Template talk:Unsolved

Image
That accretion disk picture (helpfully called "science.jpg") looks good enough on accretion disc, but why does it have to be on every other page that uses this template? Computational complexity theory, for example, has nothing to do with physics. Why not just use a big question mark? Too obvious? (And no, I don't have a big question mark picture. :-) JRM · Talk 18:45, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

Well, it's been a while. Now I do have a big question mark picture, and guess what? I'm going to put it on there, too. JRM · Talk 18:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I made the question mark image slightly smaller. I think it looks better that way. --David Göthberg 05:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Suggestion for a new question mark image: [[Image:Question_mark2.svg|39px]]. The current one looks somewhat unprofessional. Acdx 22:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Category application
Shouldn't noinclude be includeonly? Or was it put in noinclude because someone decided they didn't want all the articles that transclude this to be in this category? Whoops, forgot to sign... Alexrussell101 16:48, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, it seems it should be a "includeonly" tag. So I changed it to that while I was doing several other fixes to the template. However it seems to me it is wrong to use such "automagic" categorising for this template. Since it will add all articles that use this template to such categories and many of those articles only briefly mention a problem but use the template to link to the actual main article that describes the problem. I think only the main article for each problem should be in the category. For instance cryptography mentions one-way functions and uses this template. But I think only the one-way function should be in the Category:Unsolved problems in computer science. --David Göthberg 05:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * What if we put in another attribute, "automagically include", with values of "include" or "no"(default)? It would still encourage people to use these categories. --Homunq 18:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I just did that. Now somebody should go through and fix the pages which use this template for a passing mention by adding a third parameter. I just did cryptography as mentioned above.--Homunq 19:15, 14 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I like your solution Homunq. I now took some time thinking about other ways to use such Wikimedia logic and about changing the order of the parameters and so on but your solution seems to be the simplest, clearest and most straightforward solution. Nice one! --David Göthberg 13:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

RFD
This template has been nominated for deletion on the grounds that it encourages naive wikipedians to try to answer the question, thus engaging in WP:OR. It looks as if the nomination will fail but this is a valid concern. However, putting a disclaimer about this would violate ... er... I can't find the guideline, but it's the one about not mentioning Wikipedia in articles in a way that would lose context in for instance a printed form. I think the right solution would be to have some "This is really hard and if you think you have an easy answer you're probably wrong. The first step in solving these problems is becoming familiar with why others have failed to." text on the page that you reach from the link. You could either put this text on all the "unsolved" pages, or as an alternate kludgey solution, create "Difficult unsolved" pages with just the disclaimer and a transclude of the "unsolved" pages. --Homunq 18:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * "WARNING! The following text may incite original thoughts or a misplaced feeling of curiosity! Do not edit the article in a spirit of speculation! Problems in rear view mirror may be harder than they appear!"
 * WP:BEANS. Don't make provisions for things you think could happen. You are probably 1) overestimating the problem and 2) underestimating the effectiveness of anything we could say or do to help out the naive. You could try a redesign of the template, maybe a form where it's not stating the unsolved problem as a question, but disclaimers are right out. 82.92.119.11 23:18, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Why isn't this template categorized?
This template seems not belonging to any category. Does anyone know why? --Acepectif 16:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

deprecate
the template should be deprecated as unencyclopedic. "unsolved" problems will have to be treated and listed on a case-by-case basis, there is nothing like a global consensus on what is solved and what is unsolved. Is time travel "unsolved" or just fantasy? Is time travel "unsolved" in the same sense the land of Punt is "unsolved"? If things are "unsolved" simply say they are, no need for a template. dab (𒁳) 18:09, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello Dr. Bachmann. I would argue that while the encyclopedia naturally should contain only encyclopedic material, some of what we do is purely for educational purposes that may not quite qualify as encyclopedic. Consider for example some of the material on Commons. Open questions in the sciences is an interesting dimension that merits certain focus. When I created the template I was thinking about the physical sciences, which tends to confine its questions to the realistic. The examples you give point to a possible flaw in this argument, but AFAIK no one has misused this template for example on the time travel article precisely because in physics the line between what is fantasy and simply unsolved tends to be rather clear. How "unsolved" may be misused in other fields is something I have not given any thought to - you may be right in that there may be a problem of misuse. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 23:21, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

What is unique about these lists?
I'm not entirely clear on why these "unsolved problem" list articles are so different to other lists that they deserve their own pull-quote template, and I can't see this has been explained in the past TfDs. A lot of other lists could be boxed in the same way (every Hitchcock film could have a floating box of "List of Hitchcock cameo appearances: In scene X, Y minutes into the film...", every item on List of impossible puzzles could have a linked box repeating why it was impossible, etc), but the usual approach is to wikilink the list in prose, or include it as a see-also. Why are we making an exception for these dozen "unsolved problem" lists? Is this just a leftover design offshoot from the experimental early days of Wikipedia? --McGeddon (talk) 13:54, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This is absolutely the problem with this template. It's should be a Navigation template, which is well-established mechanism in Wikipedia. - Crosbie 22:58, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Possible replacement
It's been suggested that the reason there's so much opposition to this template's deletion is that nothing has been proposed as a replacement. So, here's a proposed replacement. This sidebar is not only much more conventional in appearance than the current unsolved template, it's also much more useful for navigational purposes. Thoughts? DoctorKubla (talk) 20:27, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * (Bear in mind this is just a prototype; right now I'm more interested in discussing the concept than the execution.) DoctorKubla (talk) 20:29, 26 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Do you think it's useful to list all the various categories of unsolved problem? I thought your first draft was more effective - if I'm reading an article about one unsolved computing problem, I will be somewhat interested in other unsolved computing problems, but much less interested in unsolved biology or economic problems. --McGeddon (talk) 17:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, the problem with creating a separate sidebar for each topic is that some of them (linguistics, statistics) would be really small. But yeah, thinking about it, I think I prefer the less cluttered version as well. I'll try separating them out again. DoctorKubla (talk) 06:21, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Two suggestions
1. The template documentation says that putting the template in an article automatically adds it to the relevant category. But this does not happen. Either the template should be changed to match the documentation, or vice versa.

2. The box is currently not sufficiently separated from the article text. I suggest to slightly change the style, e.g. by making the frame enclose the link together with the text. This will make the box look better. --Erel Segal (talk) 09:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Done.--Erel Segal (talk) 16:39, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

"Open problem" or "unsolved problem"
Back in November, User:Erel Segal changed the template title from "list of unsolved problems in X" to "open problem in X". Given that this template is used as a sidebar pull-quote in unmathematical articles such as glass and the card game Beggar-My-Neighbour, is "open" too much of a niche term to be using here? --McGeddon (talk) 09:31, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree that "unsolved" seems like the more approachable term. --JBL (talk) 13:59, 20 January 2016 (UTC)


 * OK. Changed to "unsolved". --Erel Segal (talk) 16:39, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Add a "date" field so we can add a "as of [date]" at the bottom
If no "date" is specified, the template behaves unchanged like it does now. I think this would add valuable information, give context, and eliminate errors where currently solved problems are presented as unsolved.

104.228.101.152 (talk) 21:59, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

What is the point of this template?
This template seems to me to add nothing of value to any article. What exactly is the use of a big coloured block of text containing a sentence about something in the article? Additionally, on mobile displays, these boxes look absurd.

I see the template has been nominated for deletion five times. The last was five years ago. Perhaps time for a revisit. So if someone feels strongly about it, could they please explain exactly what would be the loss, if the template were removed from all the articles where it currently appears? 62.107.127.56 (talk) 19:30, 16 June 2018 (UTC)


 * In fact, the most recent deletion discussion was just over two months ago; you can view it here. The closer's correct summary statement was "clearly not going to be deleted." --JBL (talk) 02:01, 17 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Apparently, then, you like this template. Can you outline why? 62.107.127.56 (talk) 04:48, 17 June 2018 (UTC)


 * There are six past discussions that you can read. --JBL (talk) 14:04, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Maybe update icon
I've tried another question mark icon in sandbox. You can see how it looks in testcases. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:04, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I find the present icon somewhat easier to identify as a question mark. Is there something you don't like about the present icon? --JBL (talk) 22:01, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The shadow throws me off a bit. How about icon Question, Web Fundamentals.svg: Special:Diff/890776538 ? —⁠andrybak (talk) 13:42, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I like it -- it is clearer than the current one and your previous suggestion. --JBL (talk) 13:53, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:35, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Raw HTML template
The raw HTML structure of this template doesn't play nicely with other Wikipedia templates and side images. See the Proton article for two cases where the template gets stacked horizontally to the left of a navbox and an image, compressing the article text.

Changing it to a conventional sidebar template easily fixes that problem (diff, later reverted), at the cost of moving the question mark icon to the top, which User:David Eppstein dislikes the aesthetics of.

Is there a way to have a sidebar with the icon placed at the side, to cover all bases? There's probably also a way to hack the raw HTML here to display correctly when adjacent to other elements, but I assume it's preferable to be futureproof and standardise the code using higher level templates which are more likely to be maintained. Lord Belbury (talk) 09:50, 21 August 2022 (UTC)


 * There's probably also a way to hack the raw HTML here to display correctly when adjacent to other elements not hack, just add a missing piece of CSS for Unsolved to play nicely with surrounding right-aligned content: Special:Diff/1105703540. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:45, 21 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Replicating the behaviour of an existing layout element piece by piece seems like a hack to me, and I say that with a great affection for hack solutions. sidebar has fields for classes which can applied to each section, so this should be replicable in a sidebar template, inheriting all past and future bug fixes.
 * The following template code almost works, I think it just needs some CSS changes to the padding to leave more space for the icon:
 * --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:10, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Lord Belbury, feel free to experiment in the sandbox: Template:Unsolved/sandbox. For more details, read WP:TESTCASES. —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:22, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Lord Belbury, feel free to experiment in the sandbox: Template:Unsolved/sandbox. For more details, read WP:TESTCASES. —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:22, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Your proposed template code above also makes the "Unsolved problem in X" in too big a font, so that it wraps, making the box bigger and more obtrusive than it needs to be. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:21, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Dark mode compatibility
This template is unreadable when using the new dark mode on the Vector 2022 skin. I filed a bug report at ; they told me that the problem is with this template's CSS. Could somebody who knows how to fix this do so? —LucasBrown 14:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I use Vector2022 and it appears completely legible to me in dark mode. The text and big question mark are white (on a black background). The box around the template is a little hard to see (darkish gray on black) but still present. The links are link-colors. What's the problem? Maybe a screenshot? Maybe you have some other personal css settings that are interfering? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)


 * On my computer, running Ubuntu 22.04 and the Chrome and Brave browsers, the text is white (or nearly so), the big question mark is dark gray, and the background is light gray. The link is link-colored.  My only personal CSS is the line , which should have no effect on colors.  Wpdark.png —LucasBrown  19:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm running it in Firefox on OS X, but it looks almost the same to me in Chrome (the only difference is that the gray box around the template has a thinner line). For me, the background of the box is black in dark mode, and the question mark is white not black. I have a little personal css regarding font size and visibility of some objects but nothing that should affect this. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:48, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
 * It seems that the reason for you not having that problem is that User:I Am Andumé fixed it shortly before you replied: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Unsolved/styles.css&action=history. —LucasBrown 01:24, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * If so, then thanks, ! But I'm pretty sure I checked that it was working for me, looked at the history, and didn't see that yet. Regardless of whether the fix had anything to do with why it worked for me, a more general fix is a good thing. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:04, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! :) Andumé (talk) 06:59, 13 July 2024 (UTC)