Template talk:Lifetime/Archive 2

False And Deliberately Misleading
The first line of the documentation of this template says,

ltm is a subst: only version of this template. To use it type, for example: 1901

One would expect from that the substitution would create a line on the page

and at the bottom of the article would be the categories "1901 births" and "1983 deaths". One would be wrong. What it creates are three lines

That is completely against the desires of the users of this template. If they (we) wanted three lines this template would not be used. I have deleted that section from the documentation.


 * JimCubb (talk) 22:02, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

This template is exactly what is says. Lifetime can be substituted. (This means it produces DEFAULTSORT and the categories) Check discussions above and its code. Lfm is a subst only version. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:14, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

The guidelines clearly state that this template should not be used to replace ((tl|DEFAULTSORT}} and vice versa [emphasis mine]. ltm has nothing to do with lifetime. JimCubb (talk) 00:23, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * But still you can use ltm to add ds and the categories and this is easier than using lifetime for the same purpose. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Why on earth would ltm simply change the template call from ltm to lifetime? That does not make any sense whatsoever. It pretty clearly states that it is a "subst-only" version of lifetime. In other words, it is a version of lifetime that must be substituted in use. Double Blue  (talk) 01:42, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Consensus?
My watchlist this morning is full of edits by Yobot replacing templates I'd added with DEFAULTSORT and birth/death categories. Is now considered deprecated? Should I stop using it altogether (and what should I use instead)? Or had I specifically misapplied it in the cases that Yobot changed? Gonzonoir (talk) 08:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I replied to your talk page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe answering it here would have been better. Especially since you are advising that the editor should be using lft instead of this template - User talk:Gonzonoir. A lot of the discussion here of late has been questioning that specifically.
 * And your statement is a hedge at best. Akin to "No, it isn't about to be deleted, but help us depreciate it by not using it at all." - J Greb (talk) 14:22, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Per WP:CAT categories should not be hidden. I think we have its not a good strategy to removed categories in favor of templates. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not what Magioladitis said. If you find Lifetime to be an aid to entering defaultsort and the birthyear and deathyear cats, then you may do so, though substituting is of course preferable as hiding defaultsort magicword and ordinary categories in a template is not desirable or helpful; someone or the bots should eventually correct it. The subst-only ltm shortcut is also an quick way to do it for those so concerned about keystrokes. Double Blue  (talk) 18:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, small clarification to my post above. You're right, Magioladitis wasn't that blunt, bit it sure is how "You can still use Lifetime to new articles, although I would recommend you to use the new susbt-only ltm to save bots' effort in the future." reads. - J Greb (talk) 19:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Using the template is the opposite of deprecating it, in my vocabulary. ltm is the same as lifetime, of course, except that it simplifies its substitution somewhat. Double Blue  (talk) 00:38, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Ltm and L
It appears that apart from ltm we have L that was created in August. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Now that's good news - "subst:L" is only as many keystrokes as "lifetime" (colon takes two keystrokes, which seems to have been ignored above). If "lifetime" is deprecated, I'd be happy to use "subst:L".  I sort a lot of stubs, and when they are biographical I add lifetime, glad to be able to add a lot of value in relatively little typing. I've not been following the debate above, though I think the "I'd be upset..." quote is mine from way back, but dropped by to look at it today. I don't mind whether my lifetime tags get subst'd by a bot, but I don't want to have to type any more keystrokes to add a default sortkey and birth/living/death cats. PamD (talk) 22:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If Lifetime was 1 byte less it would be impossible to beat it. :) Anyway, I think the use of Lifetime now has an advantage. We can easily spot newly created biography articles and add WPBiography banners on their talk pages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Either stop using this template or stop un-using it
Last 6 revisions of Barbara Graham:


 * replaces defaultsort with lifetime
 * replaces lifetime with defaultsort
 * replaces defaultsort with lifetime
 * replaces lifetime with defaultsort
 * replaces defaultsort with lifetime
 * replaces lifetime with defaultsort

How much longer is this going to go on? Gurch (talk) 09:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Someone has to talk to FredR. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:05, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I did. I used Nolifetime. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:07, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Wow, there's a template to tell people not to use a template? Is there a template for saying there's too many templates? Gurch (talk) 12:16, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm going to go bang my head now since the consensus has been decided by TWO as of this month (Rich being a bold editor and Magioladitis backing him up as an admin) to depreciate and, looks like, eventually delete this template. Thanks guys for even trying to look like you wanted to actually have a discussion on the topic. - J Greb (talk) 15:20, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As I have said before, the only complaint agasint the template is that the ignorant do not realise that it has a defaultsort. Why do we not tell the bot-owner to leave the dates alone and only strip out the defaultsort?  Will that not please most of us? Peterkingiron (talk) 18:12, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well... it would also take putting any/all 'bots and automated processes that are editing DSes without human oversight off line as well. It would also take putting all the rest of the 'bots and automated processes on standby until this is fully hashed out. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the second won't happen, much less that set of automated runs being changed to not strip out Lifetime entirely. - J Greb (talk) 18:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What is exactly the advantage of happing Lifetime in articles exactly? We ll just be hiding 2 categories. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:31, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Peterkingiron has it exactly right, as far as I can determine, "the ignorant do not realise that it has a defaultsort." {Emphasis mine}  What troubles me most about this discussion is that while, as J Greb as discerned, TWO editors have decided to eliminate this template because they do not understand it.  I strongly suspect that neither of them wants to understand this template and how it works.  Nevertheless, I will try to explain it in a different way.
 * Most templates, including all the project banners, "hide" categories. They populate categories without a category tag.
 * The WPBiography template populates Category:Biography articles of living people when livingyes. The listas value serves as the sort value for the page.
 * lifetime populates categories implicitly rather than explicitly. As might be expected it is easier to enter than all of its components would be.  It does not "hide" anything.  The categories involved are populated by the pipes within the template.
 * Is there also a template noDEFAULTSORT to be used when an editor replaces a perfectly good lifetime with DEFAULTSORT and explicit category tags. "Preview" says no.  It also says nodefalutsort, noDF and nodf do not exist as alternative spellings.  Would it be better to create one or to delete nolifetime quickly and with extreme prejudice?
 * JimCubb (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * A talkpage banner is a completely different beast. There has been no reason given why categories and defaultsort must be hidden within this template on articles. The only reason given is that is an aid for some editors to enter the data that way. The solution given is that the template may be substituted either by the user or by bots. There is no loss of use there. Double Blue  (talk) 21:36, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * JimCubb keeps comparing staff that are not the same. Administrative categories like the ones produced by project banners have nothing to do with categories being in article space. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:01, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ...and I can't believe you still think they are only two editors who have problems with Lifetime. Check Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography to more complains. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:04, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Bluntly: Having that support laied out HERE or at a TfD that resulted in "Change over and delete/retire" would have been better. What has happened is that two of you have decided to do an end run - depriciate the template to the point that an TfD is "Delete as unused", and I point to Rich's comments below as an indication of that POV, instead. Yes, there is apparent support for the two, but it is after the fact at this point. - J Greb (talk) 22:37, 18 September 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) I recently had to search 852 articles and ensure they were all in  Category:Living people. The task it was massively complicated by this template. It does (did) make real difficulties.
 * 2) One of the proponents says "I have never seen a misuse of this template."  They have actually use it themselves with a missing pipe to put the article in "Category:Fred Bloggs deaths".  And so have others.
 * 3) There are I think sixteen users on this page who explicitly supported making the template subst: only.
 * 4) Many categories are hidden by templates - I myself am responsible directly and indirectly for nearly 2 million of them.  The only difference is they are all maintenance categories.
 * 5) To suggest that I "don't understand" lifetime is ludicrous.  I have written hundreds of templates, have made over 8000 edits in template space, Jim, who deigns to tell us how these things work  has made 18 which are mostly to doc pages, or wrong.
 * 6) If you wish to nominate nolifetime at TfD, Jim, go ahead.  It will make it marginally harder for those of us who are educating users rather than simply dreaming up crazy arguments about 12.5% more keystrokes while wasting thousands making non-constructive changes, and perpetuating an argument which stems from the day in 2007 when, in our ignorance of the then new parser functions Lifetime  was mistakenly removed from the always subst: list.
 * Regardless Lifetime is effectively a dead-letter. I have 2,886 listas values to add, none of them Jim will be pleased to learn, Chinese. Rich Farmbrough, 22:27, 18 September 2009 (UTC).

Future benefits of the lifetime template
Most of the discussion seems to based on what the template currently does without looking forward and considering some of its future benefits. By simple changes to the template, an entire set of new categories could be automatically created if desired, which might enhance our users' experience. Some examples: Without the template, it would take a superhuman effort to add the appropriate (future) category to every article it applies to.
 * Category: People born in the 20th Century (by parsing the birth year)
 * Category: People who lived to be older than 100 (by calculating the difference between death and birth dates)
 * Category: People named XXXX (by using the person's family name)

Another advantage of the template is that it decreases the size of the article (compared to using DEFAULTSORT and birth/death categories), which means less storage space used on Wikipedia's servers, and faster download times for users (because there is less data to transfer).

I consider the template to be very useful and encourage its continued use. Truthanado (talk) 00:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Faster download is not true. Categories have to be rendered by the server. Lifetime means more work for the servers. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:16, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, no it wouldn't take a "superhuman effort"; it's relatively simple for a bot to traverse the birth year categories and/or a database dump of the project. What becomes hard is when a template hides data (category membership) in the article, as Lifetime does. Bots have to be programmed to look at the category data in the article source AND deduce the results of category membership as produced by any templates - which might be included by other templates - (or reconcile the article source and the rendering of the article source). Also, this proposal is highly duplicative of the Persondata project. If the English Wikipedia would follow the lead of the Germans and regularly code Persondata, then we really could do some interesting things with categorization and data searching and sorting.
 * Also, as Magioladitis pointed out, use of lifetime doesn't effect the size of the article. That you don't understand this suggest you don't understand other things. To understand what he and I are talking about, take an article that contains Lifetime and view it as regular user (not the edit view of the source), then do view the page source in the browser (again, not the Wikipedia "edit", the view source of your browser). Then, edit the article to replace Lifetime with the explicit DEFAULTSORT and categories, then view the article normally again, and view the source. You will find that the before and after HTML source is essentially the same, possibly with a few changes in order or whitespace. Many browsers also have "Page Info" feature that will tell you the page size of the html; this will also show you that switching between the template and the explicit code doesn't noticeably change the page size. What does change is the amount of work the server has to do to render the page; with the Lifetime template in place, the Wikipedia server has to go get the up-to-the-moment-current version of the template from someplace other than the current article, and process it. In other words, Lifetime slows things down, albeit by a small amount; the page service time is probably dominated by database query times, followed by network transfer times, with actual rendering times a distant third. Studerby (talk) 19:10, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

"An entire set of new categories" - category:20th-century births category:Supercentenarians and Category:Vanderbilt family are probably as far as we want to go. Or should we have a category "people called Smith"? Also how would we deal with name changes, spelling variations and hyphenation? I actually think these are basically sound ideas, just not suited for the current state of the Wiki. When the software has progressed a little, much of this will be easy in fact a lot of the metadata is already in micro-card format. Rich Farmbrough, 23:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC).s


 * This template only populates two categories. I have not noticed any difference in rendering time between the pages that use this template and the pages that use DEFAULTSORT and explicit category tags.  However, I do not recall that I have tried to view two large articles of similar size, one with lifetime and one with DEFAULTSORT, and cared about the difference.  (Differences that must be expressed in µseconds are nearly imperceptible.)
 * I am willing to concede that templates slow rendering time. Open any talk page that is larger than its article and has multiple project banners (aka templates) in a shell that is compressed.  All sorts of interesting things happen including the shell's taking a while to compress.
 * If one is opposed to templates that create "hidden" categories and/or increase rendering time, look at the talk pages. I no longer think it bizarre that a page in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter has more project banners than lines in the article (A footballer from one country who plays for a team in a different country can have a banner for the country of origin, the country of the current team, the football banner and the BIOG banner but the biography consists of barely two lines) and when I open the article and open it in "edit view" it takes much less time that it did to open the talk page.  If the objective is to reduce the rendering time that pages with templates take, go after the project banners and the shell.
 * As I understand "consensus" it means that an overwhelming number of folks are on one side of an issue to the extent that the other side of the issue has but one or two recalcitrant voices. To my reckoning there are three who want to destroy lifetime; five who want to keep it and use it rather than DEFAULTSORT and at least three others who have stopped and criticized User:Yobot or User:Smackbot for replacing lifetime with DEFAULTSORT and its categories.  It seems to me that a consensus is building for lifetime against DEFAULTSORT and its categories.
 * I could be wrong. JimCubb (talk) 04:21, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm afraid I'm not going to be active over the next two days, and I need to go really soon, so I haven't had the time to study the various conversations regarding this in detail. But could you explain to me what is actually wrong with what the bots have done, in using DEFAULTSORT? Have they caused any harm? Or made something not work? - Kingpin13 (talk) 07:21, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No, they haven't. Both bots got this task approved by BAG. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:13, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know, since I approved them :). But what I want to know is if they have actually made the pages less accessible, or caused harm, because it seems to me they haven't, and they have improved the pages, if not in all cases then at least some. But because a lot of users seem to be annoyed with them, I want to know why, if they haven't caused any harm? - Kingpin13 (talk) 13:43, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems to be a fear or misunderstanding that substituting the template will lead to deleting the template. Double Blue  (talk) 19:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)


 * No bots should have done anything if there wasn't a consensus on the subject. It's not about "causing harm", it's about using bots to eradicate a template many users still prefer.► Chris Nelson Holla! 19:25, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You may use the template to enter the information, if you like. It will be substituted because there is no reason for defaultsort and birth and death categories to be hidden within a template. This template is not being eradicated; there are plenty of useful templates that are subst-only. If you prefer to use it to enter the info, use it, but there is no reason for it to permanently remain in an article. Double Blue  (talk) 19:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * First -- Substitution deletes this template and inserts the DEFAULTSORT magic word and the two category tags. This is precisely what users of the template do not want.  (An old version of the documentation of DEFAULTSORT stated that there should be no replacement, one with the other.)
 * Second -- The year of birth, year of death categories and the sort value are not hidden within the template. They are the first, second and third parameters of the template, respectively.  That is what templates do, they assign things to categories in ways that may not seem obvious.  See the project banner and the banner shell.  If there is no shell and the Biography banner / template includes livingyes, the page gets the Biography of living persons banner and is placed in the category of Biographis of living persons.  (If there is a shell, the blpyes parameter does the same thing.  There is a blp but there is no need to use it.)  There is no legitimate way to mark a page for the category of living persons except through templates.
 * Third -- Other than your dislike of this template and, apparently all templates, why should this template not remain on article pages? When it is used properly it works well.  When is used improperly, repair is not difficult.
 * JimCubb (talk) 20:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yet again.
 * First, subst-only templates exist and don't get deleted.
 * Second, this kind of templates you describe exist in talk space and are for maintenance categories.
 * Third,... I don't want to make more cycles in the discussion. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:59, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

As an enthusiast for using lifetime when rapidly upgrading a stub article, as a fast way to generate birth and death/"living person" categories and a sort key from minimal input, I declare that I don't care at all whether it's later substituted to generate those categories visibly in the article code! In the light of the discussions above I've now started to use " {{subst:L| " instead of " {{lifetime| " - it's actually a key stroke less to type (given that you need "shift" to get the "|", so might as well type it earlier and hold it down for ":L|"!) So if that keeps everyone happy, I'm happy to carry on using it. I just want a fast input route while adding this info from any biographical stub I'm stub-sorting, to make good use of my time while I've got the article open for editing. PamD (talk) 22:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, You Win
I will no longer care what happens to a page after I add either lifetime, where it is applicable, or DEFAULTSORT, all other times. All I really care about is that the sort value is correct and that the value also appears as the value for listas on the talk page. If there is a sort value on the main space I use it. If there is not I create one.

If the other categories that lifetime populates are absent I will use lifetime if it is applicable. I will not use the subst form because I prefer to repair my errors before saving and a substituted template must be saved before its effects can be seen. (Yes, I see the irony in preferring the subst version to this template because this template is so difficult to use correctly.) If lifetime is not applicable, the article is about more than one person, I will use DEFAULTSORT but will not worry about the other category tags. I will put the information on the project banner, however, so that the blp banner will be generated if that is appropriate.

Feel free to carry on with the fight to eliminate lifetime with no further interference from me. There are 29,178 pages in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter that have resisted all bots and I fear that I am the only person who is willing to work on them manually. (One of the bots was designed specifically so that the editor would not have to do the task manually.) There are also about 600 pages in Category:Biography articles with listas parameter whose value is incorrect as they are listed after "Z".

Please remember two things when using either lifetime or the other version.
 * 1) Only one sort value is necessary on a page, more than one value has no effect on the sort order of the page.  If the two are different a conflict is created, a read error message will appear on the page at the point of conflict and because I monitor the category that is populated by pages where such conflicts occur.
 * 2) The sort value can go anywhere on the page but it is preferred that the Year of birth and Year of death category tags be placed after all the other category tags.  It is also preferred that the other category tags be alphabetized.

Happy editing! JimCubb (talk) 00:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree about liking to preview the changes. I think it's perfectly fine to use lifetime unsubstituted as long as a bot will eventually correct it but, for anyone else's information, one could also use a subst version and then use Show changes to see how it will be substituted. Double Blue  (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Yet another reason not to use Lifetime (unless subst'd)
While the Wikipedia article search feature has some negative issues, one of its cooler features is that it allows category based searches, but IF AND ONLY IF those categories are directly included in the article. As the search documentation notes: "incategory: - using this returns results in a given category (as long as pages are directly categorized, and not transcluded through templates)". In other words, if we were to use the Lifetime template on the Sandy Koufax article, then the article would NOT appear in the results of a search on . This is obviously a deficiency in the search system; it exists for very real technical reasons that may in the longer term be resolvable, but in the current system categories buried in templates are not searchable in this way. Making vital statistics categories such as year of birth and death unsearchable lessens the utility of the encyclopedia. Studerby (talk) 21:23, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The same holds for template:Infobox comics creator which transludes yob/yod categories. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:49, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Note for those that are tempted to experiment to confirm this for themselves: the search feature uses a special index that is not immediately up-to-date when an article changes. In fact, the search index is often hours or even days behind. So, to see this for yourself, find 2 well categorized articles, one that use Lifetime and one that doesn't, and try search on the birth date category of both. You should see that the search for the date of the article using Lifetime fails and the other is successful. Studerby (talk) 22:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:Birthdeath
has been proposed to be merged into this template, please see Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_22

70.24.248.23 (talk) 14:07, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request -
Could someone please update this template so it doesn't add article categories when used in userspace, per WP:USERNOCAT? (e.g. User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )/James Francis Jewell Archibald) Maybe add a few well-placed main other templates? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 04:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Only one is needed, . The template is semi-prot. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:13, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for making these edits. I knew I had access to make the change, but didn't feel comfortable that I could do it properly.  Based on your followup edit, I'm glad I let you handle it.  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 17:56, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I needed to ... -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:36, 13 January 2014 (UTC)