Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 November 1

November 1

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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).

The result of the discussion was Delete. (non-admin closure) Primefac (talk) 05:44, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The template has been blanked, the reason given was "rm spam". Pinging the user who performed the aforementioned action for their input. Godsy(TALKCONT) 23:57, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • delete per Salix alba and salt. Nothing worthwhile in the history, just an occasional vandalism target from presumably warned users, and not the sort of template that needs a testcases page.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 02:06, 2 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, but do not salt. The title is a common subpage style of pages associated with templates (/doc, /sandbox, /testcases, etc.) If vandalism persists after the deletion, consider edit protection. (Or maybe the test case page can be recreated properly, then the page semi-protected or template projected due to the past "vandalism".) Steel1943 (talk) 02:25, 2 November 2015 (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).
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).

The result of the discussion was delete as the system this template is designed to implement is no longer in use. Not deleting the many thousands of child templates yet. (See also this discussionOpabinia regalis (talk) 07:41, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The template has been blanked, the reason given was "no longer in use". Pinging the user who performed the aforementioned action for their input. Godsy(TALKCONT) 23:54, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's a complicated situation; if you don't need the longish explanation below, skip to the emboldened "Template:Child taxa" below.
The "automated taxobox system" (see Template:Automatic_taxobox/doc/intro) is primarily designed to enable the automatic display in a taxobox of a classification system upwards from a given taxon. Thus if you put {{Automatic taxobox |taxon=Tyrannosaurus }} on a page it will show a series of ranks through "Family: †Tyrannosauridae" up to "Kingdom: Animalia". It does this by storing every child → parent link in a separate template, named "Template:Taxonomy/CHILD" where "CHILD" is the name of the child taxon.
These templates don't allow navigation down the classification hierarchy. Prior to 2013, a tool, http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/taxobot/, and a bot, Taxobot, ran regularly, extracting information from the templates storing upward links and creating templates to store downwards ones. So it would survey all "Template:Taxonomy/..." pages, finding all that had a particular parent given in them. Then it created a template "Template:Child taxa/PARENT", or overwrote an existing one, listing all the downward links from PARENT. This then allowed editors to put |display_children= in an automated taxobox, whereupon it displayed all the stored downwards links.
The tool was never migrated from toolserver.org, and the bot was stopped, over three years ago now. The result is that the information in the "Template:Child taxa/PARENT" templates is, in many cases, seriously out-of-date and mutually inconsistent. While working on articles on various animals and plants I saw examples of this.
(Even if the bot was running, this part of the automated taxobox system has serious deficiencies, which I've set out rather sketchily at Template talk:Automatic taxobox#display children parameter.)
So I disabled the automated display of child taxa on 19 October, explaining at the main talk/help page for the automated taxobox system, Template talk:Automatic taxobox. One issue was picked up, which I fixed. There have been no other reported problems.
Template:Child taxa is one of the top level templates of the automated display of child taxa. I blanked it as part of the process of disabling the system and then worked through removing uses of it. There are none left, so it can now be deleted. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:51, 2 November 2015 (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).

Collaboration 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).

The result of the discussion was Delete all. While the argument has been made to mark as historical, the actual history of the discussions (found on the project pages) is likely to be more relevant and thus the templates themselves (which are rather poorly formatted) are unnecessary. (non-admin closure) Primefac (talk) 05:35, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Collaboration template; last updated 2013. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:18, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • keep or mark inactive/historical. All attempts at collaborative editing are important to keep a record of in case of future review/reactivation etc. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:54, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    @Casliber: (arbitrarily choosing the most recent of these listings in which to ask the question): Quite a few of these old, unused templates marking defunct collaborations have been deleted recently. These frequently use dated or nonstandard formatting or are badly constructed (like this one), and are unwieldy enough that anyone trying to revive the effort would do better to create new templates. Many of them are vaguely embarrassing, left moldering on talk pages with such old dates. The associated wikiproject pages, where the actual attempts at collaborative editing happened, are of course preserved; it's just particular implementations of those attempts, unlikely to be useful in the future, that are being nominated for deletion. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:29, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Serves no purpose at the moment, completely unused for years, and no hint that it will become relevant in the future. This can always be undeleted if need be, but the chances of that happening are tiny. ~ RobTalk 07:35, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Primefac (talk) 21:22, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Primefac (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2015 (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).

Barnstar 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).

The result of the discussion was no consensus for merge. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:47, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Propose merging.

No need for three templates. The resultant merged template should be available as a parent for a barnstar templates, in the manner of {{Tmbox}} Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:14, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Primefac (talk) 20:03, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Variation is the spice of life. I like both my gold star and my smiley star on my user page. -- Kendrick7talk 02:11, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Primefac (talk) 18:34, 1 November 2015 (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).
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).

The result of the discussion was deleteOpabinia regalis (talk) 07:53, 10 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Unsuitable template use, not sure what its purpose is... JMHamo (talk) 00:43, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For use on the SANFL (previously SAFA, SAFL) pages.Thejoebloggsblog (talk) 01:18, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to remove the deletion because it is ruining the pages. e.g. 1890 SAFA season.
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).
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).

The result of the discussion was keep. (non-admin closure) sst✈discuss 07:25, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Propose merging Template:Db-copypaste with Template:Histmerge.
These two templates have the same functionality. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • No they don’t. One is a CSD template, i.e. a request for the page to be deleted. The other is a histmerge template, a request for the histories of two pages to be merged. {{Db-copypaste}} is used e.g. if a very recently created page is just a copy, as in copy and paste of another, and the page needs deleting to properly do the intended move. {{Histmerge}} is typically used after a copy and paste move but one which was done long ago, or at least long enough ago that the copy has been edited and also has a useful page history. It should not then be deleted but the pages histories can be merged. So, yes, they both are used on pages that have been copy and paste moved but they are not the same, one or the other should be used depending on whether the page has a page history.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 01:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep/Oppose per JohnBlackburne. {{Db-copypaste}} is a valid template fork of {{Db-g6}}; {{Histmerge}} does not mirror the function of either one of the aforementioned templates. Steel1943 (talk) 02:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Having just used histmerge, I know it's a useful template for doing what JohnBlackburne described. Using G6/copypaste would have lost the original page history, which isn't good. Primefac (talk) 17:04, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep As mentioned, the 2 are different in function. JohnBlackburne describes it well. CrowCaw 18:11, 8 November 2015 (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).