Template talk:Rfc/Archive 1

Formatting with multiple topics
An rfc with style and soc topics lists the soc-topic on its own line at the bottom of the infobox without a bullet. An rfc with style, soc, econ topics places soc-topic at the end of the line of main text and econ-topic on its own line with a bullet. I didn't try it with other topics. It would be better if the formatting were more consistent and less surprising - just put all the extra topics at the bottom of the infobox with a bullet whatever topics they are. Joja lozzo  02:35, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It's possible those are typos? Templates are hard. hare j 16:40, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it was just missing some '*'s from when new topics were included. I added them in and it seems to be behaving. Joja  lozzo  18:24, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Closing RFC
I have seen RFCs that were closed, and the whole thread was put in some kind of box with a notice at the top that the RFC was closed. However, I cannot recall the exact location of any of these at the moment. Is there a template that is used for this purpose? Jc3s5h (talk) 16:45, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
 * See Closing discussions. Monty  845  16:25, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but that doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for. That page contains the statement "discussions are usually closed in situations where someone, usually an administrator, decides that the discussion is irrelevant or disruptive." I'm more interested in the case when an RFC was conducted, and possibly achieved consensus. But if it is just left for the default 30 day period to expire, the RFC bot will come along and remove the RFC tag. Then subsequent readers will have to read through the whole thing to discover the consensus, and will be unaware that the discussion was advertized through the RFC process, and thus carries more weight than an unadvertised discussion. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:47, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Closing_discussions, archivetop, archivebottom are what your looking for I think. Monty  845  16:52, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, when I read the template documentation, it is apparent that the templates could be used for much more than closing discussions that are irrelevant or disruptive. I believe this page should be modified to more fully reflect the variety of outcomes. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:21, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked the language a bit over there, hopefully that makes it clearer. Monty  845  17:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

"Within 30 minutes"
WP:RFC says, "It may take the bot up to a day to list the RfC, so be patient." However, this template says, "Within 30 minutes, this page will be added..." In practice, the RFC that I posted several hours ago has not yet appeared. Perhaps the language on the template should be updated? --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 21:28, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point. I updated the template. Joja  lozzo  01:26, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

rfctag
The template contains. The use is not apparent and when the template is used multiple times on a page it results in duplicate ids. --  Gadget850talk 12:53, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It was added by with . At that time, we didn't have the rfcid parameter, and therefore didn't have the unique anchor which it creates, so some means of linking directly to the start of the rfc was needed when the rfc was not immediately below a section heading. It was later amended with  to use an anchor generated from rfcid for preference, and again with  by  to use both. I don't know what Hellknowz means by AAB. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:50, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
 * AAB means WP:AALERTS, I needed a way for the bot to link to the RfC that didn't involve complex parsing of the template. At the time I was using the tag and the change broke existing links. I haven't transitioned to the new id tag. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:18, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Do not archive until
Is it feasible to make the template Do not archive until part of this template to ensure that bots do not archive RFCs before their 30 days are up? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:30, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Technically it is feasible, but I oppose it on the grounds that it would mean that things that were closed as WP:SNOW within a few hours or days of being opened would be forced to sit around for 30 days before being archived, and there is no need for that. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 20:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Snow closers could simply delete the do not archive comment andor the rfc tag and the bot will archive it. The point is to make this a human's decision, not a bot's. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * One thing that will help make this happen is visible text on the screen saying "this discussion will not be archived until foo" so that closers know it is there and know to remove it. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:04, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not feasible, because archiving bots don't look inside templates - they examine the bare plain text on the page to find the latest timestamp within each thread. If a thread with an open RfC is being archived, that means that the archiving time threshold is less than the time that has elapsed since the last timestamped post to the thread. Since RfCs typically run for 30 days, and most talk pages with archiving have the threshold set to a period longer than that, this sort of situation won't occur very often. It's probably better to ask the maintainers of archiving bots to add an enhancement so that threads bearing a will be excluded from the selection process. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:58, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * , they actually started there with User_talk:Legobot. The user seems to have a flawed perception that bot archived threads are automatically closed or that all discussions must be formally closed, which I have been unable to convince them otherwise.  Perhaps you will have better luck with it than I did. :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 22:14, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * An RfC is no longer treated as an RfC from the moment that the template is removed. It may be manually removed, or removed by bot; AFAIK there is only one bot that does that, it is, and it does so if either of two circumstances are met: (i) more than thirty days have elapsed since the first timestamp after the  template; (ii) the RfC is on an archive page. An example of (ii) is : the thread had been archived one minute earlier, even though the RfC had started 23:16, 15 November 2014 and so was not due to end until 23:16, 15 December 2014 - slightly over two days from now. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:39, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Technical13, clarification on my position. A discussion in an archive is de-facto closed, period. It's no longer on watchlists, it's no longer widely visible, so there is no practical difference between a closed discussion and an archived one. I've never seen an archived discussion get new comments, on any topic, ever. Therefore, when a bot archives a discussion is also closes it. This isn't a problem in most cases, but RFCs are intentionally there to give everyone a chance to comment, so most need the full 30 days. Yes, some are snow closes and can be archived quickly, so let the closer remove the DNAU note so it's a human decision. Also, discussions don't need to be closed and most aren't, and a lot of RFCs aren't, and that's fine, as long as RFCs get their 30 days. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:44, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Redrose, what about a wrapper template, where something like {{subst:rfc blah blah blah}} creates or similar? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:44, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Changes to categories?
I changed the tag on my RfC to remove the category "policy" soon after it was indexed, as it turned out not to be appropriate. I also added another more appropriate category. Will the bot eventually update the listings to reflect this change? Artw (talk) 22:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks like it updated, so that answers that question. Artw (talk) 23:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for a new RFC template
I was asked recently to comment on Talk:United States article. There are multiple RFC on this page and RFC questions are confusing. The article like this one (long and very popular) need a bit more policing. My proposal is to update RFC template to: Gpeja (talk) 20:30, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * include section of the article it relates to
 * specific question that could be easily answered with Oppose/Support
 * create an rfc response template
 * I had a look at that talk page and the problems they are far beyond what a template can fix. Also, I consistently object to support oppose options, since in many context it's not clear what those words mean (such as saying oppose in a deletion discussion which could mean oppose deleting or could mean oppose the article) Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:11, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * @Oiyarbepsy I agree with your assessment of United States. The articles like this are not rare, there will be always multiple disputes around them and hard to find all related information. It would help if an RFC could be connected to the article section it relates to. Maybe my suggestion is not the solution but it could help. I noticed it is hard to choose between support and oppose and added a neutral option too. These choices are important because of the final decision made based on these votes. I also believe the reason it is hard to vote is related to the way questions in RFC are formulated. Gpeja (talk) 16:51, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 13 April 2019
Please replace the template with the current sandbox version ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ComparePages&rev1=888313522&rev2=892325392 diff]). This would ensure that the text When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. becomes when there are multiple RfC lists. The result can be seen in the current /testcases. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 19:12, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done - FlightTime  ( open channel ) 19:15, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * wow that was really fast --DannyS712 (talk) 19:16, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

This is also not a real RfC, but a second test
Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion has two RfCs, which leads me to guess that that might be an issue. Can the bot handle two RfCs on the same page? — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 10:09, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes it can, see Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines and the two at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship (which at one point had four simultaneously). See also WP:RFC. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:59, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh right, I didn't expect bot instructions to be listed there so I didn't check. I'm also blind and didn't see RFA listed twice. Welp, so much for that guess. Feel free to remove this section so it doesn't interfere with your testing. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 11:30, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I suspended it. There may be a need for two at once, I'm a bit short on ideas at the moment. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:13, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

This is not a real RfC, it is a test
This is not a real RfC, it is a test. Some RfC listing pages have empty entries: a linked heading, but no statement or timestamp. These appear at the bottom of the pages concerned, just above the navbox. I'm trying to work out what is causing these mis-listings. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:56, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Let's see what happens to Requests for comment/Wikipedia technical issues and templates as a result. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:26, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, . Try it with colon? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:41, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Right, . Next, try semicolon as well. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:10, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Also ; next is a numeric list. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:24, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Again ; try the first one again. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:23, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, that one was . Wonder why it failed first time? Next test: Unicode characters. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 08:00, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Those were . Other Unicode characters are found in the signature of SMcCandlish. Maybe it's those (&#x2009;&#x2014;&#x202F;&#x260F;&#x00A2;&#x2003;&#x1F63C;&#x2003;). -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 08:38, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It's closing in. by  has  one of the incorrect entries - the one formerly at the bottom of Requests for comment/History and geography (it's not perfect, that extra timestamp has caused the inclusion of an unclosed  tag and the continued omission of option 4 but we can consider those later). So there is something between that new timestamp and the one of 01:01, 17 April 2019 (UTC) that was . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:03, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Another case. by  has partially fixed another of the incorrect entries - the one formerly at the bottom of Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Again, the timestamp dropped into the opening statement has cut off the latter part of the statement. For some reason there also seems to be an unbalanced  tag. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:24, 29 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Another: either or  by  fixed another of the incorrect entries. At this stage, we can't tell which edit was the successful one, because the second one was made two minutes before Legobot had a chance to detect the first. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:41, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I do RfCs pretty often, so I don't think it would have anything to do with Unicode characters in my sig, or this would have come up much sooner (and probably with someone else, since I'm hardly alone in have more than basic Latin 1 ASCII in my sig).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:51, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * With the latest of these, I feel that I should list all the problem RfCs that are presently appearing in the RfC listings only as links without text or timestamp, and their categories. They are:
 * Talk:14th Dalai Lama - hist
 * Talk:Calvin Cheng - bio, econ
 * Talk:Casualties of the Iraq War - pol, hist, sci
 * Talk:Dental dam - sci, soc
 * Talk:Dogsbite.org - sci, media
 * Talk:Grand Mufti of India - bio
 * Talk:MS-13 - pol
 * Talk:Republican Party (United States) - pol
 * Talk:Richat Structure - hist
 * Talk:Rigel - sci
 * Talk:Rigel - sci
 * Talk:The Wall Street Journal - pol
 * Talk:Tulsi Gabbard - pol
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music - media, soc
 * There must be a common factor that Legobot is choking on. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:45, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Character limit seems to be the reason. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 16:20, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Support the use of RfCs for testing purposes. —&#8288; 烏&#8288;Γ (kaw) │ 08:22, 03 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Making the bots smarter will only further the eventual AI takeover. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 15:13, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
 * We've had RfC statements that were far longer and yet went through fine (: 43,971 bytes). One of those listed above - Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music - is very short (less than one line, including timestamp, in my browser) but has a null entry at Requests for comment/Media, the arts, and architecture. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:36, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Is the timestamp with user link supposed to count as the cutoff point? Otherwise, the music one has 2 entire subsections. The campaign one is basically one sentence. Unless I'm missing something about what you're saying. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 07:37, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Any string that can be parsed as a timestamp and that is also in a format that could have been yielded by five tildes is taken as the end of the statement. If it is part of a four-tilde signature, the signature preceding that (such as the user link) is just treated as normal linked text. Try putting all of these pages on your watchlist, and observe the various RfCs getting added and removed. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:04, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I fixed a number of them by copying the signature to an earlier point. Doing this I noticed that a number of the problem ones were started by Snooganssnoogans - so Snoogans, please observe WP:RFCBRIEF in future. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:07, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The problem at Talk:Grand Mufti of India might be because copied the first part of the rfc, including the rfcid parameter, to Talk:Kanthapuram A. P. Aboobacker Musliyar. Such actions have confused Legobot in the past. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:27, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The upper limit appears to be 2,068 bytes, including the newline that follows the template. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:07, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It's probably ~2048, because you are including timestamp length, but the code likely doesn't unless the coder took a deliberate step to add timestamp length. Without timestamp, it's 2044 characters. It seems more likely they got the difference between template and timestamp positions minus template length. I imagine a few bytes are lost in newline, length math, and/or some string storage or processing stuff. — HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 13:57, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The source is here, but I can't find where the length of the variable  is set. Or the length of any other string, for that matter. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:51, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Gee, I didn't realize you had the source. I tried to debug the relevant part and the script fails (first) on this line: . The   RegEx fails with a PREG_JIT_STACKLIMIT_ERROR (6) as of PHP 7. Basically (though not technically accurate), the input is too long (~6k on that website). Since PHP sucks lets the code run with bad values, the script keeps running. Either RegEx needs to be more efficient, the PHP set to higher limit, or just not use RegEx. —  HELL KNOWZ   ▎TALK 22:37, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Just a note that Legobot managed to summon me to this RfC. I'm not sure if you had meant for that to happen. I dream of horses If you reply here, please ping me by adding to your message (talk to me) (My edits) @  05:08, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, it shows that WP:FRS is working for some people. It's not working for, for example, see User talk:Legobot. I know of no way of getting Legobot to list an RFC at the usual places yet exclude it from FRS. Certainly this thread shows that the two venues are closely linked. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:44, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
 * (Not summoned by FRS) The resident SkyNet bot is not giving me notices yet (but fingers crossed!). --qedk (t 桜 c) 13:50, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 7 July 2019
Please apply Special:Diff/905130896 from the sandbox. For Template:Userbox, parameter {{{nocat|}}} is not needed if there is no parameter usercategory. Also, re-format the code of Userbox. —⁠andrybak (talk) 02:21, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done DannyS712 (talk) 13:16, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * (also ) Wait a bit... your diff above relates to Template:Rfc/sandbox, and this is the talk page for that. So why are userboxes mentioned? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:13, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Template:Rfc uses Template:Userbox. This edit request was to clean up code. See Special:Diff/905185830. —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:32, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Formatting bug
I’ve just discovered that beginning the line after rfc with a wikilink disrupts formatting of the wikitext on that line. For instance:

Wikilink and some text, then some redacted text, then some added text, then some more text, all entered on the same line.

This only appears to occur in the initial paragraph. A workaround is to stick a tag before the opening wikilink, but does anyone have any idea what causes this glitchy behavior? (Note: I’ve substed the RFC template in the hopes that it won’t be listed as an actual RFC.) —174.141.182.82 (talk) 05:17, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Testing: Wikilink and some text, then some redacted text, then some added text, then some more text, all entered on the same line. - Ok, that's weird, this time it's all on the same line, just as you described. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:46, 24 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Here is a minimal example:

Wikilink redacted
 * It renders on two lines:

Wikilink redacted
 * Removing any part will render Wikilink redacted on the same line. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:42, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * One line Wikilink redacted  rendered inline:  Wikilink redacted Rendered as list item:
 * Wikilink redacted Rendered in column one (no indentation):

Wikilink redacted
 * For comparison an empty wkitable ending with  rendered as in your examples (indentation before the wikitable):


 * } Wikilink redacted
 * Obviously MediaWiki or tidy insist on putting the link into a paragraph, if it immediately follows the table outside of other block (div, list item, etc.) or inline (span, etc.) elements. Adding "something" between table and link&mdash;my - idea + variants with empty br, div, hr, span, or nowiki closed before the link&mdash;do not help. This reminds me of nine years old pre-oddities, but I'm not checking which long forgotten WONTFIX this was in 2006. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:39, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Since this issue apparently involves tables and not this template in particular, should the discussion be moved? Where? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 21:58, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Anyone? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 03:31, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm too lazy to find it on, but I'd bet that the general issue is a known minor bug in limbo between WONTFIX and NEEDSVOLUNTEER. –Be..anyone (talk) 17:32, 14 March 2015 (UTC)


 * This issue no longer exists. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:46, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Add parameter
How do we go about adding a parameter for site-wide discussions for sources? This is to widen participation in source deprecation discussions via WP:RSN. Ideally I'd like to add source as a parameter and have that advertised as for other sitewide items. Guy (help!) 13:18, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
 * By "parameter", do you mean a WP:RFCCAT category code? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:49, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I guess so. I am not up on the arcana here. Guy (help!) 00:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * If we add a new category code to WP:RFCCAT, we must ensure that has been set up to recognise the new proposed code, since the use of any unrecognised code will dump the RfC into Requests for comment/Unsorted, a page which should not contain any ongoing RfCs. To get the Legobot code amended, you need to convince the bot operator,, of the need for this. I doubt this will be carried out, since Legoktm is very busy and is unwilling to carry out any changes to the Legobot code, except for "Unbreak now!" bugs. This means that the list of category codes at WP:RFCCAT is pretty much fixed. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)