Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 December 10



Flag templates

 * 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 do not merge. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 05:53, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Flagcountry - "similar to the more widely used flag template..."
 * Flagu - "an alternative to flag and flagcountry, for instances where the country name should not be linked"
 * Flaglist - "identical to Flag except that country names are aligned correctly with flag icons of different widths"
 * Flagicon - "displays the flag only"
 * Flagdeco - "This template is very similar to flagicon, except the image is not linked to an article,"
 * Flag

Propose merging Flagcountry and/or Flagu and/or Flaglist and/or Flagicon and/or Flagdeco into Flag.

Very similar (see especially the documentation for Flagcountry and others quoted above); the minor differences could be dealt with by means of switches. Alternatively, their underlying code (and /core subtemplates) should be unified and the individual templates made wrappers; or be made to call the same core. A single Lua module may be the best solution. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:57, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * oppose merging since they do different things in terms of output/linking: 🇺🇸 united states,, , 🇺🇸, 🇺🇸, 🇺🇸 USA. however, feel free to rewrite the backend to use a single lua module. Frietjes (talk) 21:22, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose as these templates are often repeated many multiples of times in tables on a single page and merging them into one template and using switches would cause massive template transclusion size issues. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 22:50, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Which is addressed by "Alternatively, their underlying code (and /core subtemplates) should be unified and the individual templates made wrappers; or be made to call the same core. A single Lua module may be the best solution". Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:04, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: Any conversion to a Lua Module should probably also include the Country data templates and the other meta templates that the flag templates use. The complex flag template system is explained on WP:FTP. I agree that converting to Lua modules would be the best solution. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:06, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * (Weak?) oppose In the last few months I have tested a template that combines the functionality of many existing flag templates, plus a number of additional options, into a single general template, though not with the intent of eventually merging the flag templates. With the current flag template system, flag templates transclude country data templates, which in turn transclude the core templates. While it is possible to replace flagu by a nolink parameter within flag (taking one template as an example), a line such as  must be added to all 1800 data templates in order to be able to merge the core templates. It is possible to create a functional flag template that does not rely on a core template by extracting fields from data templates using getalias/getalias2, as shown by my sandbox template, but this is kind of a hack. Adding parameters would be easier if the entire system is drastically changed, such as by "Lua-isation", though it would be a rather large undertaking to transfer all data template data to Lua modules. Technical issues aside, I think it makes sense for the functionality of some templates to be available as a parameter in others:
 * and for  and  respectively
 * or similar for
 * And maybe and  for  and  respectively (using the existing name parameter)
 * Even if adding such parameters is technically possible, I'm not really sure whether the templates should actually be merged, since the versions with parameters are longer and arguably somewhat more complex than the separate templates. The five templates nominated for merging with flag are together used on over 66,000 pages, so replacing them would take ages. I also second T13 in that stuffing templates used hundreds of times on the same page with parser functions can cause problems. SiBr4 (talk) 10:13, 11 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose I don't see the point.  You certainly wouldn't want to make any changes to the millions of existing instances of these templates in article markup (e.g. change  to, for example) so that means you'd still need to have flag, flagicon, etc. all available for editors to use.  That means that any merger could only be in the underlying "engine" templates (e.g. Template:flag/core, Template:flagicon/core, etc.) and those internal templates are all relatively small (2-3 lines each) and very stable (a couple of minor changes in the past 5 years).  So what's the motivation for change here?  If it ain't broke, don't "fix" it.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:48, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The motivation is the general benefit derived from merging similar templates, as described (with reference to infoboxes, but equally applicable here) in Infobox consolidation. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:04, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Your essay makes sense in the context of infoboxes, where there are hundreds of mildly different templates that can be (and should be) consolidated. The main benefit is the reduced maintenance burden.  But I fail to see how that is relevant here.  There are only six flag templates listed above, and each of those is very small and very stable, so there is no maintenance problem that needs to be addressed.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose for all the reasons given. Mass-replacing could be done using a bot, but then we really have more important things to fix. More importantly, these are (and should remain) very simple templates to be included hundreds of times in lists or tables. We don't want to replace them with bulky replacements using switches. A common Lua backend would be nice though. --PanchoS (talk) 11:07, 15 December 2014 (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.

Template:Pre-CSA states

 * 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 delete. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 05:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Pre-CSA states

Per Articles for deletion/Republic of Florida and the related deletion pages for these "states." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:05, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete While a good faith attempt, this template is meant to support the speculative "Republic" articles of the first seven CSA states that lack any reliable source.  Deletion/merge discussions are underway for these and elimination appears near certain.  That leaves the template without a purpose.  Even if it linked to the state "in the American Civil War" articles post merge/deletion it would end up being redundant and only add clutter--the state pages are already templated in a larger group to the right. Red Harvest (talk) 01:27, 11 December 2014 (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.

Template:Current PGA Caddies

 * 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 delete. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 05:58, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Current PGA Caddies

Created in April 2009 this template lists just 4 caddies associated with golfers on the PGA Tour. As such it is useless. Templates for caddies used in a specific event like the Ryder Cup might be of some interest but the template under discussion is not suitable. The creator has been inactive since January 2010. Nigej (talk) 16:45, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NENAN. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:33, 10 December 2014 (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.

Template:Conclusion

 * 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 delete. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 05:59, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Conclusion

The creator is inactive at this moment. The template itself looks awkward and bulky at best, but it was well intended when it was first created. Also, it is infrequently used nowadays. archive top surpasses this. Other templates surpass this as well, like rm top. George Ho (talk) 11:41, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete as redundant; and due to lack of uptake by the community (just 18 transclusions). Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:33, 10 December 2014 (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.

Template:NAMESPACEID

 * 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 Nomination withdrawn. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 08:31, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * NAMESPACEID

This is unused, and prone to falling out of date as new namespaces are added. (At the moment, the Topic namespace is missing.) If this was used at all I would convert it to Lua which would mean it would be kept up to date automatically, but if it's not used deletion is probably the better option. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 07:00, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It seems its being used in page notices; either your deletion template is breaking them or you've added malformed code somewhere. I'm seeing
 * "<div id="editnotice-ns-

‹ The template below (NAMESPACEID) is being considered for deletion. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus.›
 * 3" class="editnotice-page" style="clear: both; width: 100%;">"
 * when I edit my talk page, but it doesn't show when i preview the EN itself. It's affecting your EN too, and I tried two browsers;' SeaMonkey 1.1.19 and Firefox 27.0. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 07:26, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. It turns out that the template is being used in Template:Editnotice load/core, and because of the way that edit notices work, none of the edit notices that use it show up in Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:NAMESPACEID. It looks like a Lua conversion is the way to go, rather than deletion. I'm withdrawing this nomination now. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 08:28, 10 December 2014 (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.