Template talk:Wikisource1911Enc Citation

Fix
I fixed the redirect to a proper transclusion that renames the #1 parameter to wstitle, which seems to be the predominant use of that parameter. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:27, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * "Necessary to fix the template to that it works with existing instances. Please use talk page if you have a better fix" There is nothing to fix, it works at the moment, so the change is unnecessary. -- PBS (talk) 09:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It does not work at the moment - you have been planning AWB jobs because of this. Are you now saying that that AWB job is not needed? I was under the impression that the redirect needed the "wstitle" parameter set for some reason. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:59, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I am reverting the change. There are other parameters involved. This has been a redirect for a long time and there is no reason for you to change it.It makes no sense to have yet another 1911 template.  Bold revert cycle. you should not have reverted again until you have consensus for you change. -- PBS (talk) 09:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If you want to go back to a previous version, I will be happy to go back to a previous version that had all the parameters coded ... give me a minute. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:59, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, we are back to a previous version, and we can build consensus from here. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 13:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You have now put code into this redirect that has not been here since it was moved back in May 2010 This page has been a redirect to what is now "Cite EB1911" for over a year. So why have you done this? A page that has been a redirect for a year is stable.  What is it that you think you are fixing? -- PBS (talk) 21:39, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You have not fixed anything as the redirect Cite EB1911 handles the parameters this template used to use. But you have broken any usage of this template over the last 14 months, because the documentation of this redirect has been that for Cite EB1911. As an example see this edit on 20 August 2011. So please put the redirect back-- PBS (talk) 22:35, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * In the meantime I have also restored what I think is an accurate doc page for this template. That template does take an un-named parameter, unlike Template:Cite EB1911. Did the previous doc page say that? &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 00:09, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Does the redirect does handle all the parameters to this template, including the un-named "1" parameter and the "author" parameter? If so, what was the purpose of this edit that you made? If the EB1911 template does not handle the existing parameters of this template, have things been broken ever since this template was redirected to the EB1911 template? &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 00:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The redirect does handle all the parameters to this template, including the un-named "1" parameter and the "author" parameter. For the same reason I made this edit. In many cases the Wikisource1911Enc Citation was used because 1911 did not take parameters but Wikisource1911Enc Citation does not fulfil the attribution required by WP:PLAGARISM and while sometimes it was added in addition to 1911 sometimes it replaced 1911, so it is necessary to check each one. Having checked it, the simplest way to avoid having it recheck is to rename it and to add the additional parameters needed to make it into a full citation. Also in the long term converting the unamed parameters into named parameters will allow the template code to be simplified and allow error checking to be put in to help fix other problems. Now that you know that all the original parameters are handled by the redirect, and that the change you have made has broken some pages, please put it back to a redirect. -- PBS (talk) 01:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * (&larr;) That explanation appears at first glance to be at odds with your bot request at :
 * "What I want done is the conversion of all the article that call the redirect Wikisource1911Enc Citation to Cite EB1911. BUT the parameters passed into Wikisource1911Enc Citation need to be converted at the same time because because at the moment Wikisource1911Enc Citation uses parameters in a way that I want to get rid of,..."
 * One one hand, reviewing for plagiarism is a classic task that a bot cannot do. Also, even if a bot could check for plagiarism, a bot would be able to keep track of which articles it had edits, it would not need to edit the articles just to remember which ones it had looked at. It is elementary programming to compare a list of articles to check with a list of articles that have been checked.


 * My goal here is to fix this template so that it is not necessary to replace the parameters in the 1,000 articles that use this template, avoiding 1,000 unnecessary edits to those articles. This could have been done immediately when you replaced this template with a redirect. As a matter of principle redirects are not broken, and in general there is no reason to replace them with non-redirects that do the same thing. It is perfectly fine if some articles call the template by this name and some call it by another name.


 * Also, we can easily translate the un-named parameters in this template to named parameters in another template, as my original edit to this template did. That would allow for error checking in the other template to work without having to edit 1,000 articles. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 02:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The redirect was not broken but is is now it is so please put it back as a redirect. -- PBS (talk) 06:10, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That's somewhat terse. Are you saying "The redirect was not broken" as in "so there is no need to remove it from other articles"? You clearly expressed the opinion before that the redirect was not working because of some parameter issue. What exactly what that issue, and how can we fix it here so that the redirect functions correctly? &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 12:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Progress report
After looking through the source code of Template:Cite EB1911 for a while, it seems like the main difference is that this template does accept un-named parameters, but the other template adds a maintenance category if they are used. So it appears that the original method I used is best: we should translate the parameters names, so that if a page uses this template correctly (with un-named paramters) it does not make the other template think it is used incorrectly (and thus adding a maintenance category). I think my next step will be to work out exactly what parameters this template is supposed to take (which is complicated by all the moves of documentation history). Once I have that, I can re-do the original edit, translating all the parameter names, and everything should fall into place. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I am currently scanning all the uses of this template to see what parameters are used. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I finished the scan. There are 1,000 articles transcluding this template. The only parameters they use are "noicon" (1 use), "author" (6 uses), and "wstitle" (5 uses). They also use the first and second un-named parameters. Therefore, I have implemented code here that translates these parameters to the appropriate parameters of the other citation template. Therefore, based on the scan, the code properly handles all parameters that are used in transclusions of this template. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirect
This template cannot just be redirected to Template:Cite EB1911. The syntax is different between the two templates. In particular this template takes nameless parameters, while the other generates an error for these parameters. So this template has to give appropriate names to the parameters before calling the other template. I manually checked a little while ago that this template did cover all the uses existing at that time. But if it was redirected, it would cause articles to be mistakenly categorized as having errors, when in fact they call this template in the intended way. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:18, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * It was a redirect from August 2010‎ until November you restored the old code on 8 November 2011. ‎ There are currently no article using this page, so if it goes back to a redirect the documentation and everything else will be for Cite EB1911. While your restore and edits were useful as a short term measure, it is not a good long term solution because either it replicates Cite EB1911 with a few less than helpful exceptions, or as it does now restricts usage to subset of the parameters passed into DNB. If the former then it is just another complicated template that needs to be maintained, and if the latter than it does not provide the same functionality as Cite EB1911.


 * While your changes made sense while there were some usages of Wikisource1911Enc Citation which were not compatible with Cite EB1911 I do not think it worth keeping, now that there are none. -- PBS (talk) 22:50, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes in place of fixing 12 occurrences of the template, which would have made everything compatible, you chose to edit the template (and generate the job queue entries that you thought were damning at ARBCOM) and increase the transclude burden on every instantiation of the template. Puzzling behaviour indeed, for anyone not aware of your history of protecting "heritage templates". Rich Farmbrough, 00:29, 12 December 2011 (UTC).


 * Changing the 12 would not make things compatible, the target template puts articles that use un-named parameters and puts the articles in a maintenance category, while this template is intended to take un-named paramters. That is the reason that the redirect won't work. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:08, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * If there are no articles using this template, there were 1000 in November... That makes it seem as if someone has inappropriately orphaned this template. The edits I made to this template were not a short term measure, they completely fixed the problem that the other template was not able to handle the existing un-named parameters correctly. So there was no longer any reason to change the existing uses, as I had explained above. I suppose the next step is for me to pull out the list of pages that did use this template, see which ones now use Template:Cite EB1911, and change them back per BRD and WP:CITEVAR, unless there was a bot approval or other consensus behind the change. I will put it on my todo list, although it is not priority #1. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:05, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually Cite EB1911 did handle the un-named parameter correctly, what it did not handle the few instances were no parameter was present. There are very good reasons why the template should not accept either unnamed parameters or no parameters as it makes error correction next to impossible. In its current form this template does not handle all the fields that are required to give a full citation, or to act as a general reference for short citations. Therefore it is not fit for purpose. Adding all that is the reason it was made a redirect in the first place. It was then excluded from the documentation for how to use the 1911 templates so that it would not be used by editors new to the project.


 * This template is called "Wikisource1911Enc Citation" (26) characters long if the equivalent is used using the redirect it is "Cite EB1911|wstitle=" 17 characters long. So there is not even a justification of brevity of typing to use "Wikisource1911Enc_Citation".


 * Over the last year or so there is an emerging standard that we will have three templates for most of the public domain templates:


 * for a box announcing that there is a version on wikisource, for placing in the ==External links==
 * which will act as a wrapper around cite book or similar, filling in fields that are always the same. eg Cite EB1911
 * for templates which lead with an attribution string eg 1911.
 * The advantage of this is that the last two templates handle both instances where a PD article is on wikisource or from another source, with minimum changes for an editor to remember. ("title=" non-wikisource "wstitle=" for wikisource).
 * So for example, a Wikipedia article I altered today to include a full citation was Barbara von Krüdener it currently uses   when the article is ported to wikisource then the citation will change to


 * You did not gain a consensus for changing the redirect back into a template in the first place, I did not get into a revert war with you over it because, as I had explained the reasons for changing them were to do with the fact that most/many? of them were incorrectly labelled. I went through the last 1,000+ out of the original 1,500, and changed them by hand. They were either changed/merged to use 1911, or they were OK they are now using Cite EB1911, or were put into Cite EB1911 and added to a special category for further checking. Further checking is something I am discussing with other editors (more hands light work) and I plan to start on checking them as soon as the current project I am working on is ended that is a day or so from completion (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Dictionary of National Biography). The name of this category of articles that need further attention is Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica that may need Attribution.
 * If you would like to help fix the 900 or so that still need to be looked at in detail to see if they should be using 1911 or Cite EB1911, then your help will be most welcome. But your logic of reverting the changes made back to a template that was until you changed it a redirect is doubling up the number of changes (something you objected to in the first place), and it will not help sort out all the remaining insistences need to be checked to see which of the 900 articles should be carrying attribution. Nearly all of them also need inline citations, (which is something else you could help do) and would be more constructive than changing them back to the state they were in before. something else that also needs doing at the same time is adding volume and page information to the templates, so that they carry full citations as recommended in WP:CITE.
 * To add this information takes time as often the 1911 pages on Wikisource do not contain that information and it needs adding to the Wikisource pages as well! I have put in a bot request on Wikisource to automate the process of adding volume information but the last time I looked it had not been done, so that is another hand job.  -- PBS (talk) 05:19, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * To explain how this process works and how it benefits the project. Alexander I of Russia was one of the articles that was thrown up when I searched through the articles using Wikisource1911Enc Citation and 1911 See this initial edit, On fixing that I noticed that an article it should be linked to was Barbara von Krüdener. On looking at that article, Barbara von Krüdener, it was clear it did not cite its sources and did not have a link to an article on 1911. So I added that information today and added the inline citations. One editor I have discussed the Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica that may need Attribution with has already started work on it see these edits to the article John Abernethy (minister). So CBM would you be helping or hindering the project if you were to mass revert the edits that created the new category, let alone articles like Alexander I of Russia? -- PBS (talk) 06:01, 12 December 2011 (UTC)