Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 October 25

These COVID data template pages have no transclusions and are all or mostly:

out of date,
probably in violation of WP:NOTDATABASE, and
a lot less useful than they may have been in the past, since COVID is not as interesting to people as it once was.

These templates appear to contain what is normally article content, and they are linked from the "Data" section of {{COVID-19 pandemic}}, which appears to violate our guideline on linking from article space to other namespaces (In articles, do not link to pages outside the article namespace) when that navbox template is transcluded in article space.

I asked at the COVID WikiProject page about these templates, and at least one editor (Crossroads) suggested deletion rather than moving them into article space. So here's a TFD nomination. Please discuss. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:22, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all. WP:NOTDATABASE, no transclusions. It is well known that we over-created COVID-19 articles, and that after the recent-ness of the event wore off, that we'd have to mass delete things from the COVID-19 topic area. This is a low hanging fruit example that should be non-controversial since there's no transclusions. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
COVID killed more americans in 2023 than flu had killed in a hundred years. if the #1 deadliest respiratory disease season in a hundred years counts as being "over-created", what could possibly count as properly created? there's literally no higher rank than #1. i'm obviously going to maintain this resource either way, just tell me how much higher than #1 we have to get until its inclusion isn't controversial. doesn't it seem fair for you to type it out now, so when we get there you can't argue any more? Kinerd518 (talk) 00:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know that we are all volunteers, but how does your claim that you will "maintain this resource" square with the state of {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United States daily deaths}}, which hasn't been edited in over a year and contains data only from 1 Jan 2023 through 12 May 2023? [Edited to add: I see that the untranscluded {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United States daily deaths post emergency}} picks up where the former untranscluded template leaves off; if you want to advocate for conversion of one or more of those to articles, please do so.] No blame for you at all, but one way or another, it appears that this template is no longer used. The same appears to be true of most or all of the templates above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:40, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
referenced below, but for completeness' sake: i can't speak to most of the templates above, just the very specific one that is still included in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States which is to say, the deadliest pandemic in the history of the most important and newsworthy country in the entire world. if there are a lot of other articles besides those very specific ones i cited that don't matter, i mean, who cares? go crazy, go wild, delete all of them if it makes you happy, and i mean that sincerely, just don't throw out the globally relevant baby with the Marin County Medical Cases Chart bathwater. how is this even a conversation? Kinerd518 (talk) 02:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
the most important and newsworthy country in the entire world. Not sure most editors on wikipedia would agree with such a pro imperialism take. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:02, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The reason these charts ended up here in the first place is because they were thought to have no transclusions. But I do see that one there, in a bar graph form; it is the same one in the code. I wonder why that ended up here, then. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:20, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps there is some confusion about similar template names. I am looking at transclusions for Template:COVID-19 pandemic data/United States daily deaths post emergency, which is different from {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United States deaths chart post emergency}}. The latter is transcluded; the former is not. At the time of nomination, all of the above templates had zero transclusions. If any of them are transcluded when this TFD is closed, I recommend either keeping them until a later discussion or, as appropriate, copying them into articles, since they are article content. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:37, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The transclusion of the former was in the latter, in a spoiler tag describing the source of its data. I state this for the record, not because I believe for a second it's actually relevant to your decision on the matter. I have recreated the template in Commons Data space and updated the link, because I refuse to let the ongoing deaths of our most vulnerable and desperate neighbors be erased, and I refuse to participate any longer in what has clearly been a bad faith pretense at discussion from the start. You will be in my prayers, and may God have mercy on us all. Kinerd518 (talk) 22:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

i have been updating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/United_States_daily_deaths_post_emergency every day for over a year. editor @Crossroads declares that the sources are no longer updating case counts; i can't speak to that either way, because this source is explicitly about deaths and not cases. @Crossroads is too bored to distinguish between cases and deaths, and nevertheless wants to declare their almost certainty that the counts are outdated

why? Kinerd518 (talk) 00:17, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No need to personalize things with statements like Crossroads is too bored to distinguish between cases and deaths. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Kinerd518: That template is being updated, but it is not transcluded anywhere. If it is article content, it should live in article space. If it is WikiProject content, it should live in Project space. Unused templates do not belong in Template space. What should be done with templates that are still seen as relevant? – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

in fact, the template is very visibly transcluded in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States

please let me know if you have any other questions Kinerd518 (talk) 02:23, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

excuse me, but @Crossroads brought up how they were bored by the updating of information on the deadliest pandemic in US history. if it wasn't personalized when they said it, it cannot be personalized when i said it

and, more importantly, you didn't address how they declared how this information was "outdated", when i provided absolute proof how it was updated daily. don't you wonder why you decided to argue about the first point, even though i was absolutely right about that, and ignored the second point, when i was absolutely right about that too?

and don't you don't you wonder benefits from your choice of argument? Kinerd518 (talk) 02:21, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fair. I didn't see them call it boring, but I see the quote now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for being a bit flippant. The premise in the talk page on the Covid Wikiproject was that none of these were transcluded, which a spot check seemed to confirm. Since that is apparently not true of all of them, I suppose those could be exempted and I will amend my comment below, but I do maintain that this is excessive detail and isn't really an accurate picture of what the virus is doing at this point. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:24, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I didn't get a response a while back when I asked the project back in December 2023. But all these templates haven't been updated in a couple of years. And WP:NOTSTATS applies here. And this is just a small batch of unused templates for Covid data and I think all of them should be deleted as all are pretty out-of-date and stats can be found elsewhere and Wikipedia should not be a repository for data like this. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 00:34, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i don't know where or how you asked anything, all i can demonstrate unequivocally is that the specific template https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/United_States_daily_deaths_post_emergency is in fact updated daily and the stats cannot be found anywhere else, and deleting "all of them" regardless of how any individual citation is updated is sloppy and frankly embarrassing Kinerd518 (talk) 02:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for now, revisit later. Contrary to some comments here, I have been updating three of these templates every day since the pandemic began: {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United States/California/Alameda County medical cases chart}}, {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United States/California/San Francisco County medical cases chart}}, and {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United States/California/Sonoma County medical cases chart}}, plus {{COVID-19 pandemic data/United States/California/Santa Clara County medical cases chart}}, which wasn't nominated for some reason. The nominator may have only looked at the edit history without noticing figures from as recently as yesterday. Edit history is misleading because the backing data for these templates is stored in the Data: namespace on Wikimedia Commons. The Alameda County and San Francisco health departments only release updated figures once a week, while Santa Clara County updates three times a week and Sonoma County updates daily (but the numbers rarely budge). The other Bay Area counties stopped reporting COVID-19 statistics several months ago.
To be clear, I disagree that the lack of updates would justify deletion. Even if the world eradicates COVID-19 tomorrow, there is significant historical value in documenting past trends and waves in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Even better if we can retroactively update past figures as more information becomes available. For example, earlier this week, Santa Clara County revised the case count for October 13, 2021, and other days in the following years, causing cascading changes and ultimately a difference of 31 cases by October 10 of this year. These revisions happen regularly, though I don't know if others are keeping track of retroactive changes as I am.
We need to be able to visualize the statistics, not just store them in tabular form on Commons. Otherwise, readers will not come away with an accurate perspective about the rate and scale of spread. Unfortunately, these templates depend on Module:Medical cases chart, which is not fit for purpose. Users need to do plenty of fidgeting to figure out how to display a prior month or year using the filter buttons, but by default, it only shows the last 15 days, which rarely exhibits any change whatsoever. In COVID-19 pandemic in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had attempted to replace these templates with {{Graph:Lines}}, which displays the full time series as a much more digestible line graph. Unfortunately, graphs were disabled due to security reasons last year. Until a replacement is ready, these finicky charts are better than nothing. I would edit this article to transclude the nominated templates again, except I don't know if that's acceptable while a TfD is ongoing.
I vote to table this nomination until the new charts are ready – sounds like we're finally getting close. In the meantime, I highly recommend that folks refactor the rest of these templates as I've done for the Bay Area ones, because the new charts will depend on tabular data on Commons, not hard-coded wikitext on this wiki.
– Minh Nguyễn ^💬 03:48, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Welp, I tried migrating the "Progression" section of COVID-19 pandemic in the San Francisco Bay Area back to these templates, but Module:Medical cases chart scales so poorly that the page ends up littered with timeout errors. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 05:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete most or all per WP:NOTDATABASE. We don't keep meticulous details of case or death counts over time by locality of any other disease, not even ones like HIV or tuberculosis. Case and death counts aren't even accurate anymore due to the fact that testing has been scaled back greatly; [1] recent numbers are misleading precision. And in general, there is no reason for Wikipedia to be a database that keeps track of historical case numbers by jurisdiction, any more than we are a repository of genetic information of variants, or of any other biological entity for that matter. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:07, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've adjusted it to say "most" since the premise of this is based on them not being transcluded, but at least one above apparently was. In any case, I maintain that ones with no transclusions should be deleted. I also don't think we should be keeping track of these numbers at this level of ostensibly fine-grained detail at all per above, but since that's out of the original intended scope of the nomination, it makes more sense to let that be (I'm not supporting keeping it either though). Crossroads ^-talk- 05:34, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Crossroads: Indeed, recent figures are not nearly as interesting as historical figures. The design of Module:Medical cases chart unfortunately biases the presentation quite heavily toward the last two weeks, which is going to be increasingly inappropriate for any COVID-19 chart, but this doesn’t detract from the educational value of seeing the initial surge or the subsequent waves. If these charts were instead static, rarely updated SVGs, I don’t think anyone would even be invoking WP:NOTDATABASE.

So I think this points to a way forward: move the data in these templates into the Data: namespace on Commons, which is a database, then see about a migration away from Module:Medical cases chart to a line graph template that would once again be suitable for inclusion in an article. The second part isn’t urgent, as long as the data is in Commons for safekeeping.

– Minh Nguyễn ^💬 14:33, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. If these fail WP:NOTDATABASE, then these should be deleted. If they don't then these are article content and should either be added directly into articles or converted to articles. In any case, these should not exist as templates to store content. To Kinerd518 or other maintainers, if you want to continue to add data, then Wikidata would probably be the correct place for this. Gonnym (talk) 08:28, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Gonnym: Wikidata doesn’t handle time series data very well, not at the scale of thousands of statements. Tabular data on Commons is the way to go, especially since the upcoming charting functionality will depend on it. Minh Nguyễn ^💬 14:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clearing that up. So if commons accepts such data, that is the place this should be handled. Gonnym (talk) 14:40, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - As a creator of some of those templates, I recommend deletion of them as they are no longer relevant and WP:NOTDATABASE. — Mr Xaero ^☎️ 18:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Userfy any "medical cases chart"s that would be deleted otherwise. Ideally, all COVID-19 data should be moved to Commons. Until then, I would like to keep the hardcoded medical cases charts in my userspace for preservation. This request would also apply to any prior or future deletions. The other templates I don't care, only the charts. Alexis Coutinho (talk) 22:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Single-use short sub-templates for Spruance-class destroyer infoboxes

Template:Spruance class destroyer armament ABL (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer armament VLS (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer aircraft (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer beam (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer complement (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer displacement (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer draft (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer length (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer propulsion (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer range (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
Template:Spruance class destroyer speed (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Except for the ABL/VLS armament templates, these templates are all just 1 or 2-line, unparameterized replacement text for parameters in the {{Spruance class destroyer infobox ship characteristics}} ship infobox sub-template. They weren't conditionally included; they were all directly included by the infobox subtemplate. I simply subst:'d them into the infobox subtemplate.

The {{Spruance class destroyer armament ABL}} and {{Spruance class destroyer armament VLS}} subtemplates are both the same list of 6 items, with different 7th items (ABL launcher, or VLS launcher). VLS was the default template, so I renamed it to {{Spruance class destroyer armament}}, and parameterized it to include either ABL or VLS, rather than switch otherwise identical parallel template lists.

After deletion, there will be 4 templates left:

{{Spruance class destroyer infobox ship characteristics}}, the main infobox subtemplate;
{{Spruance class destroyer armament}}
{{Spruance class destroyer EW}}
{{Spruance class destroyer sensors}}

The EW and sensors subtemplates are lists of items, and they are conditionally included/replaced by the main infobox subtemplate. IMO it would hinder readability of the Spruance infobox subtemplate to get rid of them.

— sbb (talk) 22:44, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment as requester – For clarification of the VLS sub-template, Template:Spruance class destroyer armament VLS is now a redirect to {{Spruance class destroyer armament}}; The only article linking to that template is the Spruance-class infobox subtemplate. I'm requesting deletion of the VLS redirect, along with the now-orphaned Template:Spruance class destroyer armament ABL. — sbb (talk) 23:07, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nomination. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 00:34, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - per nomination. I only cleaned them up. Llammakey (talk) 13:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 October 25

October 25

Template:COVID-19 pandemic data/Argentina medical cases and similar data templates

Single-use short sub-templates for Spruance-class destroyer infoboxes