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Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 October 22

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October 22

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Template:Brooklyn Italians seasons

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 05:17, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Brooklyn Italians seasons (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Per WP:NENAN, Only 1 link. Additionally, as the club is not from a top professional league, the article, and any future article, almost certainly fail WP:NSEASONS, so difficult to see how this could ever be a useful aid to navigation. Fenix down (talk) 17:18, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Template:Bethlehem Steel

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 05:08, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Bethlehem Steel (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Per WP:NENAN contains only one link that is not to a section of the parent article. Unclear how this is a useful aid to navigation at this stage. Fenix down (talk) 11:18, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Glossary templates

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was keep Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 05:09, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Glossary (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages) (only 105 transclusions)
Template:Glossary end (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages) (only 105 transclusions)
Template:Term (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages) (only 124 transclusions)
Template:Defn (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages) (only 110 transclusions)
Template:Ghat (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages) (only 20 transclusions)

Pointless templates, redundant to simple wiki markup, as seen in this replacement. Note that {{Gbq}} has already been nominated for deletion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:17, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment I see the validity of the argument that infrequently used templates have a poor benefit:cost ratio (the cost being the need to maintain them). On the other hand, markup should reflect semantics wherever possible. This allows users to change the presentation via their own CSS, screen readers to explain the layout properly, etc. Just as it's better to use {{em|...}} for emphasis rather than ''...'', it's better to use "term" and "defn" for terms and their definitions. If advertising the availability of these templates more widely fails to increase use, then maybe delete. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:28, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Users may just as easily style definition lists formed from wiki markup, as from templates; and such markup is no less semantic, or accessible, than that produced by these templates. In addition to the maintenance overhead, they act as a barrier to new editors through an additional learning (or "cognitive") overhead. The matter of <i> vs <em> in HTML 5 is somewhat different to the identical <dl> <dt> <dd> HTML elements produced by the nominated templates and their wiki markup equivalents. These templates (leastways the first listed) have had over six years to demonstrate community uptake; and have failed to do so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:05, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Andy, you're clearly not reading the documentation. These templates are necessary to work around serious, intractable and possibly permanent MediaWiki bugs. The docs also cover accessibility issues; you're simply making assumptions, in another "delete everything different" spree (and I say that as someone frequently accused of too often favoring consistency over variety on Wikipedia, BTW). There is no appreciable maintenance overhead, other than some bit of my time writing and documenting the templates, and hardly anyone else's time for anything. Using the templates reduces maintenance overhead, because when the devs monkey with the parser, as they frequently do, any problems thus engendered in <dl> lists can be fixed across all template-structured glossaries simply by tweaking the templates. Any editor can create a glossary in other formats; see MOS:GLOSSARIES for instructions for bulleted and heading-based formatting, for example. If new editors having to learn how templates work to edit extant articles were a deletion rationale, all templates would be deleted (starting with the citation templates which are much, much more of a "cognitive overhead" issue, and for material that's actually required by WP:V policy). The <em>...</em> and <i>...</i> stuff is just a distraction, and Peter's comparison not being 100% symmetrical doesn't invalidate his general point. The fact that most of our glossary articles do use these templates, despite them being entirely optional, is proof of, not against, community uptake. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that these templates are intended as simple wrappers for <dl><dt>...</dt><dd>...</dd></dl> markup, and thus redundant with ; and :, but this is not the case. It's like objecting that CT scanners must be useless, because you don't get put in one every time you go to a doctor for a minor checkup. Some day, these templates could be replaced/deleted, but not until serious parser problems are dealt with, and the devs have basically declined to deal with them, saying that content inside wikimarkup-generated structures is intended to be simple, and that HTML should be used for complex cases, which is precisely what these templates do.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:33, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"you're clearly..." Oh dear. You fall at the first hurdle. with your made up assertions about my behaviour. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:37, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I note that this is a dodge of every substantive point I raised. (PS: If you did actually read the docs, you seem not to have understood them, so the underlying concern I was raising remains anyway: Your TfD nomination makes no sense because it fails to account for any of the pertinent technical facts, all of which have been clearly spelled out. Honestly, I thought you'd pick up on me trying to give you a "didn't notice" out, instead of taking offense at it, and leaving the other interpretation, but have it your way...)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:04, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Lets move past the personal problems and get to the technical points please. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:20, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Repeat: "[The] TfD nomination makes no sense because it fails to account for any of the pertinent technical facts, all of which have been clearly spelled out", i.e. in the templates' documentation and in MOS:GLOSSARIES (and its bug test cases subpage, which should really be a subpage of Template:Glossary; will move it later). They need not be reiterated in detail here, as they do not relate at that level (exactly which markup breaks, how, under what circumstances) to TfD's concerns, and would fill TfD with large tables of code examples that we should just wikilink to instead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:31, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: Thank you for repeating your case, but I was hoping for a response by Andy Mabbett.
@Andy Mabbett: Would you please respond to the technical points made above, preferably without reference to personal differences. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:31, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Will the templates in use be replaced by a bot if they are to be deleted? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 20:43, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That, or replacement using WP:AWB or suchlike, is the usual process. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:58, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No bot or AWB script will be able to compensate, it would have to be manually done, because every single entry with a definition that has content more complicated that a few unbroken sentences in a single paragraph, will totally bollix up the list formatting if you do a substitution like this. Again, as documented very well already.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:04, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Andy Mabbett: Can you rebut these claims? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 08:26, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
These aren't subjective claims, they're demonstrated facts, documented at WP:Manual of Style/Glossaries/DD bug test cases. See also Help:Lists#Paragraphs inside list items, where it's been documented for years (and where the workarounds described are more complicated and "brittle" (easily broken by later editors) than these templates.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I made no judgement regarding subjectivity of your claims. I inquired as to whether Andy Mabbett can rebut them. Technology may have changed, documented information may be inaccurate or out of date. I prefer not to dismiss the possibility that Andy Mabbett may have a point without giving the opportunity to clarify it. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:31, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Obvious keep: the template documentation (which one should review WP:BEFORE deletion nomination), and MOS:GLOSSARY (which despite a proposal tag has actually been in active use since 2010, so isn't really a proposal any longer, and it's been referenced at MOS:LIST for a long time as well) explain why these templates are useful (and well-used). The short version is that description (a.k.a. definition or association) lists coded in ; and : wikimarkup are severely malfunctional for complex content, due to MediaWiki parser bugs (that are well-documented, very long standing, and unlikely to be fixed any time in the next several years), resulting in unexpected display results and semantically useless output. They cannot even handle simple multi-line input without workarounds that are more difficult (and easily broken) than simply using the templates. For very simple glossaries (i.e. of dicdefs only, thus likely to be transwiki'd to Wiktionary as non-encyclopedic, or of small lists of non-glossary sort, like the one the nom changed to ;-and-: markup), the wikimarkup works okay, but becomes unworkable when definitions need to include richer content like multiple paragraphs, block quotations, etc. "Only" 124 glossaries use this markup? We probably don't even have 200 total (there are only 25 science glossaries, for example), so the majority of them are using these templates, despite it being only one of several available styles covered at MOS:GLOSSARY. Update: Quiddity's point below about anchors is crucial. Every single {{term|foo}} entry would have to be replaced with ;{{vanchor|foo}} which is actually longer. PS: Incredulity about well-documented MW parser bugs is simply a form of the invalid WP:IDONTKNOWIT argument-to-avoid.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:33, 22 October 2014 (UTC) updated 07:04, 24 October 2014 (UTC), and 06:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As a user of these templates (Glossary of sewing terms and others), I don't find these templates any harder to work with than many of the other wiki markups. I have the tag set on a keyboard macro (as I do many frequently used templates) and it makes a really nicely laid out Glossary. And 105 transclusions seems like a reasonable number; we shouldn't need thousands of glossaries. - PKM (talk) 22:33, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Eventually we will have that many, as every major field involves jargon. The number of such articles has increased rapidly in the last few years, and I would bet a major factor in this is the simplicity of these templates compared to the utter intractability of the wikimarkup bugs they work around. While certain kinds of very complex entries are code-complex, on average most can be done with {{term|the term here}}{{defn|The definition here}}, and when definitions have multiple paragraphs, it really is the simplest, most robust option.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. In addition to the reasons mentioned above (in both the discussion and the !votes), the glossary templates also provide built-in anchor IDs, letting us link to terms without having to add {{anchor}} everywhere, eg Glossary of entomology terms#metathorax. A possible future upgrade, would be to allow highlighting of the specific definition intended, if there are multiple available for that term. Quiddity (talk) 22:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. There is no pressing need to remove these templates, and doing so runs the risk of needlessly breaking articles along the way. SpinningSpark 08:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - the glossary department has a person dedicated to improving it, and these templates are some of the tools he has developed to assist him and others in doing so. Please do not hamper his efforts. If he finds a better way to manage glossaries that make the templates obsolete, I'm sure he'll nominate them for deletion himself when it is time to phase them out. In the meantime, the templates provide an easy way to format glossaries. Please do not make glossary maintenance more difficult. Thank you. The Transhumanist 21:12, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I doubt I qualify as a department, but I am actively tracking all the relevant MediaWikia bugs, and I update the templates, documentation, and relevant guidelines and help pages periodically (e.g. the parser changed in ways within the last year that make the case for these templates even more compelling, because paragraph breaks no longer have to be hand-coded in <dd>, but still must be when inside : items, and <blockquote> now behaves identically to other block elements, resolving a display problem when used with these templates). The ideal solution might be something like replacing ; and : markup with simple styled <div>s, since the vast majority of their use is pure style formatting (indenting talk page comments, creating boldfaced quasi-headlines, etc.), and then introducing a new description list markup syntax that will not function unless inside bracketing start and end markers, the way wikitable markup must be inside {|...|}. This would keep its semantic functionality unpolluted. But it could easily take 5+ years to see the developers implement something like this, if it were even accepted as a feature request.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Query: How do you get the numbers of transclusions listed above? Are these the number of articles in which the templates are used, or the total number of times they are used? The values may well be the same for the {{Glossary}} and {{Glossary end}} templates, but any glossary may reasonably contain fairly large numbers of {{term}}, {{defn}} and {{ghat}} templates. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 11:11, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Pbsouthwood: Use the "What links here" feature in the sidebar. Then you tease out (e.g. with grep or the like) only the entries that feature the character string "(transclusion)". (There may be a more convenient tool for this, but after the demise of the WikiMedia Toolserver, I wouldn't know. Would appreciate a pointer if there is one.) Anyway, that's the number of pages, not individual transclusions (of which there would be thousands for {{term}}, even if every glossary only had 10 terms; some have hundreds). The count to look at in this case is the number of pages that transclude of {{term}}, since some simple glossaries (well, description lists – the templates are not limited to use only in what we'd normally think of as a glossary of terms, per se) are marked up without the opening and close tags, on the assumption that MediaWiki will auto-generate them properly (that's not a safe assumption at all, but it's not a TfD matter, so I won't get into it here, and it's documented at Template:Glossary/doc and MOS:GLOSSARY anyway). I.e., the count of pages transcluding {{glossary}} is a mis-count.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:31, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That ties in with my experience. So if I understand correctly, for {{term}} the value given of "Only 124 transclusions" is inaccurate and would be better expressed as "Only transcluded in 124 articles" or something similar, where the actual number of transclusions is in the range of "more than 124 up to a larger but unknown number, probably in the order of 1240 to 12400". • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 07:46, 27 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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