User talk:Sgerbic/Archives/2016/09

Major problem discovered with Templates
I was bad! Being a coder/debugger I could not let the citation "glitch" go. What SEEMED like just a sandbox issue has much wider implications for all of WP! Here is the news... Please report this to whoever on the WP team is responsible for fixing global issues of this kind:

Problem: A citation using a Template that has missing data may misbehave in such a way as to mask that an error is occurring.

Example: Scientific American Frontiers Template was used but the name field was left blank.

Result: When such an incomplete Template is used on a page, this uses the WP page's name for the missing citation name. (As the two are not likely the same, this puts erroneous information on the page.)

I noticed this when I copied a citation from the Graphology page to my sandbox and in the citation the supposed name, "Graphology" (a reasonable possibility - BUT INCORRECT - name for a cited source on this page!), changed to the CLEARLY wrong "Rp2006/sandbox/graphology" and this jumped out at me during a scan of the page. I realized that a pointer substitution had occurred, and tracked down the cause to a missing field in the use of the Template.

There is also a problem seen with an External Link using the DMOZ Template with the name missing on the very same page. So there are two separate errors of this sort on the same WP page. My concern is that this is a widespread problem on WP and countless citations relying on Templates are incorrectly using the WP page name in place of the correct (but missing) name.

As a solution, I believe leaving out the name when applying a Template should throw an error (or at least leave the field blank) rather than substitute the wrong information which is VERY likely to go unnoticed.)

Incorrect use of the Scientific American Frontiers template as found on Graphology page

Corrected use of the same template RobP (talk) 14:21, 3 September 2016 (UTC)


 * That template is working as designed, but someone might still have made a mistake in leaving the name parameter blank. The intent was for ease of use when writing on a subject that had the same name as the title of the episode. The fact that it picks up the "sandbox" part of the pathname when substituting the article name is just an ignore-able artifact. The same thing happens (much more frequently) when using templates like the one for IMDB. At one time, my argument for having templates substitute the name of the article would have been to make it so there was less editing involved if a page is moved, but that's clearly wrong. So best practice is not to rely on the parameter being optional.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  20:17, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

archiving
I understand you want your old talk page activity moved to archives. I can set you up with dated archives like mine or plain old numbered archives that nearly everyone uses. If I'm archiving by hand, I would drop all the bot notices. The archive bot setup would also take care of moving your old threads to archive periodically, keeping the last 90 days, or whatever interval you'd like.

You just need to leave a positive acknowledgment here so I won't be seen as violating user talk page policy.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  02:06, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Archive away. I think just take it to almost nothing, I don't really care about the last 90 days. Whatever you want Jmcgnh. Thank you.Sgerbic (talk) 02:31, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you agreed. That last message of mine already had inadverantly added the archiving template to the top of your page and the bot came along and swept up everything it could and put it into the dated archives. Would have been a bit of a pain to undo.
 * I added the archive box and cleaned up a few more things. The bot won't touch undated sections and there are two of these remaining at the top.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  04:57, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * How do those undated sections get removed?Sgerbic (talk) 05:38, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * In principle, we could use WIKIBLAME to figure out when and who added them and use the unsigned widget to mark them with their proper date.
 * Since I didn't want to do that work, I guessed that they were your own notes to yourself – perhaps you need that TUSC token to log into your TUSC account, whatever that is.
 * But the easiest thing would be for you to simply edit them out of your talk page. You're allowed to do that.  &#8212;jmcgnh  (talk) (contribs)  06:23, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

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