User talk:Oiyarbepsy/topic/20160507

PBB

Thank you for your closure at Template talk:PBB, but I'm not sure that you've addressed the outcome of the discussion in your close. No-one on the deprecation side, as far as I can tell, is advocating deletion. Your closure as "keep" is accurate in that there is clear consensus to keep, but it doesn't really address the question being asked. The "deprecation" side was advocating marking the template as deprecated to discourage additional usage and basically alert editors that there will be a transition soon. When I explained the purpose of deprecation and the fact that deprecation does not mean deletion in the discussion section, multiple editors who "voted" don't deprecate agreed that deprecation without deletion was appropriate. Would you mind revisiting your closure to make sure it addresses the actual deprecate vs. don't deprecate issue? Thanks for taking the time to read this and for closing old discussions. It's badly needed! ~ Rob^Talk 06:34, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

And just to be clear, I'm not necessarily encouraging you to close in favor of deprecation. I'm not commenting on that because I'm certainly involved. But I do think the close should address the heart of the matter, whatever the outcome is. ~ Rob^Talk 06:41, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

• @BU Rob13:My interpretation of the consensus was that whether to deprecate the templates or not is a moot point to be decided later. So, whether to deprecate or not deprecate no longer is the issue, since it seems the decision was that it doesn't matter yet, and you couldn't properly decide it anyway until the Wikidata stuff is done. That's how I read the discussion section that appeared below the voting sections. Did I understand it incorrectly? BTW, if you want outside editors to comment on your discussion, it really will help to have documentation pages for templates that actually explain what they do and how they work. Complex templates like PBB & Infobox gene shouldn't have essentially blank doc pages Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:43, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I think most editors don't get what deprecation is. I think you misunderstood, but I also think most people in the discussion as a whole misunderstood, so maybe "no consensus" on deprecation with consensus to keep is the best outcome. Anyway, deprecation is basically just a notification on the template documentation that states the template is on the way out, more-or-less, to be replaced with something else. It's pretty much a statement of fact at this point that the template is deprecated. All those who said "don't deprecate" pointed to the upcoming Wikidata solution; a solution which will replace the current template. That basically makes the template de facto deprecated already. The reason editors (myself included) were advocating a deprecation notice on the template is because it can either (a) encourage editors to move to the new solution now, making less conversion work later (this isn't really applicable here) or (b) prevent future confusion when the template is suddenly converted to the new solution. B is the applicable part here, since we have the upcoming Wikidata solution. I don't think we did a very good job of explaining deprecation. Discussions between the template crowd and content creators tend to go this way because the template crowd uses terminology that the content crowd isn't familiar with without defining it. And yes, I agree about the documentation, but that bit isn't my fault; I've never edited this particular template. I stumbled upon the discussion based on the ANRFC notice, I believe, but had strong enough thoughts on deprecating these sorts of templates that I contributed instead of closing. ~ Rob^Talk 06:50, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
• @BU Rob13:I'm not changing to a deprecate result, since none of the people who opposed deprecating struck their votes after discussion. Part of the problem is that nobody ever proposed what text would be included on this mythical documentation, so how would you ever expect anyone to consent to anything anyway, aside from a magic word that non-technical people don't understand. I'm willing to reopen for clarification if you have some specific wording proposed for the template documentation. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:28, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
• I'll add that the more I think about this template, the less I understand what deprecating it even means. Does it mean a mass-delete? Does it mean to to remove transclusions? Does it mean not to create any more of them? Or something else? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:43, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Deprecation means "discouragement of use of some feature, design or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered safe, without (at least for the time being) removing it from the system of which it is a part or prohibiting its use." In other words, it means slapping {{Deprecated template}} on it and waiting. ~ Rob^Talk 20:21, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
  • @BU Rob13:I didn't ask for a definition. I asked what deprecation would mean in this specific instance. Would this mean disabling the bot that creates the pages, for example? (Keep in mind that I'm hobbled by not having a clear understanding on how this works). Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:11, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
    • It means what I said in my last sentence. Literally slap a {{Deprecated template}} on the documentation page to let editors know a change is coming and wait. No disabling of the bot, subpages can still be created in the meantime, and no scheduled deletion at any point (that would require another discussion). The advantage is in editor awareness of the impending change. In my opinion, the appropriate close here would just be "Consensus to keep, no consensus for or against deprecation because it appears both sides were talking around each other" more-or-less. The original RfC question didn't do a good job defining what deprecation of a template means, and editors on the "don't deprecate" side were arguing against something other than the proposal. There was never a full discussion actually related to what was being proposed. I'd be satisfied with such a close. ~ Rob^Talk 05:48, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
    • As far as I know, that's not what deprecation means. As far as I know it means that old stuff can stay but don't make any new stuff. If you're still making subpages and running a bot, then you haven't deprecated anything. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:36, 9 May 2016 (UTC)