but I'll admit I don't know the best spot for these types of questions.

I had a couple thoughts about emojis with ZWJ. The first is emojis who are emojis created by a combination of emojis, like the ones you laid out in the above link. I wonder in this instance if it would be good to include that in the template, e.g.: 👨‍👩‍👧 is a combination of 👨 (man), 👩 (woman) and 👧 (girl) using a zero-width joiner. The other being a slight modification of the above but for skin modifier, e.g.: ✌🏿 is a modified emoji based on ✌️ (victory hand) using a zero-width joiner. It uses 🏿 (emoji modifier fitzpatrick type-6), based on the Fitzpatrick scale. But I can't think of a way to code this without specifying a list or table somewhere of which emoji should be which (update: would you just be able to test for the existence of the skin-tone modifier in the emoji/pagename?). In either case I think this is too in the weeds, and not entirely necessary for the RfC, support could be garnered without it, and the template could be updated in the future. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 17:06, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, all of this is a problem. I see two solutions: rely 100% on Wikidata (but some people oppose that because vandalism on Wikidata) or create some brand new modules based on https://unicode.org/Public/emoji/15.1/emoji-test.txt.
I can't quite promise when that could be done. I know how to do it, but actually working it out takes time. And I need a wikibreak to focus on more important matters.
Some notes

• Take [1]
• .replace(/^([^;]*;).*# ([^ ]*) E[^ ]* (.*)/g,'[\'$2\'] = "$1",').replace(/[ ]*;/g,'')
• .replace(/^([^;]*;).*# ([^ ]*) E[^ ]* (.*)/g,'[\'$2\'] = "$3",').replace(/[ ]*;/g,'')
• Use Module:String in the template to detect if codepoint include spaces
• If it doesn't, extract image from Module:Unicode data/images/01F etc
• If it does, extract image from custom module or Wikidata
• If it does, also show part info
• All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

— Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: please, by all means. Like I said, I think these are considerations that would have to be addressed before the template could be widely used, but the nitty-gritty flourishes between different types of zwj are not inhibitory to a functional template. If these were mathematic statistical problems that could be solved in R then I could be more help but my programming experience ends about halfway through the CS50x online course. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 18:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, I went to school once.
I learned nothing. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:12, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, that's {{Emoji info|article=Lotus position|articlename=the lotus position}} I think? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Ahh, my apologies if I missed that part of the documentation. That would be good to include in the RfC draft I think, to pre-assuage any concerns from people like me who didn't do the reading. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 15:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, but it already says "a link to an identically titled article if there is one (like fire) or optionally a different article by providing a parameter"? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 16:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: I swear my reading comprehension is normally better. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 16:45, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, image should be suppressed automatically now. To fix it (in this particular case), add [ 0x1F9D8 ] = "Twemoji2 1f9d8.svg", to Module:Unicode data/images/01F or add the image on Wikidata. Maintenance categories should get added automatically as well in cases where no image could be found. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:38, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh, so it's a list that it pulls from, and then if it's not there, then the template won't insert that line. Smart. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 15:40, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, it uses Module:Unicode data which we already had.
It's fairly straightforward, and if a module were to break and somehow nobody could fix it, you could quite easily adjust the template to pull data from Wikidata instead. In my experience, these templates require little maintenance. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:58, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Formatting the survey

I don't know how appropriate it would be to format the survey in the same way as an RfA with numbered lists with signatures. I've placed mine on there to see how it would look. Of course I would remove it prior to moving the RfC. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 13:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

MicrobiologyMarcus, I was going to say "but DiscussionTools can't handle hashtag indentation", but then I tested and realized it still can't even handle asterisk indentation. (how DT can be so far behind is a mystery to me) Still, hashtag indentation requires absolutely everyone to use hashtag indentation, otherwise the numbering breaks.
Splitting support and oppose is usually done to make counting easier. Not really an issue in an RfC, and sometimes votes are kind of conditional or otherwise non-binary. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: that's fair. I wasn't sure if this would be applicable because of the simplified nature of this RfC with less options. Makes sense. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 14:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)