Template talk:Glossary of Brazil investigative terms Compact TOC

Template?
This pages seems like its intention is to be transcluded onto other pages. Should it be in in the template namespace instead of the mainspace? —Ost (talk) 14:23, 26 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Ost316, good question. Tl;dr: no, it doesn't need to be in template space, and naming it this way keeps it close to Glossary of Brazil investigative terms and easier to deal with.
 * Details: per Help:Transclusion, any file can be transcluded, from any namespace into (almost) any other one. Even portions of an article can be transcluded into other articles via selective transclusion. That is, there is no restriction on transclusion from template space only.  So, as far as that goes, there's no reason for this file to be in template space. That's basically the answer to your question.
 * As further explanation for this choice: its place here, goes to the purpose of this content, which is to be transcluded onto one page (the glossary page) in multiple locations, unlike a Nav template (such as Operation Car Wash, say) which is intended to be transcluded onto multiple pages in one location. Thus, this seemed like the best place for it.  Moving it to template space would mean it would no longer be closely connected to the glossary page. Hope this helps! Mathglot (talk) 19:50, 27 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Just out of curiosity: can I ask how you even found your way to this page? Did you somehow find this one, before you saw the glossary page itself at Glossary of Brazil investigative terms ? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:52, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll answer the last question first; I found this because I review Special:ShortPages and it's at the top of the list, so it needs to needs to have long comment substituted to it to remove it from the list.
 * I understand your desire to keep this close to the page where it is used, but I'm unsure if that approach matches policy or best practices; it is using subpage notation and WP:SUBPAGE notes that subpages are disabled in mainspace and not to be used for permanent content. I also can't recall any other page that is always supposed to be transcluded that is in mainspace instead of templatespace. —Ost (talk) 00:51, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * User:Ost316 Oh, I skimmed this and added a comment of my own, before I saw that you linked the "standard" one, if that's what it is. Anyway, hopefully what I put in there will take it off the list.
 * I can't recall, either, but then again, this is my first glossary page, and I checked both Help:Glossary and WP:Transclusion, and I don't see any specific reason not to. Practically everything at Wikipedia except what Jimbo brought to bear when he created it, had a "first-time" event, at one time or another. I don't mind putting it in Template space, if that seems to be what guidelines or best practices call for, this just seemed like a convenient way to do it. But if not&mdash;then not. Let me know what you find out.  Just to be clear: this isn't a subpage; as you pointed out, they are disabled in main space. Thanks for looking into this and keeping me informed, Mathglot (talk) 02:54, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi, User:Ost316, no rush or anything, just wanted to let you know that probably I'll end up having to move this in the end, as you suggested. It's been prodded, with the comment, "I don’t understand why this exists...." despite this conversation here. I removed that notice, but I suspect it will just keep happening and I've already spent more time on this than I intended. Have you managed to find out anything concrete about policy or guidelines wrt to this? If moving this to Template space will just make this issue go away, then regardless whether it's permitted by policy or not, maybe I should just do it anyway, and be done with it. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:17, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I have not had time to look into this further. I'm not certain of the appropriate venue to look for advice on this topic, so I added question at the Help Desk. Hopefully, someone there will have more experience with namespaces and will be able to better help.—Ost (talk) 21:10, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No worries, and thanks for raising the Help Desk issue. Hopefully we'll get some clarity from it, although I'm pretty sure I see the handwriting on the wall already, and maybe we should just move it at this point? Mathglot (talk) 21:46, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I also think this should be moved to the Template namespace. In mainspace, it risks being shown to readers using Google or similar, as if it were an encyclopedia article. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:48, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , you mean, like Googling Broken citations would be? Look, I get it, this either hasn't been done before, or not very much, and there's opposition to it, and I'm not sure if it is, or isn't, against some guideline somewhere.  But it's not worth this many words and it seems clear there is opposition, so I'm just going to move it, so we can move on to something else. Thanks to all who contributed for your comments. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 19:00, 29 August 2020 (UTC)