Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Deprecating "Future" templates

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The original proposal
This is a centralized discussion about the possible deprecation of all the "Future" templates. Now before you click on that "edit this page" link to let your voice be heard, please read the arguments presented here first.

Just so you know what I'm talking about, the usual "Future" template looks like this:

We've got dozens of these templates for future albums, television stations, elections, cars and so on. Most of them can be found at Category:Temporal templates. All in all, there are probably thousands of articles that use such a template, if not more. The very first one was Template:Future, created on 5 June 2005. It seems to have been modelled after Template:Current (compare Template:Current in June 2005 with Template:Future in June 2005), so I presume that the supposed usage of the template was similar as well: To warn our readers when an article was being edited heavily ("Information may change rapidly"), either due to being a current event, or due to being a future event.

This usage has been entirely forgotten over the years, and instead of a warning for our readers on heavily edited articles, the template (and all the templates that it has spawned) began to be used everywhere. If an article was talking about a future event, a "future event" template was added. If a category of articles did not have their own "future event" template yet, it got created, and people started using that as well. The focus of the template changed, and eventually it wasn't a warning anymore, it was a notice to our readers that the article they are reading contains information about the future, and that said information may change.

And a template that notifies our readers about that is, in my opinion, entirely pointless. There is no reason to tell our readers something that is (a) more than obvious, and (b) already covered by our general disclaimer. So I'd like to find some consensus to deprecate the use of these templates, or at least find guidelines that would give the templates some purpose again and reduce their usage to a sane level.

Note that this is supposed to be a discussion, not a vote, so please be prepared to use actual arguments and respond to the arguments of those that disagree with you. :)

Proposal
{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 1px solid silver; margin-top: 0.2em;" ! style="background-color: #CFC;" | Proposal and discussion 
 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white; " |
 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white; " |
 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: I feel it is time to close this debate. The consensus here is Deprecation of "Future" templates. Specific cases, where such templates are worth keeping, are to be discussed separately. You can proceed in accordance with the consensus. Let me know, if you need any admin help. Greetings. Tone 21:21, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Discussion
In a way, this reminds me of the situation we had with the spoiler-tags. Initially, we had templates that would warn our readers of potential spoilers in articles about recent hollywood films, to make sure they know that we were not holding any information back. That, over many months, turned into countless spoiler templates being created, and in the end we had spoiler warnings on articles about the works of Shakespeare. Something like that happened here, too, with "future" tags being added to the year 2017 or the 2028 Summer Olympics. Note that I have gathered a few of the most common arguments (and their responses) for these templates at User:Conti/"Future" templates, feel free to have a look at that page before commenting here. --Conti|✉ 16:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * They do seem, for the most part, rather redundant. Generally the article itself will make it quite clear that the subject is about a future whatever and therefore the potential for the information to change is quite implicit.  I would support the deprecation of these templates.  Also, for what it is worth, shouldn't the discussion for this go on the discussion page rather than a discussion section here? Shereth 16:53, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * From what I've seen from similar discussions, it seems to be mostly personal preference whether the discussion happens on this page or on the talk page. Personally I prefer things to stay in one place, so I started the discussion here. :) --Conti|✉ 17:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It is an article message box (and so should be "temporary" until the "problem" is fixed) but there is little point in having a temporary tag for 10 years or so in case of future Olympic games. The information in the template is pretty useless: surprisingly, future events take place in the future and we don't know yet whether any of the plans we write about will come to pass. Delete them all. — Kusma talk 17:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I would support deprecating these templates, or at least clarifying that they should only be used when the event is imminent and information may actually change, but there's no reason to have these for minor events or things that aren't going to happen for years. Mr.Z-man 18:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think this is a great idea. to the extent that the goal is a warning to readers, it borders on insulting. “Caution, this article on the 2010 Olympics might change” How many readers are thinking, “I’m glad that template is there, I never would have considered that otherwise.” If we want to warn people that articles might change, I’ll wager there will be more edits to the Ayn Rand article than to the 1010 Olympics. However, I will raise one potential issue. While the intention may have been to warn readers, I wonder if the practical effect is to warn potential deletionists. “Hey, you there looking for the right CSD template – there’s a reason there isn’t a lot of material on this page, it hasn’t happened yet.” I don’t want to oppose the deprecation of these templates because they might inhibit bad behavior by over-zealous deletionists, but if they are deprecated, we might have to remind some editors, who might now see a rather sparse article, and miss the reason.--  SPhilbrick  T  19:07, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A quick reminder of Wikipedia's answer to Godwin's Law:"The only times that people use 'deletionist' and 'inclusionist' is to call other editors names. Their use has never improved a discussion. Any editor who resorts to such name calling is indicating that xe has run out of proper, valid, arguments to make." Uncle G (talk) 19:24, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I never really considered that, but I think that these templates wouldn't stop such a person anyways. Most of the sparse articles about future events that I have encountered were about sporting events (After all, we know that there will be Summer Olympics in 2028, 2032, 2036, and so on), and those already indicated in the article title that they were about a future event. If a potential CSD-tagger is not going to notice that, he won't notice a big friendly template, either. :) --Conti|✉ 19:30, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * An article either meets minimum inclusion standards or it does not; the existence of a "future whatever" template does not somehow give an article a free pass. Shereth 20:46, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, wouldn't these mBoxes actually be more appropriate on "minor events" then they would be for the major events? I would think that the notice would be more important for events which may not be receiving the widespread attention that the major events do. — Ω (talk) 04:19, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Borrowing from Z-man's comment, perhaps there should be a replacement Template:Imminent: "This article or section contains information about scheduled or expected future imminent events." ? --Cybercobra (talk) 07:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, is there a reason why we would want to warn our readers about that? Unless there is massive editing going on, I don't see one, and in that case we can just as well use Template:Current. --Conti|✉ 09:11, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent point. Deprecate. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes please deprecate it. The future template should be rewritten to say imminent, emphasize the reason (heavy editing) and then not used. The current template should be rewritten to emphasize the reason (heavy editing), and discouraged. Abductive  (reasoning) 12:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I would not support deprecating these templates. Everyone is focusing on those articles that are obviously (i.e., dated in the title) about future events.  There are other articles, particularly in-production films and other creative works, where it is important to remind the reader up-front that the information is based on preliminary reports, previews, etc. rather than after-the-fact reviews and summaries.  Is it absolutely necessary to do so?  No, of course not; but neither do I see a compelling reason to prohibit it.  By all means, remove the template from the most obvious future articles, but keep the templates for future legitimate uses.  Powers T 13:55, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Aren't articles about in-production films making it also obvious that they are, well, an article about an in-production film? And aren't all the implications of that (information is not yet final) just as obvious in those cases? Let's take an entirely random example: The Lovely Bones (film). What use is the template in that article? To notify our readers that the "details are likely to change as the release date approaches and more information becomes available"? Do you honestly think that that's not already more than obvious to our readers? Seriously, what's the point? --Conti|✉ 14:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's just a useful reminder, prominently displayed for clarity and increasing the chance that the reader will notice, such as in the case where the reader might skip the lead and go directly to the cast section or the like. Powers T 14:10, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The thing I'm not getting is: Why is it useful? What's useful about reminding our readers of the obvious? And if the readers might skip the lede, he might as well skip the big, friendly box on top of the lede. And even if he would not, there are still enough reasons not to use such a template. Information may not stop being tentative even after a film has been released, for once. There will always be future information about DVD releases, or interviews years after the film has been released that give insight into how the film was created, etc. Some information will be rumors for all eternity, and some information will be final long before a film has been released. --Conti|✉ 14:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Concur with LtPowers about the reasons for its applications with film articles. The Future film template seems more useful than it is not.  Lead sections are going to be written in a myriad of ways.  Sometimes the lead sentence will mention "upcoming", sometimes it only mentions the release year and then mentions the more specific date at the end of the lead section, etc.  At least with films, people are really good with using it and taking it down when a film comes out somewhere publicly.  That's my $0.02, though... basically a weak oppose.  If the overall consensus is to remove it, WikiProject Films can probably survive.  I'd rather transform the template into something more useful, more specific to the subject matter (like having the template encourage building up of production information since many films get such coverage leading up to their release). — Erik  (talk • contrib) 14:43, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think I'm following your reasoning. You say that lead sections are written in lots of different ways, but all the examples you mention make the future nature of an article quite clear, unless the reader doesn't know what date it is or is not reading the lede at all. The only situation I can think of where such a template might make sense would be in an article that does not mention at all that it is about a future film. And in that case, Template:Cleanup or Template:Update seems more appropriate. Changing the template into something more useful might certainly be a good idea, depending on the details. But that would probably mean that the template will become independent of the fact that an article is about a future film or not (Production information may be present in an article about a future film, and it may not be present in an article about a 30 year old film, etc.). --Conti|✉ 15:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I wish we could use consistent indentation here. To respond to Conti farther up, I guess I'm saying that it's useful because it's not always completely obvious.  You're presuming a conclusion -- that the future nature of an event is always "obvious" -- that I don't think is necessarily true.  In some cases, sure, but not in all.  And I think that the future nature of an event is something that ought to be called out clearly outside of the article text.  Powers T 15:14, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * But what if it is obvious? Do you see a purpose in future film on The Smurfs (film)? It already says clearly "is a forthcoming 2010 live-action film". Garion96 (talk) 15:53, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly; it makes the fact that the movie is unreleased explicitly clear at first glance; that's important because it colors the interpretation of the entire article. Powers T 16:56, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Why not let people just read the lead where it already states it quite clearly, you really don't need that in a huge box. Of course it can change, it is a wiki. The Barack Obama article clearly can rapidly change, but there is no "this is about a current and possibly future (2nd term) president, information in this article may change as the presidency continues." on it. :) Garion96 (talk) 17:19, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh come on. The entire article makes it explicitly clear at first glance that the movie is unreleased. "is a forthcoming 2010", "The film will be", "The Smurfs is expected to", "Voices will be", "is currently in pre-production stage", "is expected to release", "will be Live-Action/CGI". You cannot seriously argue that we need to make it more obvious than that. --Conti|✉ 17:26, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So, because you disagree with me, I must not be serious. Way to argue in good faith.  Powers T 22:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not what I meant. But if you're saying that The Smurfs (film) needs a warning to our readers that it is an article about a future film, then I strongly disagree with you, and would like to know why, exactly, the information presented in the article isn't enough. --Conti|✉ 22:51, 5 August 2009 (UTC)\
 * I don't know what else I can say. I'm not going to magically come up with an explanation that's going to convince you.  I've told you that they're useful for telling at a glance that an article deals with a future event, and calls strong attention to that fact upfront.  If you don't find that sufficient, fine, but I do.  Can't we reasonably disagree on this topic?  Or do you require unanimity for some reason?  Powers T 00:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Mostly I'm just trying to understand your standpoint. I would in other cases, but in the example above I simply don't get it. So I guess we can agree to disagree here, yes. :) --Conti|✉ 09:43, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Considering how outnumbered I am here, it seems like piling on. Suffice to say that I find value in a more prominent notice versus leaving it to the prose.  Powers T 13:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Deprecate these templates. The current template can be used for some situations, and the rest are obvious enough that they're fine without the template. I don't think that imminent is needed either, and that current can cover it or no template is needed.  hmwith τ   14:12, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate please - I edit over in the video games section, and I can't count how many times I've seen this template immediately followed by "blah is a video game that is in production and is expected to be released in [future date]". The template should be redundant to the text, if the writers are doing it right, and as such there's no need for a big distracting banner. -- Pres N  14:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Idea, I do not mind categorization of future stuff, but I think if anything, don't make them banners. Put the clock icon thing up in the corner with a tooltip like "This article documents a future event or release", linking to the current events portal. ViperSnake151   Talk  16:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I would be fine with making this an invisible template. There are three benefits to these templates:
 * categorization for readers - sometimes useful, for example the future tall buildings was an interesting category
 * categorization for editors - good - can use hidden cats if needed
 * "warning - clean-up reminders"
 * this is the dubious part. Warnings are often not appropriate, and the clean-up should be cat-driven (i.e. when they cease to be "future" and become "existing" or "past")
 * Rich Farmbrough, 17:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC).
 * I'm not sure I understand your third point. What should the warning/clean-up reminder say? "The article should be changed to reflect that the film/show/etc. has been released"? And apart from that, the only use of the template would be to add categories, in which case we could just as well add the categories themselves. :) --Conti|✉ 17:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea. But it sounds like you're talking about current articles rather than about stuff that might be happening months or years in the future? Flowerparty ☀ 03:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, I'm sold... I'll be fine with deprecating such templates, although I won't be complaining if there is no consensus to do so. — Erik (talk • contrib) 16:56, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate - Serves no valid purpose. Use it perhaps solely as cleanup template when it is not clear in the article/lead that it is about a future event. Garion96 (talk) 17:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Kill with fire - per pretty much everybody above. There's certainly some legitimacy to using them on a small scale in the same way current is, but not on the scale they've been used. ^demon[omg plz] 18:33, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate - it's on too many pages not to be an eyesore.--ZXCVBNM (TALK) 18:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: I just did a quick count. Turns out there are about 6000 articles currently using a future template. --Conti|✉ 19:04, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate Don't need such banners, especially when they often introduce redundancy and make a big splash across the top of an article. They aren't even cleanup banners. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:03, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate - I am of the opinion that while content of article my be influence by time sensitive matters, the article in-and-of-themselves are timeless. Having article using secondary sources with content comprised of creation/conception/promotion/etc. is describing the movie/comic book/video game/etc. as it exists, and the makes such tags a bit irrelivant. Simply, removing the tags could help us to better refocus on building content in articles, and still meet the needs of spoiler seekers. -Sharp962 (talk) 21:31, 5 August 2009 (UTC).
 * Comment I like the idea that these could be made invisible, simply to hold tracking categories. --Izno (talk) 22:05, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: What would be the use of a tracking category? Isn't the purpose of the template to warn users that the info could be subject to change? If it's invisible, the point is lost. Better to just delete it outright.--ZXCVBNM (TALK) 22:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Assuming you mean the "Future Film/Album/Road/etc." categories, why not just use them without any templates? It seems more straightforward to type "" instead of "" . --Conti|✉ 09:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate, we have several classes of templates than do little more than clutter up pages and patronise readers - the Future templates are some of the worst offenders in this category. There's a valid argument for a possible variant on the current template that covers genuinely-imminent events that are subject to large amounts of media speculation - but generally slapping future templates on things that haven't happened yet generally achieves nothing while being rather unsightly. ~ mazca  talk 10:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate per z-man. --Joopercoopers (talk) 11:10, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate per Mazca. I have always hated these. They do next to nothing for the reader and are extremely ugly. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:18, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate Just in case someone is !counting,I said so above, but without a formal !vote. -- SPhilbrick  T  19:31, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Since this is supposed to be neither a vote nor a !vote, this probably isn't necessary. :) Hopefully no one is going to count !votes at the end of this. --Conti|✉ 22:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Need a bot? I'm neutral on this right now, but it looks like the templates are going to be deprecated. I'd be happy to request approval for DrilBot to do this task. Just let me know on my talk page. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep as per Powers above. I understand the arguments for deprecation; however, they are extremely useful for articles on artistic endeavors.  While an article may explicitly state that Such-and-Such has not yet been released/performed/recorded/etc., people don't always make the connection that the information in the article is subject to change.  For things like Olympic Games 30 years in the future, they usually do, but for the production of a musical on Broadway, people don't understand that it may lose financing, that cast members can be recast, that the authors can pull out, that the plans can fall apart completely.  I agree that, in general, they're overused, but I don't think that fact is a sufficient argument for deprecation.  &mdash;  Music  Maker  5376  22:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment seem to have missed the boat a bit here, but I've written a new template that would make all those subject-specific templates redundant - User:Ninetyone/testtemplate2 - do with it what you will. ninety:one 11:11, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. While I am sympathetic to the arguments presented here, I'm also inclined to agree with those who feel that these templates provide useful "at a glance" information. Is it wise to be talking about deprecating all of these templates without considering their usefulness on a one-by-one basis? What about alternatives such as moving them to talk pages? The only one of these I use is future film, which I find a rather useful tool in terms of categorisation, tracking articles, article assessments and weeding out articles that do not meet notability guidelines; it would be a pity to lose it, IMO. PC78 (talk) 11:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * All the uses of the template that you mention are done through the various categories, and not the templates themselves. You categorize, track, assess and weed out articles through the use of categories, and those will be retained even if the templates will be deprecated. --Conti|✉ 12:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So you use it as a maintenance template. The template text self is intented for readers, although admittedly I don't see any benefit in it for readers, As Conti stated, you can do all the things you use it now for without the usage of this template. Garion96 (talk) 13:58, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not strictly true. With the template I can see where it has been added to recently created articles; I can't do that with the category. And without these templates I would not expect the categories to be so well maintained. When an article ceases to be "future" it's going to be a lot easier to miss a category at the foot of a page than a large banner at the top. PC78 (talk) 13:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Could you elaborate on that? Currently I don't get how you can see that a template has been added to recently created articles, but cannot do the same when a category is used instead. Anyhow, if the purpose of the template is to tell our editors "Remove me after this date!", then it most definitely belongs to the talk page, and should probably be integrated into the WikiProject films banner. --Conti|✉ 14:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure. If you click on "what links here" for the template then (so far as I can tell, but it certainly seems to be the case) articles are listed by age, i.e. newer articles appear at the end of the list. I don't really get your last comment. Obviously the primary purpose of the template is not to tell our editors "Remove me after this date!", but for all of these templates it is of course inevitable that they will eventually be removed when they no longer apply. To voice my concern another way: if the categories are to be populated manually rather than by the template, then I think it would be less likely that the category would be added to an article, and less likey that it would be removed. So a side effect of deprecating these templates might be less effective categories that require more frequent housekeeping. That may or may not turn out to be the case, but I think it's a reasonable concern. Speaking more generally, I don't find it unreasonable or unhelpful in the slightest to point out that the content of an article may be more speculative and subject to change than usual. Perhaps we just need a better way of doing it. PC78 (talk) 15:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, that's what you mean. That actually sounds useful, although that, too, could be done with categories. Actually, that can already be done with categories, see here (Hey, did you know that Wes Craven is an upcoming film?).
 * The templates are being populated manually, too, and that seems to work quite fine. I don't see how typing "" at the start of an article is any harder or any easier than typing "" at the end of an article. As for the general idea of notifying our readers of content being speculative and subject to change, I've made my opinion on that clear enough in previous comments, so I'll leave it at that. --Conti|✉ 15:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Doh! Actually that's a bit obvious and goes some way to resolving my concerns. Regarding the second point, it's not a case of it being any harder or easier, rather I see it as being far less obvious without the template. PC78 (talk) 16:01, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. I would support deprecating these tags. While cleanup tags are there to warn about faults wit the article theese tagsshould be redundant to the article text. The fact that the article is about a future event is of course a very important element of the article that probalys should get a prominent position in the lead, but a tag is not needed. Good suggestion. Rettetast (talk) 18:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Query whether certain classes of tags need a separate discussion - If a warning tag is there merely to point out the information in this article is only provisional as the event has yet to occur then that is pointless (any reader with brain engaged should gather that from the article text), if there to inform the reader this article may well be complete rubbish; it was the best we could do when we wrote it but we are aware that it belongs to a class of articles that may quickly become out of date and that we acknowledge we have a poor record of maintaining then that is not so pointless; an intelligent reader could not surmise it merely from reading the article, they would have to be aware also of certain systemic failings in Wikipedia. From personal experience, I've found that articles on upcoming elections and sporting events have been largely unaffected by these problems - they seem no better or worse for factual accuracy or prematurely dating than any other class of articles. (Not sure why. Perhaps they tend to convey facts that are less subject to change - e.g. the law under which elections are contested is already fixed. Electoral and sporting events often occur at predictable intervals, which may make them more amenable to be handled systematically.) I notice that articles on future film, musical and architectural projects are often outrageously poor (at the time of reading the article, such projects have often been cancelled, renamed, substantially altered, or already taken place!). Perhaps that is understandable; particularly for blue-sky projects, even people in the industry may have little idea whether the project is dead, alive or just "on ice". Publicized updates tend to be low-key and rare, often in industry news sources rather than the mainstream press, so are missed by Wikipedia editors even though they may contain information that would radically transform the article. I appreciate my evidence is only anecdotal, but it does also make intuitive sense that such divisions should exist, and seems in tune with the many "keep" comments that specifically talk about one or more classes of "future" tag (particularly for the arts) being particularly useful. I don't want to unduly prolong the discussion, but could we have a case-by-case discussion at least on those "future" tags for which specific concern has been raised? We could do with more subject-specific editor input on whether "future" articles in certain fields have a known tendency to fail, and therefore whether warning to readers may be exceptionally justified. TheGrappler (talk) 13:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, then we might need a new template (And I mean one, not two dozen) that simply says what you just said: "This article may well be complete rubbish; it was the best we could do when we wrote it but we are aware that it belongs to a class of articles that may quickly become out of date and that we acknowledge we have a poor record of maintaining." Well, it should probably be worded more nicely. :) And it should only be used where it can reasonably be assumed to be true, and not like the future film template (random example), which is used on each and every film that has not yet been released. The Lovely Bones (film) may not well be complete rubbish, and it doesn't need any template that says something to that effect. But I'm honestly not sure if we need another template in the first place. Template:Crystal, Template:Update and Template:Out of date can be used in pretty much all situations instead. --Conti|✉ 14:27, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly none of those three templates would be appropriate for the situation I am describing (or rather, in a metaphysical sense, it might be appropriate to tag an article as out-of-date, say, but it wouldn't work as a system since nobody would know where or when to apply the template). I'm thinking of articles that are not obviously out of date (to readers or editors), were probably fine at the time of "going to press", where checking they are still up to date may be difficult (bizarrely I've had severe difficulty checking whether certain proposed TV shows were actually ever broadcast, or in some cases only found non-reliable sources such as blogs that confirm it; for proposed building and film projects I've found on several occasions contradictory information about whether the project is on hold, going slow, or already cancelled), and worse still, in instances where the information is out of date, it is often badly wrong without this being obvious to a reader. One issue when creating a system to manage such articles is that announcements do not come out at predictable intervals, so an article may be out of date within a week or still up to date a year or two later (I've seen cases of both). So we are talking about articles with a high risk of "failing" (i.e. becoming substantially incorrect at an unknown point in the future) yet where systematic maintenance will be difficult or impossible. As a result, many readers will be exposed to an incorrect version of the article. Now, readers have a general entitlement to take what we say at face value unless we give them specific reason otherwise - a right limited by our general disclaimer, but which we largely respect. I hope nobody writes articles with the expectation that every reader will carefully check each citation given. Similarly, as editors, if we smell a rotten fish on an article (we may suspect original research, emotive language or apparent contradictions, even if our subject knowledge is insufficient to confirm this) we often add warning tags. This has a maintenance purpose, but do note that we add the tags to the article page, not the talk page, so readers (not just editors) receive fair warning of our concerns. With high risk articles, the fish may still be fresh - but we know it's stuffed behind a radiator and it's likely we'll forget about it for a while. Now this revision of The Lovely Bones (film) actually looks pretty good. In fact it is unusually good for an article about an upcoming film, which makes it bad as a general example. However, a well-informed reader (one who knew about Wikipedia's weak points on article maintenance) might not take everything in the article at face value, particularly the release date of December 11, 2009. If I saw the article in that state in January 2010, it would be clear that the release date had changed but nobody had altered the article. But looking at it today, if that release date had already been changed (postponed last week until Feb 2010, say) I would be none the wiser. Moreover, either as a reader or as an editor, there would be no reason to suspect that such a change had taken place, as an editor I wouldn't know that it was an article requiring an update so would fail to tag it as such, and neither as a reader nor as an editor would I be likely to check for new sources. (Actually, being an editor has made me much more skeptical of what I read here, and so often I do look for more up-to-date information even when there's no clear reason to do so - and I've found that many articles which as fine as your example did but turn out to have key facts out of date and sometimes wildly incorrect as a consequence.) Obviously this is a problem throughout Wikipedia, especially with "abandoned" articles, but experience informs me that there is a specific and disproportionate risk for articles on certain classes of future events and which would not be obvious to a typical reader (my experience is that coverage of future election is more accurate than for future architecture, but how would a casual reader know that?). A "future" tag, even in its current wording, serves as a gentle nudge to the reader not to take the contents of the article at face value. I agree that we should be more parsimonious with the use of such tags, but I do think we should spend some time establishing which (if any) classes of article are at unusually high risk of presenting incorrect information to future readers. TheGrappler (talk) 19:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Responding to your last point first, I think it would be a great idea to find out which kinds of articles about future events might need to be looked at more closely. I've done some cleanup work in this area, and I, too, was surprised which categories of articles are in need of more editors (Future airlines, for instance) and which are not (Future elections, as you said). Still, I do not think that it would help if we would keep some of these templates, and would prefer if we would instead start anew, once we identified the problem areas. For instance, I'm quite sure that future hollywood films do not have the problems that you mention, while future Bollywood films probably do, due to systemic bias. Additionally, as I said above, I think one template that points out the problems you described would be enough, otherwise I can guarantee you that we will end up in the same situation again, where people will start to mark the 2028 Olympic Games with such a template.
 * But, generally speaking, I am still not a fan of preemptive warnings to our readers. It is of course entirely possible that the release date of The Lovely Bones has been postponed, and that our article about the film is not saying a word about it, and therefore misleading our readers. But that kind of argument can be made for each and every article that we have. So we either have to tag all articles, or find some guidelines that would draw a line somewhere. And I am not sure if it is possible to reasonably define that line. I just don't see it happening.
 * In the end, this is about whether we want additional disclaimers in articles or not. And I don't think we need any more than the General disclaimer and Template:Current. I do not think that we need Template:InformationMayBeIncorrectOrOutOfDate. --Conti|✉ 19:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment i'm not sure if deprecating is a good idea here. I understand that many folks have a problems with the abundance of maintenance templates and see in these future a good place to start cutting, but they DO have a purpose, both for readers and editors. TheGrappler has eloquently put forward these subtle but important problems that often exist in this category of articles. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate Wikipedia articles should look like proper encyclopedia articles. I think tags like these should only be used where we are flagging up problems with the article - e.g. lack of referencing, disputes etc. Being a future election, for instance, doesn't count. AndrewRT(Talk) 22:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Support Deprecation of All' These are very annoying and overused templates. While some are valid disclaimers (which aren't actually allowed either), a majority of these are used when it is very obvious that it is in the future. It annoys me to warn readers that information will change when 1) DUH! and 2) actually no, not for a long time. The lead should indicate a future event, not a big ugly banner. Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk  00:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. This kind of useless banners is why nobody reads warnings. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. I don't see much advantage to these templates. Every article in Wikipedia is subject to change. In the absence of a warning that information is likely to change in an article about a future event, would any users complain that the article was getting more accurate as the event approached? I doubt it. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 13:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Handle this on a case-by-case basis Don't deprecate some, deprecate others. Some of these are important, I think; such as for future video games. There are pages such as Final Fantasy XIII which are long, drawn-out articles on things that haven't been released yet, and people spend an inordinate amount of time on them, but I think it's important to alert readers right off the bat that the content of the article is often speculative, subject to change at short notice, and possibly full of junk (depending on who's editing). In this way, it's similar to the templates&mdash;a quick warning to the reader to take content with a grain of salt. That being said, I agree that some of these templates, such as future public transportation, are probably not necessary...but for some of these bigger ones, I think they need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. <b class="Unicode">r ʨ anaɢ</b> talk/contribs 20:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Given the number of templates involved, I think it's most pragmatic to just delete them all (reviewing any individually would get quite time consuming), and then if a group of editors wants to bring a topic-specific one back, that can be done after first gaining consensus to do so, and otherwise, unilateral creation of "future" templates ought to be prohibited. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:32, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate - While sometimes their use is justified, they breed like rabbits so should be removed all at once. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * What about all the cleanup tags? It seems pretty obvious when an article needs cleanup and improvement if it has lots of spelling and grammar issues. SharkD (talk) 04:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Some of them are more subtle than that (e.g. COI, unbalanced, cleanup-tense, intro-rewrite). --Cybercobra (talk) 05:40, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate, but make the Future and Current assessments for articles part of the normal assessment scale (they are currently custom assessments used by a handful of projects). --<font color="#115566">G <font color="#496636">W … 15:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. Where would be the best place to suggest this change? WikiProject Council? --Conti|✉ 17:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. If there is a lot of information coming out about a 'future subject' (e.g. a new games console in the days following its official announcement) then we can put an 'ongoing event'-type tag on it. These overused banners have always given me the impression of being a subtle criticism rather than a worthwhile source of information for users. I think we can rely on our readers to have the intelligence to know that 2028 is in the future, for example! Cynical (talk) 17:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: Looks like the templates will be deprecated. I ask whomever decides to take action to contact the related WikiProjects.  For example, the Future film template adds the film to the Upcoming films category, so if the template was removed en masse, there should be a check to ensure that the "upcoming" category is included.  The same may need to be done for other kinds of future templates. — Erik  (talk • contrib) 17:40, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I will give whomever is going to deprecate the templates a list of the templates and their corresponding categories (some templates use more than one), so that the categories won't be touched. Speaking of which, I plan to ask a neutral admin to close the discussion in a few days, if there won't be a sudden surge of traffic on this page or something like that. --Conti|✉ 17:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. No one who didn't read the template documentation knows how these are to be used. Furthermore it's pretty rare that a "future" event needs such a template. "Current" events are much more likely to invite the number of changes necessary to warrant a warning. On the rare occasion that such warnings are necessary, they can be coded manually. Equazcion (talk) 22:00, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. Conti's arguments are very strong. An article should be clear about the subject being a future event/building/something. And if it is not, the text should be changed/updated, or at least tagged with a more specific template, like crystal or update. --Kildor (talk) 22:34, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. — Primarily because this remedy is overly prescriptive. One important issue that I don't see addressed at all is the exact definition of the term "depreciate" in this context. I saw a removal bot mentioned somewhere above... Are we really having a discussion seeking some sort of sanction to begin a massive edit war? I don't particularly like article mBoxes myself, but this is no way to deal with them. — Ω (talk) 04:13, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Assuming you mean "deprecate", as in to retire, rather than "depreciate", as in to lessen in value. We're looking to delete these templates altogether. The purpose of a bot would just be to remove the template references from articles, once they've been deleted, so that the code doesn't show up as red links (like Template:non-existent template). I don't think anyone suggested starting an edit war. I suppose one could start if some people who were unaware of this discussion disagreed with the removal of the templates from articles, but the templates themselves would be gone, so those editors wouldn't be able to get them to reappear in articles anyway.Equazcion (talk) 06:06, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If the intent of this conversation is to delete the templates, then that should be accomplished through the proper TfD procedure. I'm not about to try to tell you guys what to do, but don't be surprised if you experience significant resistance from taking this discussion as some sort of mandate for action. That's where the "edit war" comment that I made above is coming from.
 * Anyway, if you don't like them, that's just as valid of a position as those editors who seem to plaster them on as many articles as they can. The least disruptive way to deal with this sort of issue is to quietly remove the template while generally copy editing the article content. If you're improving the quality of the article at the same time that you're removing the mbox, no one will be able to make accusations of disruption (or, at least, not ones that will stick). — Ω (talk) 06:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This discussion continues on the talk page.
 * Sure. Anyway, I support deprecating the templates. A reader will perforce read any template at the top of a page, even if only for a second, even if he already knows what it says from having seen it before. If the article's introduction is well written, the future template should not be needed.  There are probably some exceptions to this rule, but I cannot think of anything specific.  Future may be thought of as similar to fiction: as long as everyone knows it's future or fiction, it may be written normally as if it were real. Chutznik (talk) 19:42, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I also support deprecation of these templates. Irbisgreif (talk) 20:08, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I concur with the deprecation, and can't add any more to my colleagues' excellent reasons. Stifle (talk) 21:12, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Overused has been cited a few times here. If it were used in just the right quantity, would that help? HarryAlffa (talk) 14:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * HTML 5, old version. Look at the tense the article is written in. Apart from the lead, it's written as if HTML 5 is current. The future warning allows the editor and reader to "work" with the article this way, making it easier to read as well as write.
 * Editor Guidance. As per my two points above, I think the real problem is over/needless use.
 * Campaign of Removal. If someone has the balls for it, then remove it from pages you think it shouldn't be on, and point the usual editors to this discussion. But remember the mass date delinking uproar. HarryAlffa (talk) 14:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * HTML 5, like many things in-development, are written present-tense because they do exist currently, though they haven't been released yet.Equazcion (talk) 16:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate per many of the reasons behind what seems to be the consensus here. "Future" templates are a separate issue from many of the "current event" or "recently died" ones, and it seems redundant and too easily applicable.  &mdash;<font color="#0033CC">Pie4all88  <font color="#0033CC">T <font color="#0033CC">C 19:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. It is not giving readers any information they are not going to get in the lead section, and will simply annoy them when they read the same information twice. It is not informing potential editors of anything they will not be aware of from either knowing the topic, or from what the lead says. It is therefore a piece of clutter.  SilkTork  *YES! 22:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecate This proposal was overdue  SPLETTE &#32;:]&#32;<font style="color:#104E8B;font-size:90%">How's my driving? 00:57, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No action Except to draw up guidelines for their use. They have a role in some situations.83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:39, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Since this discussion has been going on for more than two weeks now, with more than 50 people participating (quite a lot for a discussion, I would argue), I suggest to ask an uninvolved admin at WP:AN to close this discussion in the next few days (Er.. that's how it's done with centralized discussions, right?), unless there are any objections. --Conti|✉ 21:19, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good idea. It seems like this discussion has got sufficient attention now, and the outcome of the discussion is, in my opinion, pretty clear! --Kildor (talk) 09:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Also agree. I just checked AN and didn't see any such request yet, so I'm gonna do that now. Been more than long enough. Equazcion (talk) 15:26, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Done here. Equazcion (talk) 15:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Deprecate. These templates are in most cases not necessary and just an eyesore. I think we can get by fine without them. Kaldari (talk) 19:41, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Just came across this on the WP:AN. It seems there is a broad consensus to deprecate those templates. Shall I close it now or would anyone like to add anything? --Tone 20:09, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it's safe to close it as such, but I'd hesitate to outright delete all the templates immediately, as I believe that alternate solutions are preferable in some cases (I can think of two specifically). I'd suggest using WP:TFD on a more individual basis.  Cheers.  <i style="color:green;">lifebaka</i>++ 20:53, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree there. There whole point of having a centralized discussion was to avoid a lot of individual repetitive TFDs. If there is consensus here to deprecate, then that's demonstrated consensus to delete the templates, and there's no reason to do that all over again at TFD. I'm not sure what kind of alternate solution you're referring to, but certain templates can be brought back on a case-by-case basis, if need be. Equazcion (talk) 20:57, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Equazcion. If a particular template is worth keeping, then it can be discussed separately, but the whole of this discussion feels like a way of saying "deprecate all of them, without going through a TFD". I mean, this basically, is a TFD. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecating these templates will probably take a while, so they're not going to be deleted immediately either way. The alternative solutions that have been proposed here can pretty much all be done by creating a new template, instead of (heavily) modifying an old one, tho. Which two suggestions do you have? --Conti|✉ 21:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 1px solid silver; margin-top: 0.2em;" ! style="background-color: #CFC;" | Long discussion on implementation
 * }
 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white; " |
 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white; " |

How to implement the deprecation
So now that the discussion has come down in favor of deprecation, how shall we go about "implementing" the deprecation? A suggestion made earlier on was to program a bot to go through and remove the template from every article, but I'm not sure that is a good solution at this time - deprecation is not the same thing as elimination, and there may be some cases where editors are reluctant to see them removed. Should all of the templates in the temporal templates category be marked with tdeprecated? Some other solution? <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 21:49, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't like the idea of using G6 in that manner, as that usually comes after an actual TfD. --Izno (talk) 21:52, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Whoops, I meant tdeprecated, not deprecated. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 21:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Meh, that won't work either, as it still wants a "new" template to redirect to. I suppose what I'm wondering is if we should mark them as deprecated in some fashion to discourage their future use. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 21:57, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Unless the templates are removed from articles then I'm not really sure I see the point of this discussion; in theory you have a concensus to stop using them, but if they're still there then in reality nothing has changed. Since concensus here has been only to deprecate, I would think the next logical step is a TfD to pursue deletion. PC78 (talk) 22:07, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * We could simply use a custom-made template:


 * In addition, a bot can be used to remove the templates from articles. --Conti|✉ 22:11, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That works, too. I suppose one way or another, it needs to be decided if these are going to be phased out gradually via deprecation or actively excised via deletion.  I suppose the only reason I ask is because I've seen it happen in the past where the enforced removal of "deprecated" formatting turned in to a massive headache and I'd rather not see the ambiguity turn into a problem here. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 22:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, if we don't at least actively prevent users from using these templates, nothing is going to change. People are simply going to keep using them. --Conti|✉ 22:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hence why, at the very least, they need to be marked as "do not use". I am somewhat ambivalent as to whether or not they should be deleted/removed, but that distinction should be made sooner rather than later. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 22:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

← I'd say: Redirect all of the future templates to the basic Future template and mark it as deprecated. DrilBot should be able to go through most of the pages that transclude them and remove the template, replacing it with just the category (I'd need to request bot approval first, but I don't think that this sort of request would be denied). Then, periodically, we can go through Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Future and remove any new usages. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:39, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If we do a bot run to remove the templates, once they are no longer in use I would say they can be safely deleted, so no one has to do periodic checking on it. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 22:43, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think this redirect/bot/delete idea is good. The generic future template could be marked as well, with a small transcluded message stating that the template has been deprecated and should no longer be used. I'm thinking something unobtrusive, the way TfD notices are transcluded. This way it won't come as a shock when the bot comes along and whisks these away en-masse. Equazcion (talk) 22:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree. Perhaps we can insert a message at the bottom of each tag, something like this:


 * In this way, everybody will see what is about to happen, and we will avoid having people removing the template without replacing it with the corresponding category. --Kildor (talk) 07:06, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I was thinking more along these lines, with the notice outside the template. Also changed some wording:

The template below has been deprecated (see discussion), and will soon be replaced automatically with the corresponding category.


 * Seems more appropriate outside the box, stands out less to the average reader who doesn't know anything about bots or template deprecation. I could be wrong, it's late here :) Equazcion (talk) 08:06, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I prefer to keep the message outside of the template. Should it be transcluded into the articles, or kept on the templates? If the former, should the templates be removed from the articles first?
 * I noticed that quite often these templates are added to articles by people using Friendly, so I've gone ahead and left a note there to ask for the removal of the Future templates from that utility. --Conti|✉ 09:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good! And Equazcion's version of template message above is perfectly fine (better than mine :). I would say we better add the message to the template itself rather than transclude it into the article. It might be a good idea to transclude it like tfd-inline so that everone sees it. But I am not sure if we should redirect all the templates to future as suggested above. We will need to deal with each template separately, since they place articles in different categories. For more frequently used templates, this is better done by a bot. But for less used templates, it will probably be easier to remove them by hand. --Kildor (talk) 13:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point on the not redirecting the templates all to future. It shouldn't be too big of a hassle to modify each of the templates with the notice.  I do agree that it should be transcluded into the article, as well, so people know what to expect. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 14:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If transcluded, the message should contain a link to this page so people know where the decision was made. And yes, the templates should not be redirected until they are orphans. --Conti|✉ 14:40, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Suggestion: Get rid of the red but leave outside the template and in italics, just as a standard tfd or ffd message is displayed. --Izno (talk) 15:29, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Er, I might have jumped the gun... I put the Future film template up for TfD. I looked below the closed proposal for follow-up discussion and did not see that it continued above the proposal... in any case, removal of this template requires a specific handling (maintaining articles in the "Upcoming films" category). Anyway, that's my heads-up. — Erik (talk • contrib) 14:48, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, maybe this discussion should he moved back down (or to the talk page, or something). Anyhow, I've compiled a list of the templates and the categories they use, which can be used by whomever is going to deprecate the templates with a bot. As for the TfD, you could withdraw the nomination to keep the discussion in one place. --Conti|✉ 15:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I put in a request to withdraw. I agree about moving discussion down.  Maybe if there is a fear of people missing it below the proposal, we can force a table of contents to show that there's more than one item? — Erik  (talk • contrib) 15:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Moved back to the bottom, where I had started it to begin with. I went ahead and collapsed the proposal, so that this part of the discussion is now more prominent. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 15:18, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict)Regarding the problem with using the bot after redirecting all future templates: I don't think that's a problem, because the code in each page won't change; Future films will have the future film code and future games will still have the future game code, for example. The bot will still be able to use those to determine which category to place. All that would change is the actual box that renders in the article. That's my take anyway, I could be wrong. As far as the TfD for Future films, I see people have brought this discussion to their attention, so hopefully that nomination can be speedily closed without too much flak. If this discussion needs to be moved somewhere to avoid that happening again, that's fine. It used to at the bottom of this page, and I moved it up here, perhaps in bad judgment, to keep people (and myself) from having to scroll through the long archived debate below. (post edit conflict) Good job on the move :) Equazcion (talk) 15:20, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd say we use some other template for articles that are changing rapidly. Maybe construction? — MC10 ( T • C • GB •[ L ]• EM )  01:24, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Are we sure?
I just noticed this discussion because a the future building template was removed from a template I use. I am not sure from reading the above that there is broad community support for this change, and fear that we will be duplicating the date controversy as people and bots go around removing templates that have been around for a long time. Unless I'm mistaken this has had 21 days of discussion from about 50 users. I would have opposed this change had I known about it and wonder how many other contributors missed it. There was no notice on WikiEN-l of the existence of this discussion that I can remember.

Despite the overwhelming vote to deprecate I think we need to give some thought to why they haven't been deleted before now if it was so obvious that they should be? There must be editors and/or users that find their use convenient and informative beyond their use to reiterate parts of the disclaimer. Have those reasons been thought about rather than being summarily dismissed?

Unfortunately, I think that those that support their use would NOT notice the discussion until the templates start to get deleted. Therefore, we ought to be prepared for such a contingency. And the implementation should proceed in a way that provides for these these possible objectors to contribute to the process to reach full consensus. However, I could be very wrong and no one but me will feel they were left out, if so I just ignore my comment and proceed. -- Trödel 17:13, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I left notices about this discussion at all places I considered relevant, but it never occurred to me to leave one at WikiEN-l (probably because I don't use the mailing-list myself). Apologies for that. I think I didn't leave out any important on-wiki place, at least (WP:CENT, the Village Pump, all WikiProjects that use these templates, all talk pages of the templates, etc.). But unfortunately it's inevitable that someone who'd like to participate in such a discussion will miss it, we can only minimize that problem, not eliminate it entirely. This certainly shouldn't become another date controversy disaster, and I hope no one is going to start any edit wars over this issue.
 * As for why these templates have been used, my interpretation can be read above in the original discussion. Basically, it's a "We use them because we can" issue, just like it was with the spoiler templates a long while ago, or the overuse of the current event templates a not so long while ago. People see a "Future" template, and decide to create their own for a group of articles that does not yet have its own "Future" template, and once they have, they start applying it. Hey, there's a template for future elections, so why not one for future years? Wait a few years, and you have dozens of different future templates. Of course that's not the sole reason, and there actually are good points why we should use these templates (again, a lot of those can be found in the above discussion), but in the end I (and many others, it seems) was not convinced that they warrant the use of these templates. The only real use of these templates (in my opinion) is categorization, and that part would not be touched if a bot would remove them from the articles.
 * The first step should probably be to mark these templates as deprecated, without removing them from articles. That, hopefully, will alert more people on this discussion. Maybe they will come and object, maybe they won't. We'll see. --Conti|✉ 17:57, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This was posted in high-profile places like WP:CENT. In theory, CENT and similar locations will attract users of all sorts of varying views on a topic, so that even with only 50 !votes you still have a similar percentage of support and oppose votes as you would with 500 or 5,000 !votes. I think that a lot of users who add the templates also do so because that's how it's done. I've never added the templates just because I thought that it was a good idea (and because I've never had occasion too add one in the first place :)), but if I did add one it would have been because that's how it's done, not because I liked them. The !votes above seem to show strong support in favor of their deprecation, so I think that we can just start moving on with this. If there is significant opposition once edits start being made, then the discussion can be revisited. As to why they haven't been deleted before if there is such overwhelming consensus to do so, I'd assume that it's just because nobody actual took the time to start a discussion. It can be daunting to start some huge RFC that could affects thousands and thousands of pages. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:50, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreeing with everything above, I just wanted to add that I think many people if not most add these to articles just because they exist. People inherently assume that the existence of a template, containing a message applicable to an article, is reason enough that it ought to be there. If you created a template to mark all music-related articles, unnecessary as that would seem, they would still be used simply because they are there. As for why they haven't been deleted yet, this has been a gradually growing issue, and there was really no singular event that would've triggered a nomination. It would have had to simply be someone finally saying they're tired of seeing these unnecessary things everywhere and asking who else agrees, which is pretty much what happened. Equazcion (talk) 19:17, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand the objections. I'm not seeking to reopen discussion. I just wanted to log my objection in case there are others as it can be intimidating to come to a page like this where everything seems too late. I wanted to create a place where such objections can be lodged and if there is sufficient numbers of them we can decide what to do.
 * There was due diligence in noticing the discussion - in my opinion from browsing around after my: comment above. I do think that the input hasn't been as broad as I would have hoped for if I was the nominator.
 * I am a visual person and think the notice conveys useful info quickly. And if it is on an article that it shouldn't be on - that tells me the article is not watched carefully which is also useful info. But let's not bother debating any - it seems settled - unless there are sufficient objections. I ask that implementation proceed carefully, as has been done thus far, in case there are such objections.
 * Sorry for bringing up the date discussion - maybe using that argument in the future will be a corallary to Godwin's Law :) Trödel  20:10, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Trödel just expressed my own earlier concerns. I still think that, at the very least, someone should start a TfD before continuing on. I'm just betting that you guys are walking yourselves into a storm here. You'll do what you want regardless, but there will probably be less heartache if you at least go through TfD, since you can at least point to that when the inevitable complaints start rolling in. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 00:47, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * We can just point to this, I think. If we really must bow to the bureaucratic notion that a deletion discussion for templates must take place at TfD, then by all means, let's move this entire page to a TfD subpage. Equazcion (talk) 02:10, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * *shrug* it's up to you. I reserve the right to say "I told you so", though. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 02:16, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (e/c) I'm not so sure. This proposal was to deprecate, not delete, so I think concensus here allows us to mark the templates as deprecated and even remove them from articles, but no more. TfD may be a necessary step. PC78 (talk) 02:19, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and put a dummy disclosure entry @ Templates for deletion/Log/2009 August 29. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 02:29, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Moving forward
In the interest of moving things along, the plan seems to be to alter all future templates to include a message, to be transcluded into all their articles, warning of the automated replacement by bot. The templates would be deleted once the bot has replaced all future templates with their corresponding future categories, and also after manually doing the same for template references the bot didn't catch, like those added to articles while the bot was working. The immediate steps should be to add the message to the templates, and to apply for bot approval. I have very little experience with bots or their approval process, but I can begin work on adding the template messages. If everyone more or less agrees on the plan, we should get started on it. Equazcion (talk) 20:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I will file a bot request for approval shortly. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:02, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. A few of the templates are fully protected (ironically enough, only those that are not used on hundreds of articles), so you'd need to make some editprotected request. --Conti|✉ 21:04, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Bots/Requests for approval/DrilBot 4.
 * For protected templates, you can use editprotected or just ping my talk page; I'd be happy to make the edits for you. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:13, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've made an edit to future that I believe reflects what we are trying to do here. I've also set it up so it shows a larger message on the template itself, informing editors not to use it.  Let me know if this is what we want to do, I'm holding off on making further edits until it has been reviewed. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 21:46, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * IMHO, less links are always good. The link to the "corresponding category" should probably not always be used, since some of these templates use more than one, or none at all (see User:Conti/"Future" templates/List for a full list. It can get rather complicated). Also, there's probably no need to link to WP:BOT. Apart from that, it looks good to me. --Conti|✉ 21:49, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Good ideas on reducing the links. I think it's a better solution, too. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 21:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

←Everything looks okay so far. I've placed the notice, using Shereth's example, on future film, but without the bot and category links. Equazcion (talk) 22:11, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I hit the protected ones, so it looks like all the templates have now been properly marked as deprecated. Now that it is done, the approval period for the bot should give interested users some time to notice the notices and drop in to sound off if there will be any further issues with the deprecation. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 22:43, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * All the non-protected future templates are also done, in case that wasn't clear. Equazcion (talk) 23:03, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment This template was made to make it very obvious that the topic is in the future. Like spoilers, it should already be obvious in the text. However, in some articles it may still be necessary to point out that it is a future and changing topic, but the lead/text does not make it clear. I suggest that, either in the notice on the template or in an edit summary by the removal bot, there should be a short reminder to users to be sure the article still conveys that the information may be dynamic. Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk  02:23, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * How would a notice on the templates help when these templates themselves are already about informing people the article is about a future topic? --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 03:02, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A notice in the edit summary of the bot sounds like a good idea. There are very few cases where this is actually a problem, tho, at least in my experience. --Conti|✉ 08:19, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Can do; any suggested wording that will fit in an edit summary? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Spoiler warnings were removed by a massive abuse of the rules and exploitation of single points of failure in the system. Please don't use them for precedents in other cases.  And specifically in the case of spoiler templates, a spoiler warning is not redundant, because not every plot element is a spoiler.  A properly used spoiler warning should only be applied to spoilers, not to everything which contains a plot element; this might mean putting it in the middle instead of at the top if the first spoiler appears some distance down, or not putting it in at all if no spoilers are being given.
 * Furthermore, to the extent which it is redundant with being a plot, all natural language, and many user interfaces, contain some redundancy. My car's fuel gauge has an empty and full marker.  The empty marker is completely redundant because everyone can figure out from the presence of "full" at the other end that this end means "empty".  It would be foolish to delete it on these grounds. Ken Arromdee (talk) 17:46, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Beta software?
Template:Beta software has also been tagged for deprecation. I didn't originally consider that template for the list of Future templates, and as I've nominated the template for deletion a while ago, I don't want to be the one to decide whether it should be included here or not, so I'll let you guys decide on that one. :) --Conti|✉ 08:25, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Eh... this could go either way. It does seem to convey a little more information to the reader than the other templates do, but at the same time it should also be pretty clear in the text. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The only difference I can see is that it doesn't have "future" in the title. It's the same thing really. PC78 (talk) 14:37, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * ^Agreed. I don't see any differences either. It says something is in development. Isn't that what all the future templates say? This one just doesn't contain the word "future". Equazcion (talk) 15:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Removal of deprecation notices
See this edit. User:Brian Everlasting commented out the entire future sport template (his intention may have been to only comment out the deprecation notice, but I'm not quite sure myself on that). I requested an explanation, to which he replied that he thinks the notices are an eyesore. I invited him to comment here. However in the meantime, I'm concerned that the future sport template isn't even showing up at the moment, since all of its code has been commented out, which might be misleading to people in a number of ways. I think the edit should be reverted, at least until Brian's concerns can be addressed further here, however it might not be appropriate for me to perform the revert since I'm the one who placed the deprecation notice on the template in the first place. I'm also wondering if someone with more diplomatic ability than myself could speak to Brian and at least convince him to bring his concerns here. Equazcion (talk) 22:40, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've just gone ahead and reverted. Commenting out an entire template is highly inappropriate. PC78 (talk) 23:09, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Just delete them
We don't need to rehash this. The whole "future" template thing was held yonks ago and we deleted them. If somebody has recreated them just speedy them. --TS 00:46, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If that's true, I think that was too long ago to still hold (I see future's history goes back to 2005). The current iteration of future templates has become pretty accepted and deserves the new discussion it's getting. It might be worthwhile to dig up the discussion(s) that led to their original deletion though, just for the record. Equazcion (talk) 00:54, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I looked in the logs and the history and am surprised (and apologetic) at not finding that these templates were dumped back in 2007 when I thought we did for them all. In any case, deletion is long overdue.  Better late than never. --TS 01:15, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, it happens :) Equazcion (talk) 01:28, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * They do still need to be removed by bot first... otherwise we'd have redlinked templates littering the articles! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:55, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, these things are useful. WP:PW uses them for all our future PPVs, which normal account to around 10.-- Will C  21:56, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Why are they really needed even in that case, beyond WP:ITSUSEFUL? What do they tell the reader that the reader can't determine after reading a sentence or two? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Further, I think it is accepted(?) that you can try recreating it on an individual basis once the Great Purge is complete; you'll just need to show consensus beforehand, which might be hard to get looking at how the polling went. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 00:06, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, these templates contravene our No disclaimers in articles (WP:NDA) guideline. They should certainly not be recreated ad hoc. --TS 00:15, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Not correct. Temporal templates are explicity exempt from that guideline. Incidentally, can anyone post a link to the "whole "future" template thing [that] was held yonks ago"? PC78 (talk) 00:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Policy revision?
Following consensus for this deprecation, should there be some sort of accompanying policy edit to reflect it? The mention of No disclaimers in articles above, and the exception it contains regarding "temporal" templates, got me thinking. If there's an interest in seeing that these templates aren't re-created down the line, maybe an addition to WP:NDA is in order, something "un-excepting" future templates? Perhaps a new guideline altogether? At the very least, a short reference outlining this discussion and its outcome could be placed somewhere. Equazcion (talk) 00:42, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * we've kind of been talking about this at WT:POLICY recently. My answer right now (and likely forever) is "no", simply based on the fact that whatever you and I may agree to right now isn't really binding on whoever else may come along later. Like it or not, we all have to work together here. There's simply no shortcuts to... interestingly enough, in light of the post below, consensus. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 08:43, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (a lengthy irrelevant exchange was moved to the talk page) You seem to disagree that a consensus exists on this page, which I'm not going to argue about further (at least not here). I'd like to get opinions on possible policy revisions, under the assumption that this page does represent a consensus. So to restate the question, if there is consensus for this deprecation, should a policy change be made to reflect that? Equazcion (talk) 11:24, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * As I actually said above, No policy revision is needed. We've been talking about this topic at WT:POLICY recently. Feel free to join in the continuing discussions there. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 11:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * All I see there are a few hypothetical discussions. In light of the outcome of this discussion, it would be perfectly reasonable to review the wording of WP:NDA with regard to temporal templates. PC78 (talk) 11:34, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Go for it... just don't be surprised when you meet some actual reistance. It's one thing to go after a template, or even a series of templates, but it's quite another to try to change policy. Their two different worlds, really. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 11:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a guideline, not a policy. And no, they aren't different worlds, they both require discussion and concensus. But I personally have no intention of "going for it" because others are taking the lead here. I also didn't support this proposal, I just have a healthy respect for concensus. PC78 (talk) 11:43, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, I have respect for consensus. It's just that consensus requires some compromise, which is clearly not occurring here. But, there's more about that on the talk page if you're really interested. Equazcion doesn't like this sort of conversation being here, and I don't really care, so you'll just have to take an extra step to see it is all. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 11:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Compromise is not an essential part of concensus, it depends entirely on what's been said. I've read that other discussion and frankly I think you used a lot of words to say very little. What compromise do you think is needed here? PC78 (talk) 12:12, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think No disclaimers in articles needs to be modified. Temporal disclaimers can still be appropriate (Template:Current), and I don't think the guideline mentions the Future templates at all. Current and future event templates needs to be modified, tho, but that page isn't even a guideline anyhow. --Conti|✉ 16:34, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Consensus?
Can someone please point me in the direction of it? I've (admittedly only) skimmed over, and a poll is all you seem to have? There also seems to be very few editors involved in this, it hasn't been given a fair chance - the decision's been made based on a couple of deletionists on the usual mission and that's that? This does not seem to have been taken into account, that surely disputes any claim of consensus. k.i.a.c (talktome - contribs) 07:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * there isn't really any, as much as those who are advancing this position want there to be. No one has really stepped forward to say "stop" yet, is all. I don't think this should be done personally but, the fact is that I just don't care that much. People will just overturn whatever they do here, down the road, regardless. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 08:47, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * An argument can be made that there weren't enough people participating in this discussion (discussion, not poll), but more than 50 people are not "very few" by any definition of the term. And what should have been done to give this a fair chance, if this apparently hasn't been given one? As for the TfD on the Future album template, I was surprised myself that no one from that discussion has appeared here. I notified people about this discussion at the WikiProject Music, the WikiProject Albums and the WikiProject Songs, amongst other places. --Conti|✉ 16:31, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand it was technically a discussion, but made a point of it seeming more like a poll. Overviewing it, the discussion seemed to be driven by numerous members, but the 'voting' which has contrived this consensus is where the "50" figure has come from. I can understand how you feel you have support, but as you said, I do not not see any activity from the relevant Wikiprojects, I guess it's our own fault for not responding accordingly and thus our own loss. IMO, the template should have had a more concentrated use anyway - pointing people to WP:CRYSTAL or something. k.i.a.c  (talktome - contribs) 13:38, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Granted, it's usually quite hard for discussions of this size not to turn into a poll, and some more discussion and some less bolded opinions would have been nice. But in the end, there's not much to discuss when most people simply agree with each other. I'm not sure how to interpret the lack of participation from Wikiproject members. Maybe they just didn't care much about these templates one way or another and therefore didn't comment here. Or no one actually reads Wikiproject talk pages. Which makes me wonder if there's a better way to notify people of general discussions like this one. --Conti|✉ 14:22, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There was a pretty big discussion on WP:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 July 28... 『 ɠu¹ɖяy 』 ¤ • ¢ 14:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That was part of the basis of me posting this section, look in my first comment! :) I'd say the Wikiproject talk pages only get active when people see them up in their Watchlist, there has to be an active discussion for them to show up, one post doesn't sit on the top of your watchlist very long. Only reasonable explanation I can think of. k.i.a.c  (talktome - contribs) 15:17, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Bot is running
Special:Contributions/DrilBot; just thought that I'd let everybody know. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:13, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Bot paused temporarily pending resolution of . –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

How to delete?
As my bot removes all the usages of these templates, should I just go ahead and delete the templates or do they each need to go through TfD? The former seems outside of policy (no CSD applies), but the latter seems like pointless bureaucracy after having had this discussion. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:24, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * As would probably seem obvious from my other comments on this page, my stance is that taking this to TfD would constitute the epitome of pointless bureaucracy. This discussion constitutes a deletion discussion, despite the fact that it didn't take place at TfD. Wikipedia is not governed by statute. Equazcion (talk) 19:41, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You could G6 them under db-xfd, citing this page as the "deletion discussion", but that does seem slightly sketchy. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 20:07, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This discussion was for deprecating the templates, not deleting them. Take them to TfD or tag them with deprecated. PC78 (talk) 20:15, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * What could possibly be the point in keeping around a deprecated template that's already been removed from all articles? Why would we not take the next logical step and delete them, if not for the sake of bureaucracy? Equazcion (talk) 20:24, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Did you even look at the template I just linked? The templates would be eligible for speedy deletion after being tagged for 14 days. Beyond that you can't just simply decide to delete something. That's not what was discussed. PC78 (talk) 20:31, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Deprecated seems reasonable to me. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec)No, I didn't look at the template you linked, and I should have. That works too then, though I disagree that deletion isn't what was discussed. I think that is precisely what was discussed. Differentiating between a deprecation discussion and a deletion discussion is splitting hairs, in my opinion. This is the very definition of bureaucracy. But that's again just my opinion. In the end I wouldn't object to using deprecated. Equazcion (talk) 20:37, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * On how specifically to delete them, I would do it as you would any template deleted as the result of a discussion (no CSD criteria required), and just point to this discussion. ie. "Deleted per centralized discussion at (link)." Equazcion (talk) 20:17, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Other similar discussions have pointed out that we cannot simply delete a template or anything else on Wikipedia. Various Wikipedia policies say that. The reason given is that, even though it may not be used at the current time, it was used in the past, and archives and other historical information might be lost if deleted. There may also be some legal reasons why unused things are not simply deleted; perhaps the Wikimedia Foundation can comment on that. The general consensus is that no-longer-used things are simply kept around, they are not deleted and there is no harm in that. Truthanado (talk) 14:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * AFAIK that simply isn't true. We delete things all the time, especially templates that are no longer in use. PC78 (talk) 14:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Late to the party
Why not just make the templates invisible? Keeps the good and loses the putative bad. Rich Farmbrough, 05:29, 2 September 2009 (UTC).
 * What is the difference? If you hide the visual message of the template, the only thing left is categorization, which is exactly what we are doing now by replacing templates with their corresponding categories (i.e. Category:Future events). --Kildor (talk) 07:31, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually maybe it is not the problem I thought. I am concerned about different functionality, the "as of" or "update" type of information. Rich Farmbrough, 00:30, 3 September 2009 (UTC).

Template now being deleted on basis of this discussion
Well apparently it doesn't matter much what was discussed whether deprecated or deletion because they are being deleted at the moment .Garda40 (talk) 07:01, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * One was mistakenly deleted by an admin who wasn't aware of this discussion. All of the rest are still there, as far as I can tell. Equazcion (talk) 15:52, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * More than one .Garda40 (talk) 17:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That was a removal from articles, which is not not the same as deleting the template. Garion96 (talk) 18:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Those edits are implementing the depereaction, not deletion. As Garion96 said, removing a template from an article is not the same as deleting the template. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:43, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 *  removing a template from an article is not the same as deleting the template
 * That's just wikilawyering .Garda40 (talk) 06:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Not really. They're two different things. PC78 (talk) 10:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If something ends up having the same effect, which it most definitely will in this case namely the notice not being on articles , it is wikilawyering to suggest there is a difference .Garda40 (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The deprecation of a template means removing it from articles. That's what deprecation is. The template is deprecated and no longer used, so, it is removed from articles. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * <- What are you protesting in the first place? Your original comment seems to indicate that you are protesting the deletion of the templates, even though this discussion was about deprecation. Now you say it's both the same anyhow. I'm confused. --Conti|✉ 16:08, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Project notification and automobiles
Would it have bee clever to inform wp projects before removing this template?? --<span style="font:bold 11px Arial;display:inline;border:#151B8D 1px solid;background-color:#DFDFDF;padding:0 3px 0 4px;">Typ932 T&middot;C 20:30, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think so. Which is why I did just that. --Conti|✉ 20:40, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I just noticed that this useful template was removed around 100 car articles and nothing was said in WP:CARS  --<span style="font:bold 11px Arial;display:inline;border:#151B8D 1px solid;background-color:#DFDFDF;padding:0 3px 0 4px;">Typ932 T&middot;C 20:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, must've missed that WikiProject, my apologies. To my defense, the corresponding template does not have a WikiProject tag, nor is it linked from anywhere within that WikiProject. --Conti|✉ 20:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Consensus here was that they weren't useful... why do you think that they are important to the articles? What can't the reader determine in a sentence or two of reading which the template would have clarified? And how many non-editors even read all the templates anyway? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:50, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * When you read car model articles you never know if its released car or just pure future speculation and that template was good to inform readers about that --<span style="font:bold 11px Arial;display:inline;border:#151B8D 1px solid;background-color:#DFDFDF;padding:0 3px 0 4px;">Typ932 T&middot;C 20:53, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't the very start of the article make that clear? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:59, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes it should but that not happen in every article, and should removing this kind of templates to be informed properly I dont know how this thing was discussed but In my opinion should have been taken more widely to under discussion before removing. --<span style="font:bold 11px Arial;display:inline;border:#151B8D 1px solid;background-color:#DFDFDF;padding:0 3px 0 4px;">Typ932 T&middot;C 21:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It was discussed pretty thoroughly in the collapse box above, without too many objections. The discussion was advertised at WP:CENT, so a good bit of input from all points of view should be included. What articles don't make it clear that the thing isn't released yet? Are there really articles that use the present or past tense for unreleased vehicles/books/games, etc.? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:16, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Im not sure how many articles are unclear, but Im sure there are such articles, and very many using it as |section template, but will see it how does it affect, and Im not sure how closely projects took parts for WP:CENT etc. I think most follows their own projects only.  --<span style="font:bold 11px Arial;display:inline;border:#151B8D 1px solid;background-color:#DFDFDF;padding:0 3px 0 4px;">Typ932 T&middot;C 21:28, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If there are actual problems with the articles, there are more appropriate templates that can be used. Template:Update, for instance. --Conti|✉ 21:32, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

2012 Olympics
I have just seen the Future sport event template removed from the London Olympics 2012 article, i would just like to say i think the template was useful and should not have been removed or deleted if that is whats happening. BritishWatcher (talk) 20:55, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The very title of 2012 Summer Olympics indicates that it is a future event. Why is a tag also needed? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:59, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So? In June 2012, it will still be a future sporting event? BritishWatcher (talk) 21:00, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * And the article will still read "The 2012 Summer Olympic Games (...) are due to take place in London, United Kingdom from 27 July to 12 August 2012". --Conti|✉ 21:03, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Why does it need to be removed. Should we delete the "this person has recently died" template. Surely it will say the person is dead in the intro? BritishWatcher (talk) 21:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That template is needed because of WP:BLP, which I believe also covers, to some extent, the recently deceased. Such articles are sometimes subject to high levels of vandalism. These templates seem useless... do we really need this tag on that article for three years? IMO, it really just clutters up the page needlessly. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:10, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * One small template at the top of the page does not "clutter up the page needlessly". Will you be deleting the {Future ship} template as well? BritishWatcher (talk) 21:13, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Another brilliant example of WP's cloak and dagger bureaucracy. Appoint yourselves, hold a vote in an obscure location, and forgot to actually tell anyone.--MacRusgail (talk) 21:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A few notes: This discussion was advertised at WP:CENT, which is widely viewed (I think). Additionally, after the discussion, notices were appended to every "future" template (and the notices were transcluded into articles) noting the templates' deprecation and linking to this discussion. How is that not "telling anyone"? Every articles that used one of these templates had a notice on it. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you want a list of places where this was advertised? --Conti|✉ 21:19, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * No doubt this was advertised in several hundred places. None of which I've ever heard of. Some of us actually spend our time on Wikipedia editing and creating articles, rather than creating rules for everyone else and so don't have much time for obscure bureaucracy, particularly when it gets in the way of content, as in this case. Removing the "spoiler" template was another idiotic idea.--MacRusgail (talk) 17:10, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Stop Implementation
I think its time to stop implementation. There have been quite a few objections raised. While I think that there was an effort made to notify about this discussion and that it was done in good faith. The objections here are being dismissed without considering my original points I made earlier. Like many Wikipedia editors, I've found sanity and joy in just editing my little world of Wikipedia articles and ignore nearly all the contention, word-smithing, and minutiae of the "Wikipedia:" namespace. However, now that it has encroached on my world, with a decision that I'm not sure is a true consensus, I'm speaking out. It's time to consider how to get more editors involved and discover if there is a consensus to remove the future templates from all articles. There may well be - but you can clearly see from reviewing the responses to the objections that there are less than 5 editors who are driving this change and responding to all challenges that this is a fait accompli - I disagree strongly with this approach to global change. -- Trödel 00:56, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) No matter how well advertised something is, less than 50 editors who care about wikipoliticing do NOT create consensus
 * 2) Editors found these templates useful in clearly distinguishing between future/proposed/concept/conceptual articles from articles about completed things (i.e. these templates were not useful because they made a disclaimer)
 * 3) Wider discussion should take place with efforts to get editors of the different templates
 * I will not object to wider discussion; however, where would it be held that it would draw more attention than this? –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Please keep the future banner. I raised this objection before, and I would like to state again that this banner provides a very nice visual cue to readers. I understand that the information regarding something as being in the future is supposed to be inside the text, but such information can be easily missed by a reader doing just a very cursory glance. Thanks. --unkx80 (talk) 01:25, 6 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I dont see the big problem with having the templates there and thought they were useful as they catch peoples eye straight away.
 * "This article contains information about a future Olympic Games, and is likely to contain information of a speculative nature. The content may change as the event approaches and more information becomes available."
 * I think thats a pretty useful note to the reader to remind them that not all the contents of the article may be right. The title and the introduction does not tell them that. BritishWatcher (talk) 01:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The contents of any article may be completely wrong, that's why we have the WP:General disclaimer. The "future" templates just duplicate it, albeit with a more specific warning text. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 02:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ofcourse every article could be complete crap, to be honest i would support a large banner above every article reminding people this is edited by anyone and should not be taken as 100% fact. However there is a difference between an article covering a past event and one covering a future event where there will still be many developments. Its very unlikely many major changes will need to be made to 2008 Summer Olympics, but its unavoidable major changes will be made to London 2012 as it gets closer. Whats wrong with reminding people of that? It does no harm at all. BritishWatcher (talk) 02:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It does violate No disclaimers in articles to some degree. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 03:25, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That page says Temporal templates are an exception. Future / Current templates are "temporal templates" according to the page on it. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I should point out that not all page titles contain temporal information such as "2012". I came from the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit pages where quite a few lines are currently under planning or construction. Downtown MRT Line is one such line. I fear that without such a banner, more than a few readers might mistake this line as an operational line. --unkx80 (talk) 10:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think our readers are that stupid. It says quite clearly that the "Downtown MRT Line will be the fifth Mass Rapid Transit line in Singapore". Nevertheless, a cleanup template (perhaps future stating that an article needs to be rewritten to state more clearly that the article is about a future event might not be a bad idea. But I don't see the need of automatically putting a templated warning on every article remotely related to something in the future. Garion96 (talk) 11:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The debate reached the consensus that the "future templates" are generally deprecated in the articles. However, it was also said that if any specific template is worth keeping, this can be discussed. The above Olympic example shows why a template is not needed in 2012 Olympics article. The fact that it covers a future event is obvious from the title and introduction and the fact that some things can be inaccurate is covered in the general disclaimer. Regarding the whole discussion, Centralized discussion is the most centralized place to hold such debates, given that most of the relevant WikiProjects have been notified. So, I would recommend the community to focus on separate templates instead and bring forward the reasons why some should be kept, not just overturn the implementation of the consensus here. --Tone 11:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Lmao you say people should focus on separate templates, and yet this whole debate here has been about removing and in the end deleting them all treating them the same, if only each template was handled separately then too. If there are individual example of future templates that are acceptable, i dont quite understand how others are not? What harm did having a note explaining something is a future event and details may change (clearly in a way details about a past event would not). Current / future templates are useful for an encyclopedia. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:20, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * May be, but this is why I ask to bring forth one template that you think is useful. The debate at the top decided that in general, they are not. While they may not bring any harm, they also bring no other info than the first sentence of the introduction, "X will be in the future". But anyway, I entered the whole debate as an uninvolved admin who closed it, I really do not wish to get more involved now because this is not my focus area of WP. --Tone 11:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, since we're apparently starting the deprecation discussion again, I'd like everyone to have a look at User:Conti/"Future" templates again, where I've collected some of the most common arguments about these templates (and that includes all arguments made above so far). It would also be nice if everyone would read the original discussion that led to all this, since many, many arguments have been made there on both sides, and more importantly, there have been lots of responses. If we want to have the same discussion again, that's fine by me, but that way we'd all save some time.
 * To respond to a few individual arguments (again): "It provides a very nice visual cue to readers". And why is one needed in the first place? To warn our readers that an article will change? As has been said multiple times now, that's what the lede of the article is supposed to say (by saying that something is going to happen in the future). If our readers miss that, well, tough. That something is in the future is not the most vital part of an article, it's just one of many important pieces of information. We don't generally add a big template on top of an article to inform our readers about all the important things about the article. Again, that's exactly what the lede is for.
 * The concept of "temporal templates are an exception to our No Disclaimer guideline" was created for templates like Template:Current, which is supposed to stay on articles for days, at most. That it is nowadays used for future templates that stay on articles for weeks, months, years or even decades (yes, decades), is quite unfortunate, and not at all what "temporal template" was once supposed to mean. Again, everyone, please read the original discussion.
 * As to how we can get more people to comment here, I'm welcoming each and every idea. I've advertised this discussion on more than a dozen of places, and I considered the turnout of about 50 people to be a success, considering that the usual Wiki-discussion has a lot less people involved. That there are now "less than 5 editors who are driving this change and responding to all challenges" is hardly surprising to me. The discussion was held for over two weeks, an uninvolved admin was asked to close the discussion, which he did, a consensus was declared, a bot was tasked with deprecating the templates.. I imagine that by that time, 90% of the people simply unwatched this page, assuming the discussion ended. That does leave about 5 people still active on this page. I also find it interesting that people only start to actually complain about this once the templates are being removed. There has been a message on each and every template (transcluded, which means it was visible on almost 6000 articles!) for days that the corresponding template will be deprecated according to this discussion, and as far as I remember, only one person commented here because of that message. This kinda gives the impression that no one actually ever reads these templates, doesn't it? --Conti|✉ 12:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That this discussion and subsequent decision were held primarily in the month of August, in which many people are on holiday/vacation and Wikipedia edits are historically down, suggests that a longer discussion would be appropriate. Those involved have done a good job publicizing this, and the message that accompanies the templates on each page should trigger any interested editors to take part in the discussion. That's how I got here. I suggest, therefore, that this deprecation and removal of templates be temporarily placed on hold until the end of September 2009. After that, a review of the increased discussion can be made, with a decision to take (or not take) appropriate action. Thanks. Truthanado (talk) 15:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So are all of the discussions held primarily in August also null and void, needing another month of discussion? That would seem stupid, especially since that is the schedule in America, but not nesseccarily in all other countries. That's like saying that a merge discusion shouldn't take place on a weekend due to lower editing rates. Besides, the opinions expressed in the discussion/poll should give the same percentage as they would if the discussion was held in September. At this point, I think that most of the supporters of the proposal aren't saying anything because they feel that it's already been decided; they see the notice or removal of a template, and don't do anything about it. Opposers come here to... well... oppose. :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:00, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There appears to be several people here now who would strongly oppose the mass removal of these templates. I wonder how many the CARS project would have bought here if they had been informed as they should of been. As this is a general agreement on future articles, how about the Future ship templates? I note they have not been removed but im sure if this had been included and placed on the ships project page.. there would have been more opposition. Would it be enough to turn over the majority that sadly supported this awful proposal ? probably not, but it might of made a few more people think more carefully before agreeing to such a radical deletion proposal.
 * This is basically what is happening here, we are removing it from articles so at some point the template could be deleted. Had the templates just gone up for deletion would the outcome have been the same? i do not think so, because these templates are in so much use unlike the limited use of previous future templates which were deleted . BritishWatcher (talk) 17:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Strongly support retention of the future banners. They're useful.--MacRusgail (talk) 17:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This is not a vote, so please provide some reasoning. Why are they useful? --Conti|✉ 17:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Your arguement can be used for all temporal templates.... Why are current/past templates useful? Give me an answer that you could not use for why future templates are useful. --Rootbear75 (talk) 00:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * We don't have past templates that I know of, so I don't see how that really matters. Honestly, I think that the Current templates should be reworded to have some cautioning advice about only using reliable sources for the article, since otherwise people may add links to blogs, etc.; right now, I agree that most temporal templates have the same issue. However, the Current templates are only intended to be on an article for a few days... in articles like 2012 Summer Olympics, the tag would be there for three years. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 00:58, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I certainly hope that we don't have any "past" templates yet. :) There are two groups of temporal templates, "current" and "future". Current template serve a specific purpose (especially Template:Current): They are used on highly active, strongly edited articles. Y'know, those that receive up to hundreds of edits a day. The template warns of that ("may change rapidly"), or rather, of its implications: That the article may already be out of date, that it might be a good idea to check back in 5 minutes, or that the article might contain vandalism, etc. All that might be true for any article, but in the case of some current events, it might be necessary to warn our readers with that additional disclaimer. Now, any current event template is only (supposed to be) used on articles that are changing rapidly, and is to be removed after a few days, maximum. The "Future" templates, on the other hand, are simply being used everywhere. And in 99,9% of the cases, that means the Future templates are on articles that are being edited normally, so no warning is needed at all. If the current event templates would be used on all current events, I would oppose that as well. --Conti|✉ 02:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Would one of the opposers here who are calling for more discussion please mention where such discussion should take place? I'm fully open to ideas on further discussion, but I don't feel that it is necessary and have no idea what more visible location could be found than this. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Each template should have been put up for deletion, allowing people to decide on a case by case basis if the template was good or useful. That is what we are told to do now, to consider which ones may be justified to keep as exceptions. Completly the wrong way to go about it as far as im concerned. Removing the templates from articles so they no longer have a use and clearly need to be deleted seems like the back door approach to me. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:24, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That's the thing, many of the templates were put up for deletion whilst this discussion was taking place, and yet there's still many, many templates which remain because they were either kept or of no consensus. k.i.a.c  (talktome - contribs) 17:34, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec) The closing admin of the discussion above said that the templates can be considered on a case-by-case basis if some of them are more controversial than the others. If Future automobile has some particular reason for being kept beyond the others, than it can certainly be discussed individually. However, Future book, Future film, Future game, and Future album (arguably four of the most widely-used of the templates) drew little if any opposition here when they were removed. So, would it be wrong to say that removing them was the correct course of action, and maybe some others need more discussion? Requiring an individual TFD for each template seems like unnecessary WP:BURO... if that was done, then everyone would most likely just copy/paste keep or delete !votes to every one without really looking at the individual template, anyway (something similar happened at Files for deletion/2009 July 23... the various nominations had different reasons and were meant to be discussed separately, but nobody else seemed to really look at each nomination separately). –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * @ Kiac: What templates were individually nomianted? Nothing was mentioned here about it. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I just think that is how it should have been done from the start. Instead of looking at individual cases now, they should of been looked at on a case by case basis before mass deletion / removal. Its a bit like shooting everyone and then deciding which ones you are going to try and save, instead of deciding who to shoot at first. (strange example, but same sort of principle). I still do not understand how some templates are more justified than others, although clearly some are more used. If you can accept that future templates for cars are ok, and people here completely ignore the future ships one then why is one on future sporting events sooo unacceptable? BritishWatcher (talk) 17:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the one for cars is OK; I was just using it as an example. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Templates for deletion/Log/2009 July 28 - Just as there was no mention of this, there. k.i.a.c  (talktome - contribs) 11:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

You people didn't even have consensus when nobody knew about this, you certainly haven't now. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:00, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Removal of these templates is nonsense. As for No disclaimers in articles, does anyone else notice not one but two similar gray templates describing important information the page covers? ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Why is it nonsense? Could you elaborate on that? --Conti|✉ 20:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What more is there to say? We use the exact same notices on Wikipedia: policy pages.  Is policy going to be deleted as well?  Nonsense. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Readers don't typically see the policy pages... project-space pages can have more notice templates because they are for the editors. Readers shouldn't need to see things like this. Templates like policy also provide information not typically clear within the first few sentences of the page. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:57, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see... so we're going to delete all the "[edit]" links and "[citation-needed]" links and most of these templates as well, right? ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No, because that would be nonsense. Why would deleting some templates mean having to delete all templates? Templates get deleted all the time (see WP:TFD), and yet, miraculously, some don't. We tend to discuss which templates are beneficial to Wikipedia and which aren't, and then remove the ones that aren't. You're welcome to participate in that discussion here, preferably by providing some reasoning as to why you think these particular templates benefit the project. Equazcion (talk) 03:16, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That's great and everything, but this isn't WP:TFD, and deleting twenty or so templates for no good reason is just as nonsensical as deleting all templates for no good reason. ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Then perhaps you'd care to present your argument against the reasons that have been given for the deletion, rather than just saying that they aren't "good" or that they're "nonsense". TFD is generally where template deletion discussions take place, but this is a more significant change involving a broad scope of templates, so the centralized discussion area seemed more appropriate. The mere fact that a template deletion discussion took place outside TFD doesn't invalidate it. Equazcion (talk) 03:54, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What, the way you have ?
 * "I think this redirect/bot/delete idea is good."
 * What was your argument for this action in the first place, again? I think mine against it is pretty clear. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The comment you refer to was in support of a manner of implementing the proposal, after the proposal discussion concluded, and there wasn't any reason to elaborate on why I supported it, since no one seemed to oppose it or have any better ideas. Check out the actual proposal discussion, which is collapsed at the top of this page under the heading Proposal (click "show"). Many including myself have offered many arguments there. Equazcion (talk) 22:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So because you're defending something new that a handful of people conspired to achieve in some obscure location instead of WP:TFD and I'm merely defending the status quo, I have to go to great lengths to make my arguments clear and you don't have to make arguments at all? :p
 * You're assuming that starting the discussion here as opposed to at TFD was some sort of conspiracy, which aside from being a bad-faith assumption (WP:AGF), was brought up already on this page by someone with more tact than yourself; See here, and the accompanying answer. Whether you're defending the status quo or advocating change, I think everyone should have to do their best to make their arguments clear if there is opposition. As I said in my last response, I did at least attempt to make my arguments clear above in the proposal discussion, as many others have (on both sides). You however, have so far only made accusations and called the proposal "nonsense", without presenting any actual argument. Equazcion (talk) 01:56, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Assumption is irrelevant, that's what happened. I've never once in four years been to Centralized discussion until now — its name is laughable.  You didn't make an argument at all, mine was clear. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:04, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Two cents
In order to find out things about a topic, you currently need to read the article. Tags are only meant for other things, not related to the topic but to the article itself, from an editing standpoint; information that couldn't be presented within the article, like not enough references present or copy editing required.

Future templates make it easier to see that an article is about something that will happen in the future. I won't argue with that, because it's just true, and it doesn't surprise me in the least that many people like them and want them to stay. There's a lot of information about article subjects that could be beneficial to place in a separate colorful eye-catching box. Wikipedia just doesn't operate that way (yet).

It could be that general topic information would benefit from eye-catching placement. If an article is about a historical American event in which someone important got assassinated, each of those points (historical, American, assassination) would be useful to see right at the beginning of the article, despite those likely being present in the topic sentence. Just as the argument has been made for future templates, just in case people don't read the topic sentence, or just in case the article is written poorly, they might benefit from such tagging.

This might be a sign that we need to figure out a better way to display article categories to readers. We have "future" categories that we plan to keep around, so if categories were displayed more prominently, perhaps this wouldn't be an issue, and other information important to a topic would be clearly visible in a graphical sense, similar to the way future tags are. Maybe in addition to cross-referencing and listing related articles, categories could also be a way for readers to gain important topic information quickly, at a glance.

That's a bigger issue though. Although I would take this suggestion myself to Village Pump, we currently have a smaller problem at hand: tags that really shouldn't have been tags to begin with, despite there being ample reason for their popularity now. We currently don't generally use tags to provide this kind of information to readers.

I'd also just like to point out that popularity doesn't make or break a feature on Wikipedia. If it did, I think every movie article would contain a trivia section copied from IMDb, and an attempt to remove those would cause a huge stir. Despite popularity, there's a certain standard and consistency Wikipedia strives for, and these tags don't fit. Equazcion (talk) 05:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The tags broke no wikipedia rules, the templates removal was not required, just the prefered choice of some people here. Each of the templates in question should have been put up for deletion so that they could each be judged on their merits, instead of this centralized debate which clearly not everyone was aware of until the mass deletions from dozens of articles took place. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:20, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The thing is a lot of the templates were put up individually for TfD. The three templates that that should have really stated are, & . These three were all put up for discussion & the general consensus was to keep them & I think we should keep them & continue to use them. 『 ɠu¹ɖяy 』 ¤ • ¢ 17:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think all 3 of those templates are useful and should have been kept (id of voted to keep it too), but what makes them more valid to keep than something like a future sporting event? BritishWatcher (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the TfD procedural argument is irrelevant. We've had previous individual TfDs where some future templates were kept, but we've never had a discussion about whether or not future templates are merited in general. It's possible the previous keeps were influenced by the fact that there are so many future templates, so it didn't seem to make sense to delete just one. Those discussions weren't about the merits of future templates as a whole. That's the point of having a centralized discussion. Let's discuss the merits of the templates now, rather than basing our decision on previous decisions that had a different focus. Equazcion (talk) 17:58, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There were lots of TfDs about Future templates. Some were deleted, some were kept. I started this discussion because I do think that what is true for one Future template is true for all of them. Future sport is no better or worse than Future cars. Anyhow, we're starting to drift off into meta-discussion here. This discussion is about all Future templates, and if you want to get rid of them or keep them as they are, please provide a reason and be ready to argue your point. Pretty please. --Conti|✉ 18:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Reasons we should use some future templates.

1) visual clues that can be quickly discerned are useful for putting something in context. Just as the use of images on Infoboxes can quickly help a person know "where they are at" a visual clue that isn't buried in the text is very useful

2) these templates also inform a reader how relevant and reliable the information is (not in the form of a disclaimer but in a way similar to the other boxes that are used about missing reliable sources, express a viewpoint, or needs to be re-written not in essay form)

We should be doing more to help the reader evaluate the reliability of individual articles on wikipedia - and saying readers should verify everything they read on Wwkipedia, while true, is a shirking of our responsiblity to have higher quality articles - higher quality articles start with informing the reader about the quality and then improving it

3) I've quite a few times (i.e. more than I should have and more than would happen if it was the exception rather than a regularly occurring thing) come across articles with a future or some other "editor only tag" type template and the think I'm looking at shouldn't have that on it anymore - this is EXTREMELY useful information - it tells me immediately that the article hasn't been updated since the future think became a present thing - and prods me to edit the article if I have time, and to use google more to find the information I need than to assume wikipedia probably has it basically right.

I urge you to not just delete all these but to carefully consider the impact on the occasional editor, frequent user that eliminating these quick visual (as in non-text) clues provide. 70.152.235.196 (talk) 16:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you, thank you, thank you for providing some arguments. I don't personally agree with them, but I really prefer to respond to arguments than to accusations. :) I'll try to be short, as I've responded to similar arguments at length already in my comments above.
 * 1) I simply don't think there needs to be a visual clue for future things in the first place. Maybe I'm in the minority here, and if I am, then so be it.
 * 2) The problem I see with these templates is that they say "There may be a problem". Which means that a future template will also be on an article that is perfectly fine in every way. If the templates would be used as some kind of cleanup-template, that would be fine by me. But it should be a "There is a problem" kind of template, not a "There may be a problem" one.
 * 3) That is indeed kinda useful. Back then when there were no bots that automatically correct typos and fix formatting issues a bad article could easily be discerned by bad formatting and lots of typos. Nowadays articles can have perfect spelling and formatting, and still be quite horrible. In a way, it's unfortunate that it's not like that anymore, but then again, those bots do ultimately improve the encyclopedia. There is Template:Update after, which pops up an update message after a certain date, which would have the same effect as you describe. And, additionally, you could still find out about non-updated articles by looking at any of the Future categories that should be removed but possibly aren't. --Conti|✉ 18:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * }

RFC

 * Note: I've tried to make this initial comment as neutral as I can from my biased point of view. If you feel that you can make it more neutral, please feel free to edit it. It doesn't have my signature. :) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is getting out of control... on both sides. Nobody's putting forth a good idea for a next step, and I couldn't think of one other than this. So, I'd like to try to restart the discussion. Conti's original proposal is still what is being discussed. To make things clear:


 * If you have already commented above, please repost your arguments here. Keep everything organized, and don't just say "see above" or anything like that.
 * If consensus is to deprecate the templates, they will be removed from articles and deleted. There would be no need for a TfD.
 * Due to the discussion above, many templates have already been removed from articles, including Future, Future film, Future game, Future album, and Future book. If consensus is to keep the templates, then the WikiProject(s) related to the last four of these will be contacted on an individual basis for further discussion of their related template; re-adding the templates must be done manually, not by bot, and so would take time and doing so unnecessarily would be counterproductive.
 * I am going to make this a high-visibility discussion. In addition to WP:RFC and WP:CENT, I'll post at WP:VPP, WP:CAFET, and WP:NDIA. A TFD has also been posted, which directs people here. If you have other ideas on where to post notices, please go ahead and post the notices.
 * Regardless of consensus here, individual templates may be considered on a case-by-case basis. It may be that some templates should be deleted and others kept; however, having separate discussions with copy-paste rationales seems pointless.
 * Please, don't just say that the templates should be kept or deleted. Explain reasons, from a reader and/or policy standpoint.

Just trying to bring some order to this current madness. We'll never reach a consensus the way things have been looking above, with neither side apparently willing to give in at all. During this discussion, please be willing to try and find some middle ground. Perhaps changing the guidelines on the use of the templates, or changing what they actually say, rather than an all-or-nothing keep-or-delete.

RFC Discussion
Third, these banners can sit around for a long time. Take 2028 Summer Olympics, for instance. The tag on that article will, theoretically, be around for longer than Wikipedia has existed to date... 19 years from now, altogether (note that this page doesn't currently have the template, because a bot removed it after the initial discussion above). Although this is an extreme case, many pages have templates that will be present for three, seven, or even ten years. In the case of cleanup templates, current event templates, etc., it is anticipated that the templates will be removed in a couple of years (for some cleanup templates, although in some cases the backlog takes longer), or a few days (other cleanup templates, Current, Recent death, etc.) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:42, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My feeling is that these should be deprecated, as I have outlined above. There are a number of reasons for this: First, the reader should be able to tell that the article is about a future _____ after reading a sentence or two; if they can't, then there's a bigger problem with the article than just a template. Second, I think that a lot of people ignore cleanup banners anyway; I know some readers who do. A lot of people probably go "those are for the editors" and not even look at them. But we editors don't really need them, do we? The templates are intended for the readers, unlike other banners.


 * As I alluded to in the original discussion, I think the use of these templates stems from an understandable compulsion to tag articles based on categories. Many other online databases show graphical tags to categorize their information, to tell readers that an article is about music, or sports, etc, regardless of how obvious those things might be. It's just "nice" to have that quickly recognizable information displayed. Wikipedia does things a bit differently than most other websites though, and one of those differences is that we specifically don't use tags this way, and so I think Future tags should be deprecated and deleted. Though as I also suggested originally, since we do basically "tag" articles based on their category (by adding categories to articles), perhaps this whole event is a sign that we need to make categories more prominently visible in articles, rather than leaving them at the bottom as simple text links that no one really notices. Equazcion (talk) 02:44, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

0

 * I think Equazcion's point is largely reasonable, but there may be some instances where such tagging is more beneficial.
 * While I am not in favor of mass-deprecation, I do believe that we over-use future templates, they often form an unnecessary disclaimer or graphical tagging of the obvious, and their use should be restricted to areas where they are more useful. Experience suggests that there is a specific and disproportionate risk of substantial inaccuracy in articles on certain classes of future events, which may not be obvious to a typical reader, and where the disclaimer element may therefore be informative. Note that the verifiability of articles about future events is inherently and crucially different from those about past events, a vital point only hinted at in the original discussion and worth fleshing out. Consider two well-written articles, one about a past event and one about a future one, where each statement is referenced to a clearly reliable source. Both articles will look and feel trustworthy to a casual reader. Yet while the "past" article probably is, the "future" article may well not be. For instance, a reference stating that a "past" film was released in July of last year is almost certainly correct, and someone viewing the article critically can verify that by clicking through the references (as all wisely wary readers of Wikipedia, in addition to our content reviewers, are wont to do). A reference stating that a "future" film is slated for release in July of next year was almost certainly correct at the time of going to press, but it may well be that the current situation is different - film release dates are notorious for being postponed. However, the original source (especially if a news article or press release) is unlikely to have been updated, so clicking through all the references may not reveal the error. When verifying "future" articles there is a strong additional requirement to review all of the references to see if they have been supplanted by more recent ones (for instance, a new statement announcing the postponement of the release date), which is a far more difficult task. Only rarely will it be obvious that an article has not been updated to reflect more recent developments (though on occasion, I've come across articles that give a particular projected future release date, that has long since passed!) even if changes have been very substantial. To my mind, if there is a forceful risk that an article will fall into this "looks good, apparently well-sourced, but actually substantially and unobviously incorrect" trap (particularly were its original author to abandon the article, or indeed Wikipedia), then it merits a specific disclaimer, additional to our general one, because it may well degenerate (or already have degenerated!) in a way that our general articles do not. I also think it should be a public disclaimer, not just the addition of a hidden maintenance category, because potentially inaccurate and harder-than-usual-to-verify information is a problem to readers, not just to editors.
 * If my line of logic holds true, then where do we most need these disclaimers? My (anecdotal) experience has been that articles on upcoming elections and sporting events have been largely unaffected by these problems - they seem no better or worse for factual accuracy or prematurely dating than our "non-future" articles. (There are hypothetical explanations for why this is reasonable: perhaps the articles tend to convey facts that are less subject to change - e.g. the law under which elections are contested is already fixed - or where new developments - such as the announcement of sporting venues - are well-publicized. Electoral and sporting events often occur at predictable and relatively sparse intervals, making them more amenable to be handled systematically. They may just have keener editors and better organized WikiProjects than other areas.) I notice that articles on future film, TV, musical and architectural projects are disproportionately likely to be very poor - at the time of reading the article, such projects have sometimes been canceled, renamed, substantially altered, or already taken place! (Again, perhaps this is understandable; particularly for blue-sky projects, even people in the industry may have little idea whether the project is dead, alive or just "on ice". Projects are often announced in a blaze of readily-sourced publicity, but updates tend to be low-key and rare, often in industry news sources rather than the mainstream press, so are missed by Wikipedia editors even though they may contain information that would radically transform the article. These topics are not as sequential as World Cups, Olympics or elections, so maintenance may be harder.) This is just personal experience, and I would welcome input from WikiProjects or indeed more statistically valid investigation, to determine which topic areas, if any, are at unusually high systematic risk. I would recommend deprecating templates in areas which seem to be low-risk, and where their main purpose would merely be to convey information that would be obvious from the title or first sentence of an article.
 * I do wonder whether our banners also warn about slightly the wrong thing. Although it's true that information about a future event will often change as its time draws nearer, that doesn't mean that all future events articles are locked in flurries of editing activity; indeed many of our "future" articles are characterized more by stability than flux. Some are "too stable" - they have simply been abandoned and are now out of date! And more troubling still is the fact these articles may misleadingly appear to be up to date and well-referenced. (I don't buy the counterargument that readers are warned by the "This page was last modified on ..." about the degree to which an article can be regarded as current, since a great bulk of WP edits are of a drive-through nature: wikignomery, formatting, or vandalism and counter-vandalism. An anecdotal example of this can be seen in the history of "gayness", lovingly recalled on my userpage.) My tldr summary would be that "future events articles have different verifiability concerns to most others, and at least in certain topic areas appear to have an unusually high risk of becoming inaccurate despite appearing misleadingly up-to-date" - perhaps some aspects of this should be reflected in our banner notices, if they are not all deprecated. TheGrappler (talk) 03:29, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I haven't read this comment completely (but I did "spot-read" it), as it's very long and I don't have the time right now. I'd suggest that many people will feel the same way and this comment is unnecessarily long, and I'd encourage TheGrappler to try and cut it down, or agree to collapse it, if only for the sake of the readability of this page and to not intimidate other potential commenters with its length. That said, I did neglect to address the main point that's been brought up in favor of keeping the templates (shame on me). The potential problems an article on a future product or event might have is not all that dissimilar from other articles. An article on, say, the JFK assassination, or Michael Jackson's molestation charges, are similarly topics where not all of the information necessary to form a reliable body of information is currently "in" yet, and actually, may never be. Would those not be in even more dire need of such a tag? Equazcion (talk) 04:16, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it's actually a pretty worthwhile comment to read, despite its length. And there is a TL;DR summary. :) --Conti|✉ 10:51, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Srry 4 2 long! :) As people have already commented on it, and it clearly didn't intimidate anybody else from commenting(!) I'll refrain from collapsing it now. The JFK/MJ comparison is interesting but flawed - both subjects would be easy to fix if new information arose as they are big stories and updates attract attention. I suggest notifying readers in cases that seem "high-risk", which generally will be lower profile. The wider "articles where all the info isn't in yet" is a better comparison, and something I'd considered. I don't think most (or even very many) of our articles are like that, but a good example is "possibly living people" - e.g. an entertainer who faded into obscurity with no media coverage since the 1940s, and has probably already died in anonymity, with even local press failing to report it. The question of whether they are currently alive shares many of the same difficulties as our more obscure "future" articles (checking there is no new information is trying to "prove a negative", which is the frustrating prime difficulty in both cases) and I think our biography of them should openly admit editorial uncertainty. Since only the death date is basically at issue, tagging the whole article seems disproportionate; but I guess if there are non-future articles where a great part of the content has that degree of verifiability/uncertainty problem, and especially if it wouldn't be obvious to the reader from the text itself, I'd be happy with a suitable warning tag. Usually however, at least for an article about something that happened in the past, our description of what happened - if properly sourced - is almost certainly sound. New or missing information is often just an addition (like the date of death for the obscurely deceased). On the other hand, some of our "future" articles contain little except announcements, intentions and predictions - the really substantive stuff hasn't happened yet. Even well-sourced predictions and intentions are often proved wrong, and it is rarely obvious when they have have been superseded! If a film was released in July 1930, we need only one reliable source to check this. But if a future film's release date is pushed back, it's often done quietly (if you do check for new sources, you may have a hard time finding any, especially ones that meet WP:RS) and a reader could easily be misled into too great a certainty by the way we have a fully cited and apparently reliable source for the original planned release date. If the bulk of details in an article (about the future or otherwise) are subject to that level of uncertainty, and it's a reasonable guess it may not be updated when new information becomes available (depending on topic, WikiProjects and the obscurity of the article), then to my mind that's a problem meriting an additional disclaimer. TheGrappler (talk) 01:16, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My MJ/JFK examples are only high-profile because I wanted to use something everyone would be familiar with. The same can be said for string theory and the possible genetic causality of tongue rolling (which by the way, I think, is about as obscure as it gets). On the contrary (to your opinion), I think nearly every topic, big or small, obscure or not, is subject to similar uncertainty. We never know just how inaccurate our information is. Your reasoning seems to apply to any obscure topics that aren't well-watched, and will likely need to be updated in the near future, whatever the reason (ie. because they happen in the future or some other reason, like a developing theory, technology, career, etc). I think that's a whole other story. There are many topics that will likely require updates soon and probably many of those aren't heavily watched. Do we tag them all? I don't see a difference. The way I see it, that's the essence of Wikipedia, is the uncertainty, for whatever reason, and the constant need to update all our information. Because most topics are always changing. Equazcion (talk) 01:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I suspected your examples were meant to be big for that reason :) But seriously: try going through 20 or 30 random articles (I've just done this) and consider which statements are susceptible to needing revision, how likely those updates are likely to be, and what are the odds that new information would slip through the net. I think you'll find it is far less than you imagine, and my experience is that it's disproportionately worse on the "future" articles. A lot of articles might need additional information added, but very few will have the bulk of their claims retracted and replaced, because we generally talk about things that have already happened (dates of birth, tracklists on albums, weight and gunnery of a frigate, paths of tropical storms, who wrote what books in 1873, locations of towns, dates and results of a battle, sport and election results, concepts of a philosophical theory - all these are pretty fixed). Sometimes there are wide scale changes - administrative boundaries or biological taxonomies for instance - but these couldn't be done quietly! It would be rare for us to have to change a scientific theory article because it had been deprecated (and again, Wikipedian subject specialists would most likely notice it had been falsified as this would be academic news) and still, what we wrote about the history and development of the theory, as well as the details it proposed, would hold true. If you can identify a specific class of other articles that are just as uncertain, and as difficult-but-necessary to check that no changes have taken place (the tough "prove the negative") as our "future" articles, then I'd recommend a specific disclaimer for them too. (At heart I want to identify which articles are the "toughest nuts" of maintainability for us, so we can (a) warn readers and (b) consider what we can do about them, and many "future" articles are clearly part of that. Citizendium's policy is to only start articles that can be systematically maintained - it's possible they've got one over us in that respect and it makes a degree more sense than our "notability" requirement does, but our culture isn't going to change to that now.) TheGrappler (talk) 02:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, let's assume your reasoning is sound, and that obscure future articles need attention somehow. Your point is that you think they require attention to make sure they get updated despite the fact that people might not actually be looking at them a whole lot. So my question is, if people aren't looking at them enough, how will they see the tags? Perhaps categorizing these articles would address that problem, so that interested people can see a list of articles that will likely need attention in the near future (which is basically already done), or if you want to take it further, create a task force or wikiproject. The argument for a visible tag has to stem from some need to inform the reader that something might not be right with the article, and as we've already established, that holds true for many articles other than future ones. So, to rehash, if we're just trying to call attention on these articles that otherwise might not get it, so they'll get updated, why the need for a visible tag? Equazcion (talk) 02:45, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Read both (a) and (b) at the end - I think in some "high risk" circumstances readers should be given a little extra nudge that our information may not be up to date. The "future" templates may serve that purpose although I feel they are currently overused. When you write that the problem is "something might not be right with the article, and as we've already established, that holds true for many articles other than future ones" you're overlooking that future articles (and perhaps a couple of others) have a very specific and potentially serious (especially in obscure articles) problem. Lots of articles are subject to change, especially new information becoming available, but that's not what this is about. A good "future" article may consist of well-referenced statements, but sometimes almost every single claim is provisional and tentative, and each reference really requires a "proving a negative" search to ensure it hasn't been superseded. Except for the extreme philosophical skeptic, that's simply not the case in the vast majority of other articles - honestly, do the 30 random article test and see for yourself. Concrete examples time: actress J. Smith-Cameron might need updating, perhaps she has done some more film roles, but there's no reason to check that sources claiming she had roles in Law & Order have been superseded because it wasn't actually her (the reference could be wrong, it may even have been discovered she was misattributed, but the reference looks good enough so I'll believe it). Did Ed Merkle wear jersey number 51? Was the Battle of Oriskany fought on August 6, 1777? I'm just going to trust that we have reliable sources! Hypothetically, historians of sport and war may have blown these theories out of the water, but it seems sufficiently unlikely that "duly diligent verification" need not involve a fruitless search to doublecheck there isn't a new "Merkle really wore 52" school of thought. Now compare this to It's a Wonderful Afterlife. There's quite a stellar cast list, but are they still committed to the project? Well, the given source states that filming has begun, so that doesn't seem likely to change much and I probably don't need to check for newer sources. If the cast list had been provisional, I'd have had to check that it was still up-to-date more carefully. According to our article it's currently slated for release on April 2, 2010. But is it still? To be sure, it really would be worth checking through Bollywood news sites to see whether any fresher information has been announced. The original source for that date may have been perfectly reliable when published but if I am being a verifiability stickler, I can't just accept that it's still correct. And to reiterate: this is a problem for readers too. We have an article that might look well-written and well-referenced, but the citations are a worse guarantee than usual of factual accuracy, and some of those facts may be difficult to verify. (On my random article trawl, the only thing to give me similar pause for thought was a species of fungus. The year of its discovery and where it was found seem trustworthy enough but the taxonomy bugged me - I know mycologists can argue about or change taxonomies, so many reference books on the subject are out of date and no longer reliable. I'd need to take extra care that the reference used was still considered valid; hopefully it would be trivial to check that it was a current edition. If it had been sourced to a non-current edition, I'd need to do a "new sources" check, albeit a far more straightforward one than the usual "proving a negative" type, since I could just look the species up in an acceptable reference. Far easier than checking the currency of claims in an old press release or news article! I don't see any reason to believe our wikimycologists are likely to have dropped the ball with this, so there's no point alerting readers. If there is ever a large scale taxonomy shakeup affecting a significant minority of fungi articles, and we lack enough specialists to implement it quickly, I would suggest a notice to readers in the taxonomy infobox.) TheGrappler (talk) 03:53, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

← That takes us back to my JFK/Michael Jackson example: The sources may be good but the information highly suspect. They should require tags too, if this reasoning is sound. You said no before, because future templates need attention for updating -- but the updating reason shouldn't require a visible tag. So what else is there? Equazcion (talk) 04:02, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I can understand that certain articles (like future music and film articles) are more likely to change or contain uncertain information. But we need to address those problems specifically. A tag named future (or future film, or whatever) will inevitably be added to every article that has any information about the future. There are more specific tags, like update, crystal etc. And there is perhaps a need to create new ones. But there is absolutely no need for a generic message that applies to every future event. What message do we want to give readers of the It's a Wonderful Afterlife article? It is an upcoming film, yes. But that message is already in the lead. "Details are likely to change"? Perhaps. If so, lets create a tag for that message. We must avoid having future as a core message in order to prevent this tag to be added to thousands of articles. --Kildor (talk) 16:40, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

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 * "We'll never reach a consensus the way things have been looking above"
 * That's right, we won't, which means stop trying. We don't need a consensus to maintain the status quo, only to abandon it, therefore establishing a consensus only serves one side.
 * To repeat myself, since previous discussion has been hidden by wielder of the deletion bot:
 * Removal of these templates is nonsense. No disclaimers in articles does not apply, and even if it did it uses the same sort of templates, making its rule ridiculous in the first place.  Will we delete the policy template?  How about the [edit] links?  How about fact?  How about all article-space templates?  Where do we draw the line?  Editors use these "future" templates in the same manner as those others, so what makes them alone more worthy of deletion?  Nothing. ¦ Reisio (talk) 04:19, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how much effort to devote to this. I hope I'm not feeding a troll. You're saying that if we delete one group of templates, we should delete all other templates, plus remove the ability to edit articles? I don't follow this logic at all. Could you clarify? Equazcion (talk) 04:32, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You hope you aren't feeding a troll? :p
 * I'm saying (for the third time) that there are plenty of templates we use in the exact same way we use these "future" templates, and nobody's considering deleting them, so why these? ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * We are not using those in the same way. fact for instance is asking for a citation, something that can be fixed. The same for almost all the templates in Templates. The future templates are just being used as an unnecessary extra large warning for something which is obvious when you read the article. Garion96 (talk) 06:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well obviously it's not that obvious to some or this article would have not been flagged for deletion (originally a speedy) for crystal balling, when obviously it is a future EP. It was never flagged until right after the bot removed the future album tag.『 ɠu¹ɖяy 』 ¤ • ¢ 06:50, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It wasn't flagged as a speedy, only wp:proposed deletion. Which you can agree or disagree with but if an article is kept solely on it having a future tag then there is something wrong with the article anyway. Garion96 (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No originally it was flagged for speedy, read what I type. Crystal ball means looking into the future & obviously someone that didn't actually look at the article that it was a future album. 『 ɠu¹ɖяy 』 ¤ • ¢ 15:29, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I read what you typed but I also read the history of M.A.D. EP and it was not flagged for speedy deletion, only proposed deletion. Garion96 (talk) 15:34, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The article was proposed for deletion for "crystal balling". Which means "The article talks about a future thing without any reliable sources". I don't know if that's true in that case, but either way, the Future album tag would not have changed anything in this case. It would still be crystal balling (or not), and it would still be tagged accordingly. --Conti|✉ 15:37, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Would re-wording them to something like Current be a good option? I can see a use for this template just after an announcement has been made on a topic (e.g. when the host city the 2012 Olympics was announced) but they should not be up continually If it said This article documents an future event. Information may change rapidly as new announcements have been made and more information becomes available. Similarly imminent events, e.g. the week before the Super Bowl should possibly be tagged, (Imminent?) but Current could potentially be used in those cases. --Natet/c 08:51, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

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 * I oppose the method used to decide the future of these templates, not everyone joins wikiprojects / puts them on watch and not all wikiprojects were correctly informed so when templates started disappearing from 100s of articles it obviously led to some people coming here and disagreeing with the actions . This method was simply used as a backdoor to fully delete all these templates, knowing that taking them to TFD would see many of them saved. We are now told to look at each individual template to see if theres justification for it to be restored, surely this is the wrong way around? Each template should have been looked at individually, rather than just have some bot come round mass deleting everything. One example of templates still on articles is the Template:Future ship which is being planned for deletion but some may not notice they will be deleted until they are removed from those articles as well. Also, there was only a note on wikiprojects about a possible removal of the template, an update on the outcome of the debate BEFORE mass deletions from articles was carried out might have been useful.

People just want to delete these templates for the sake of it, having a template at the top of the article warning readers that major contents may change is valuable diclaimer and advice for the reader. The "no diclaimers" policy states temporal templates are an exception.

It is true that ALL wikipedia articles may change as its a never ending process, but there is clearly a difference between how radical a change to Summer Olympics 2008 there would be compared to Summer Olympics 2012. Unless the 2008 article contains incorrect information, nothing serious will change. The one in the future is providing details for an event that could radically change and could impact on the reader in a far bigger way than coverage of a past event can. What happens if people plan their holidays around such an event (unwise ofcourse) but wikipedia is meant to be a trusted source, some form of diclaimer / warning as mentioned before that things can change is more useful. Encyclopedias tend to cover only things in the past, wikipedia clearly covers things in the future. I see no reason why we cant have a visual display at the top of an article reminding people about this. We should not forget the future templates do not just say "This is a future event" it contained a reminder about the contents..

Why delete something thats useful. BritishWatcher (talk) 10:33, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Why is it useful? Do we really think our readers are so dumb that they need a huge template telling them that the Summer Olympics 2012 article is about something in the future? Garion96 (talk) 11:22, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think our readers should be reminded that as the article is on an event that is yet to happen, the contents of the article can radically change in the way the contents of the article on the 2008 sporting event clearly will not. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:53, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think our readers already know that since they are smart enough to realise that information about an event in 2012 can rapidly change when they read it in 2009. Garion96 (talk) 12:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * But in 2012 it will be a future sporting event still. And this is just one example which does have a date in the title unlike most articles that use templates, like about a new ship. I still see no harm in reminding people that its a future event and information may change. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:06, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Even in Januari 2012 I think that our readers are smart enough to realise that the article might rapidly change when reaching 27 juli 2012. :) Garion96 (talk) 14:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

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 * I have been away for a while, and just resumed editing in the last week or so - so I missed the initial centralized discussion on this topic, which I guess is my own dumb fault. However, a set of templates in use on several thousand articles would seem to demand broad consensus, both to deprecate the templates and to trump a TFD discussion to delete them. I'm worried that that does not exist here. Some objections to the process as it stands:
 * I am concerned that we don't have a list of the templates under threat of deletion - Which templates are included in the scope of this discussion? Which aren't? The consensus was to deprecate "future templates", but does that mean all of the templates in Category:Temporal templates? Or just future? Or some combination?
 * The closing admin also specifically noted that individual cases should be discussed separately - and this was not done. The example of WP:CARS is a good one, as they had no opportunity to object to the deletion of the future car model template (don't have the link - which one was it?) . The olympics template is similar.
 * If given the chance, I'd argue that Future spaceflight needs to be kept, since information about a spaceflight might be authoritative and reliably sourced, but may still change significantly prior to the launch. Launch times are a good example - we can verify the scheduled launch time, but it's not final until the spacecraft is actually launched. My argument may have merit, it may not - and it might be applicable to other templates, or it might not. It's my fault that I missed the discussion in August, true - but I'm concerned that I didn't/haven't had the chance to raise that objection as it relates to that specific template, since we haven't discussed any specific templates, then or now.
 * A lot of good editors have put a lot of time into this proposal, and I don't want to do anything to disparage their efforts - but this feels like it's moving too fast. We skipped a step, and we need to correct that. Thanks, UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 14:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a list at User:Conti/"Future" templates/List. Basically, we're talking about all templates in the temporal templates category that begin with "Future". You say that information about future spaceflights might change significantly prior to the launch. I certainly agree with that, but my point is that this is true in general: information about spaceflights might change significantly. Period. Whether they're in the future, currently ongoing, or in the past, even. Sure, it's not as probably in the latter case, but then again, considering the articles that use the future spaceflight template, I would argue that most of those won't change significantly, either. Actually, most of those will probably not change much at all and will be quite boring. :) And I don't think we should say "Well, they still might change, so let's tag all of them. Just in case." Because the same argument can be made for a lot of other situations. --Conti|✉ 15:32, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Didn't see that list, thanks. I'm not suggesting that we tag everything that might change at some point in the future - quite the opposite, I think many of the future templates can go. My specific example looks at spaceflights because we list the actual launch (and landing) times of each flight down to the second. With that level of precision, we need to show when the time listed is a planned future launch time as opposed to an actual launch time, as this has implications for orbits, altitudes, and a myriad of other factors, all reliably sourced and documented. In this case, at least as far as the date and time of launch, these facts will not change after the fact. Perhaps the template should be more narrowly tailored for that purpose, or the infobox altered to indicate "Until the spacecraft actually launches, times indicated are subject to change" or something. There are very very few events that use Future templates where the exact second that the event took place is critical, so I think this is a different case, and I think this specific case could be debated - as the closing admin very specifically recommended.UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 16:28, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This could be debated, yes, and you very well might have a good point here, I don't know (because I don't know too much about spaceflights). But I'm not sure if we should mix the discussion about specific templates with the discussion about the idea of the templates in general, as that would be somewhat chaotic. I think the idea of the closing comment was that individual templates could be discussed after the original discussion was closed. One thing, tho: There is Template:Launching, wouldn't that satisfy your concerns? --Conti|✉ 17:01, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised that template isn't listed here, though it's a much broader template than future spaceflight. I'd agree that specific templates can be discussed separately, and so long as that happens I'm satisfied. My concern was mainly that we don't say we're going to discuss specific templates, and then blam them all without doing so. Thanks. UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 12:10, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

4

 * Really? Again?  This had been pretty well settled; seeing this run through a second RfC because of a few vociferous complaints from those who hadn't jumped into the first discussion is a triumph of bureacracy for bureaucracy's sake.  It is almost enough to make me want to boycott the process altogether.  Anyway, to completely rehash what has been said over and over again: these templates do not accomplish anything that should not be readily apparant from the prose of the article.  If a big, unsightly template is required for a reader to realize "Hey, this article is about something that doesn't exist yet", then the only thing the template is really indicative of is an article writing failure.  I understand that WP:NDA gives an "out" for temporal disclaimers, but it should be evident that the intent of that exception is for subjects that are actually in the process of changing - not ones that might change somewhere down the line.  I do not understand the attachment some people have to these templates but they serve as little more than visual clutter, and an extraordinarily substandard method of indicating that the content of the article will change down the line. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 15:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's annoying when people who had been excluded from the discussion get to participate, isn't it? :p If these templates are deleted I will be nominating every other article-space template for deletion, one at a time, until the end of time.  They all just make articles "unsightly" and point out things that are obvious to everyone who's read the policies and guidelines anyways, right? ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:20, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Wrong. Very, very wrong. I mean, there are legitimate reasons to keep these templates, but comparing them to all other article-space templates certainly isn't one of them. Heck, you compared these templates to the [edit] link, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Article-space templates serve countless different purposes. Some are useful, some aren't. And this discussion is about whether the future-type templates are useful. The main difference I see between most article-space templates and these templates is that the former say "There is a problem, please fix it", while the latter say "There may be a problem. Just so you know". In addition, threatening to violate WP:POINT when things don't go way really isn't helping your position at all. --Conti|✉ 16:30, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If they weren't useful, they wouldn't have existed in the first place. The templates also do not say "there may be a problem", they merely state clearly a fact and nothing more.  In addition, stating that I will nominate templates for deletion based on the fact other templates used in the exact same manner have been deleted is not remotely a violation of WP:POINT. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright, if you think doing that won't be WP:POINTy, that's your call. Are you implying that the existence of a template proves its usefulness? I kinda doubt it, but I don't see any other way to interpret your first sentence. Of course the templates state a (true, verfiable) fact, but a template that'd say "This is an article about a clown." would do that, too. And it would be just as unneccessary, too. --Conti|✉ 17:55, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What is necessary, though? I can personally do without all the templates in article-space, but people use them, they are useful.  Again, where do you draw the line, and why? ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:25, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I think that some of those templates are unnecessary, too, but that's simply besides the point. As I said, different templates have different purposes. Some make sense to me, some don't. To take a random example, Template:NPOV is important because it warns the reader that an article might not be neutral. Which is an important piece of information that is quite probably not obvious to the reader at all, hence the template. It is added when a user thinks that an article is not neutral, and it is removed once there is agreement that it is neutral (again). That seems like a sensible use of an article-namespace template to me. I decide on a case-by-case basis what I consider useful and what not, and there's no clear line. For instance, I think we could do without Template:Orphan (the template, not its category), but I don't strongly oppose it. The Future-templates, on the other hand, I consider to be one of the most useless templates that we currently use on a lot of articles. Why I think so, I already described in many, many paragraphs in my various comments on this page. --Conti|✉ 17:14, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ( ec, reply to Reisio )No one had been excluded from participating in the previous discussion. It had been open for a reasonable amount of time and its existence made visible in several locations. It is unfortunate that a few people missed the discussion for one reason or another, but they were not excluded. When this iteration of the discussion ends, what happens when a few people show up after it has been closed with a "Hey, what about me" complaint? Do we reboot the discussion yet again? Closing the discussion after a period of time is not an attempt to rush judgement, and keeping it closed in spite of complaints after the fact is not an attempt to exclude input. If we are forced to do otherwise, nothing gets done around here. To address your second point : if you want to run afoul of WP:POINT, be my guest. Understanding an article is about a future event/structure/whatever is not a matter of being familiar with policies and guidelines but is merely a matter of reading the article at hand. "Future" templates are content disclaimers, not notifications of a deficiency in meeting policy/guidelines. Your sarcastic comparison is an invalid one. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 16:35, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Just call me Mr. No one, then. If the templates had been listed in WP:TFD like usual, I would have known about this, instead the discussion and decision took place here at Centralized discussion, a place I have never in four years been to until now.  Exclusion is not subjective — I wasn't aware of the event, so I was excluded.  Yes, if more people show up, we "reboot" the discussion yet again WP:CCC.  Having a discussion about something without the input of the people who use that something is unacceptable.  To address my second point, stating that I will nominate templates for deletion based on the fact other templates used in the exact same manner have been deleted is not remotely a violation of WP:POINT. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A good-faith effort was made to give widespread notification of the discussion. cent isn't really somewhere you go, but it's transcluded all over the place.  I'm surprised it is no on WP:TFD, since it is transcluded on to WP:AFD, WP:RFD and WP:MFD.  In any event, not being notified is hardly an exclusion.  It is unfortunate that you never saw this, but again, a good-faith effort was made to advertise the discussion.  As far as WP:CCC is concerned, yes you are right.  It is always acceptable to rehash a debate.  What I am objecting to here is the wholesale discarding of the previous debate and starting over - that isn't how it should go.  This new discussion should be "Hey, did we get it wrong before?" and not "Well maybe we got it wrong before, so let's scrap it and start over".  Discussions are not rebooted, they are revisited. <b style="color:#0000FF;">Sher</b><b style="color:#6060BF;">eth</b> 17:28, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If you're talking about how all the previous discussion (which I did deign to participate in) is now hidden, that was all Drilnoth the bot wielder; I came close to reverting those edits myself. Yes, you (guys who were involved) got it wrong. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:25, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand, I thought this was fully settled and the consensus was to get rid of them. Why do we have to have yet another discussion about the same thing? Why did someone delete the previous discussions? Gigs (talk) 13:11, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

5

 * Reason for this RFC: In short, because there are a few editors who are strongly opposed to the change after the discussion was first resolved. Personally, I don't think that a second RFC is needed but I'm not sure if anything else can settle the issue. It got down to a few people arguing against a few other people, because very few were still watching the page, and at that point I wasn't really sure what to do with my bot... perhaps there is more opposition than was represented in the original RFC, or maybe there are just a few people with strong views who hadn't seen the initial discussion. Additionally, the original proposal wasn't clear on how the deprecation could be implemented, which caused more controversy by people saying that removing the templates from articles was equivalent to deleting them; should they be deleted or just tagged as deprecated; etc. I, personally, don't feel that more discussion should be needed but, I'd rather not have the bot remove all the templates only for it later to be decided that it shouldn't have. Re-adding the templates much be done manually, but removing them can be done by bot. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:46, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I can see, the original discussion/proposal was properly advertised and a clear consensus was established. And there is no way we could make everyone agree on such a proposal like this. There will always be objections, and I do not see why a few objections should overturn that consensus. It is time to go on and let the bot work again. --Kildor (talk) 20:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You can have all the discussions and "consensus" you like, but if the people who actually use the templates in question don't participate, what you've decided is meaningless. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So how do we get the people who actually use the templates to participate? --Conti|✉ 20:49, 10 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment - Why not just do a TfD? They were removed with consensus (I believe) so just follow the normal procedure.  Otherwise, deprecate and delete.  I'd like to see a lot of article spaces templates gotten rid of.  I haven't seen many that do anything beneficial. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:59, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

TFD?
It's been a week since major discussion here. There was clear consensus for deprecation, but many complaints delayed the process. Can we just have a TFD for all of these useless Future templates already? Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk 01:17, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we should get an uninvolved admin to have a look over this page and provide an assessment, with TFD being a possible outcome. Would that be agreeable to everyone? Equazcion (talk) 01:22, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:24, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Individual TfDs would probably be less controversial than one massive one... --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 02:36, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No, this must be a single discussion. No one wants to have to copy and paste their vote to twenty different TFDs, and it would be terrible and pointless if half were kept and half were deleted. Every single one of these templates is exactly the same, just signifying a different topic. Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk  02:42, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Since a prominent argument has been that the templates are not all the same, it'd probably be best to leave this up to the uninvolved admin. Equazcion (talk) 05:55, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've made a request at ANI: WP:ANI. Equazcion (talk) 06:27, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I was going to suggest for a request to close this discussion myself, as no new comments have been made in a while, despite the deprecation message still being on all the future-class templates. I'm not feeling comfortable with a TfD, tho. The entire point of this discussion was to avoid a) Different TfDs for the same kind of template with different outcomes, and b) a straight vote instead of an actual discussion. I, personally, think that this discussion is enough to form a consensus (or declare that there is none), but I will of course respect the closing admin's decision. --Conti|✉ 07:57, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that a TFD is unnessecary, too, but I won't completely oppose one if that is what is required. However, it needs to be a single discussion... that is, a discussion almost identical to the one above, but in a different location. I'd urge the closing admin to look at everything that has been said and see the bureaucracy involved in having a TfD after this discussion. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:15, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The request at ANI seems to be getting ignored. This page is probably intimidating. If anyone can think of additional places to post a request, feel free. Equazcion (talk) 17:07, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, WP:AN is usually the place for such requests, if I'm not mistaken. Moving it there will get it some more attention, at least. --Conti|✉ 17:20, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Hope it works. Equazcion (talk) 20:11, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Closure
Thank you for the close. I'll start the bot running again in about 2 weeks from today, to allow for time to contest individual template deletions. I know that this was a tough close; thank you for taking the time to really study the whole thing. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 00:35, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You are welcome. Hopefully this solution will satisfy most everyone or at least avoid further drama. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I hope so, too - that is a well thought-out, reasonable conclusion. Thanks, UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 13:45, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Where are your "future categories"? WHERE?

 *  moved from Template_talk:Future_software -- Equazcion (talk) 03:38, 1 October 2009 (UTC) 

I'll put this up here, because the WP:DFUTURE is now meant as an archive and not meant to be edited any longer. (DANG!) I just missed the whole caboodle and just stumbled on a "deprecated" message with a future software article; that's why I started to look for information. Uh-huh, again some dude which wants to make himself immortal by his great proposal; 100 different users commenting to it meaning "All of Wikipedians" (like the jury in the U.S. court!). So if 80% say "deprecated", this is projected onto the point of view of the rest. Uh-huh. OK, let's give an example. Software not released yet: Azure Services Platform. Categories I can find there are: Microsoft and Cloud Platforms. Fantastic. So all you bigmouths that promised us future categories as replacement of our beloved future... templates, where did you hide them? Currently, things look like this: a bot will auto-delete the "deprecated" templates and then there will be no new "future category"! I'm not as stupid to believe the bot will auto-INSERT a new category after it has deleted the future template. Not a cat in hell's chance I'm gonna buy that story. -andy 92.229.113.76 (talk) 01:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You're free to not believe it, of course, but that's exactly what the bot is going to do. --Conti|✉ 10:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Azure Services Platform indeed doesn't have the category. But it also never had a future tag in the first place. Therefore no bot removed the future tag and no category was being added. Garion96 (talk) 11:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Time to go on
It is now more than two weeks since the last RFC was closed, and not a single "future template" has been put up at TfD. Therefore I assume it is ok to let the bot proceed and remove the remaining future templats. The message "The template below has been deprecated (see discussion), and will soon be automatically replaced with the corresponding category" has been up for quite a while now. --Kildor (talk) 14:36, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Equazcion (talk) 19:48, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed indeed. :) I just deleted the remaining orphaned templates. Garion96 (talk) 20:04, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's running! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

DrilBot needs your help!
DrilBot has removed all but 292 uses of the future templates. However, it can't finish removing Future public transportation because the template has a couple of parameters (year and country) which modify what template is added, which would be very difficult to code DrilBot to handle at this point using AWB. As such, it would be most excellent if somebody(s) around here could help me empty this list of pages by removing the template and replacing it with the proper category. Thank you! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 19:26, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Tried to help a bit, but it's slow. Couldn't the bot work from Category:Future public transportation in China and the other country categories? Almost every article in there has the future tag and needs to be put in the category again after the template removal. I already did that for Category:Future public transportation in Canada Garion96 (talk) 19:52, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Aha! I completely hadn't thought of making lists by categories rather than by transclusions. I don't have much more time today, but I should be able to go through the rest tomorrow that way then and then everything should be done. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 21:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)