User talk:Dave Rave/TalkArchive

edit reverted, why ?
My edit to Main Western railway line, New South Wales 710292940 was undone by User:The Drover's Wife, why ? Entry included two corrections and 10 date updates as well as entries that aren't wrong ... Dave Rave (talk) 07:11, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * This looks like a content dispute, especially over whether use of a template is appropriate. You were invited (in the edit summary) to discuss it on the talk page, though the other editor has not yet started a discussion, but that page is the best place to discuss the content of that article.    D b f i r s   07:56, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * and now that the Talk has started, he still has his head in the sand and doesn't want to learn. --Dave Rave (talk) 06:53, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * She is critical of people mass-adding templates that serve literally no purpose but to obfuscate links in wikitext, since that is a bad thing and not a good use of your time. There is nothing to "not learn" about that. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 13:04, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I have no personal view about this dispute, but the best place to discuss it, as noted above, is on the talk page of the article where others can join the discussion.   D b f i r s   17:41, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not a rail page dispute. rail ppl who understand rail pages and rail templates understand that the rwsa template makes the page, lets, see, 1200 bytes shorter, and easier to read, once you understand the thing you have never seen before. objexting to a thing that is good that you don't understand makes for an edit war and words get thrown. i'm sort of restraining myself because venting is imminent. --Dave Rave (talk) 19:44, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * May I suggest making the edit, excluding the addition of the templates,, as the rest of it looks uncontroversial. You can then discuss use of the templates on the article's talk page. I like "objexting", by the way! Cordless Larry (talk) 20:42, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi . You might ask for an opinion on the station name templates. He has provided User:Useddenim/Naming conventions (Australasian stations) which describes them. They seem to be used in tables and templates where compactness is important. Are they meant for general use in articles? StarryGrandma (talk) 21:33, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

My 2¢ worth: This is precisely why route diagrams are usually on a separate page that is transcluded into the main article. Besides the fact that the incredibly convoluted syntax of BS-map makes it extremely easy for an inexperienced editor to totally screw up a diagram, the helper templates (such as StnlnkA ) simplify editing and remove a lot of repetitive typing. (Why type the same name twice, and add the words “railway station” onto nearly every line of a diagramme?) Contrary to claim that they “serve literally no purpose but to obfuscate links in wikitext” do the exact opposite and reduce errors and editing time when changes are being made. As far as their general use in articles, there’s no reason not to (and some editors do for the reasons noted above, but most people tend to prefer to stick with what they know: standard wiki markup. However, that is not “a bad thing”, merely personal preference. In the case of Main Western railway line, New South Wales, perhaps a  explaining the template should be added to the page, to end this fight. Useddenim (talk) 00:32, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input, . Thoughts, and ? Cordless Larry (talk) 08:23, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
 * seems negotiations, and understanding, has failed. User_talk:Dave_Rave --Dave Rave (talk) 08:36, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussion continues at User talk:Dave Rave — Preceding unsigned comment added by Useddenim (talk • contribs) 17:35, 20 March 2016‎ (UTC)

user discussion
It is a massive edit that makes working out what isn't and isn't linked an absolute headache. I have never seen that template before before despite having nearly every railway article in Australia on my watchlist - and thankfully so - because it serves absolutely no purpose - it just obfuscates ordinary wikilinks to make the wikitext as confusing as possible. This might be ignorable on a small page, but on a page of that size it is absolutely headache-inducing and for no good reason.

Absolutely nothing is simplified or clarified or in any way made easier by this edit: all it does is turn a bunch of perfectly clear Wikilinks into obscure templates doing exactly the same thing which make the wikitext of that page completely unintelligible. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 02:11, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * so, it's en:wiki, and you don't understand it, it doesn't affect you, you don't research it, but you'll revert it, including the date updates and the two edits that needed doing. The associated line template for the article was already done with those templates, I just got around to finishing off the ones not done. So good job for you ... Dave Rave (talk) 04:19, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * That didn't address my point whatsoever. The edit made the wikitext of that page completely unintelligible, and did nothing useful, so of course it affects me (and most other editors). I could care less what you do to the line templates, because they don't need regular editing and so it matters less if they're unintelligible to normal editors, but your edits here were actively detrimental to the article. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 05:23, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * who reads the underlying written code to understand the presented wiki article ? a normal wiki link is unintelligble until you understand it, so is reading a cite web url = --Dave Rave (talk) 05:25, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Let me rephrase: what does that template add to that article besides making the wikitext harder to read? The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 05:36, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * it detracts nothing from the article. wikitext is always hard to read, until you understand it and translate it in your head, as you go. reverting a valid edit undoes good editing, this article has bad dates, spelling errors, and you haven't learned anything from this experience. --Dave Rave (talk) 05:42, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Feel free to fix all the dates and spelling errors you like. It is completely bizarre to add something that serves absolutely no purpose except making the wikitext harder to read, without even any attempt at having a rational reason for doing so besides "because it is technically possible and I can". The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 06:31, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It appears that you don't like RwsA, and support your POV with the straw man argument that “it serves absolutely no purpose …[except] to make the wikitext as confusing as possible.” Apparently you didn't bother to read the documentation, which is as clear and simple as I could make it. If is that much harder to read and understand than, then I think if may be fair to question your overall grasp of wiki editing. Useddenim (talk) 12:57, 19 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Why did you create that template? What purpose does it serve? I can't think of an editorial dispute where someone had literally no reason for making edits except for a desire to obfuscate wikitext. The direct link is clear: it simply tells, in plain text, where the link goes to. The StnInkA requires me to track down and read the documentation for a random template and then interpret it (which on a large page gets to be a headache, particularly when mixed with the equally useless NSWCity template) - and has absolutely no advantages over the direct link besides being a handful of characters shorter. There's a reason I've never seen this kind of useless template in all my years on Wikipedia, and while I could care less if you want to mangle the never-edited line charts, if you're planning on trying to roll these out further, both templates need to be simply nominated for deletion. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 13:16, 19 March 2016 (UTC)


 * If you are asking those questions, then it is obvious that still haven’t bothered to read the documentation. And if you tell me that you have never mis-typed when inserting a wikilink, well then you’re lying. Your aversion to looking up and trying to learn about something you don’t understand suggests a laziness that is inappropriate for a barn-starred editor. I’m not advocating their replacement of regular wikilinks in articles. I just said that it is merely personal preference. Occasionally I’ve used them in an article; sometimes they’ve been reverted, but usually not.
 * Go ahead and nominate the templates for deletion, and see the shitstorm that you’ll bring down on your head. Useddenim (talk) 17:34, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * No, I understand how they work. I am just stating that they're completely pointless - ecause at no point has anyone advocating these templates actually advanced a plausible reason why they're doing this besides "just because". If I mistype a wikilink, it will show up as a redlink, and I can fix it piece of cake. If someone else mistypes a redlink in this format, I, like many editors, may or may not be bothered trawling through the documentation to work out how to actually fix it. It's bizarrely contradictory to all the efforts of people like the VisualEditor developers to make editing Wikipedia more accessible to newbies to drive our amount of active editors up to just intentionally make editing pages harder because you can and very weirdly, want to. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 23:51, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * So you’re just not willing to make the effort to understand? Definitely not willing to read what I wrote about easing editing Route Diagrams. (Try creating one yourself, and you might just see how much work it saves.) Besides, VisualEditor is incompatible with RDTs, so stop dispatching straw men to this discussion. WP:IDL is not an adequate argument, and if using a template is harder for you, well then just don’t use it – but don’t prohibit it to everyone else! Useddenim (talk) 00:12, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * To quote :"[RDTs are] a giant block of pipes and strange acronyms in German … a standard RDT contains lines such as . RDT coding is ridiculously complex and completely obscure. Anyone who wants to change an RDT needs to know the codes…"so drop the “Newbie” argument. Useddenim (talk) 00:32, 21 March 2016 (UTC)