Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2023 May 28

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Template:USCensusDemographics

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template(s) or module(s) 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).

The result of the discussion was delete after substitution. Primefac (talk) 07:38, 16 June 2023 (UTC) This template is quite prolematic: no documentation, a couple-dozen-something parameters and they're all positional, surprising reference dependency, and so on. It's hard to maintain articles that invoke it, not so easy to verify, and cumbersome to use. Either I'm crazy or its usage has thinned-out ... I thought it was used on thousands of pages, but it's really only in use on about 950 or so. With lower usage, it seems realistic to subst the content into articles where it is invoked and remove the template so that it doesn't spread. Cleaning up the template to make it more usable would involve editing that same number of articles, anyway; so it seems like abscission is the best for this particular patient. Mikeblas (talk) 03:39, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * USCensusDemographics
 * I believe it was created to make automation after US census updates trivial. But this is a content template masquerading, and I would suggest deleting it after a subst as the presumed bot either never came to fruition or stopped running at some point. Izno (talk) 04:27, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete per Izno. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:07, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete. It is hugely repetitious to the 2020 data and actually confusing to the reader. The 2000 and 1990 templates, which also appear on some pages, also must be deleted. Keystone18 (talk) 19:00, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This template is year-agnostic (I think.) What are the 1990 and 2000 templates? -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:59, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Meh Kudos to User:Ram-Man, and his Rambot, who created most articles for populated places in the United States using data from the 2000 census. When data from the 2010 census became available, I worked with User:ChrisRuvolo to extract the data from the Census Bureau's website, with a focus on places in New Jersey. It worked and has worked effectively for more than a decade in almost a thousand different articles; no one had complained about the structure of the template or the way that the data is presented in the thousand or so articles. An editor came along and needlessly removed a source used by the template. A second editor came along and saw that the source was missing, and came to the destructive conclusion that the only possible remedy was to delete the template from the article. When the problem was fixed in that article through the simple expedient of restoring the reference, the same editor decided that the only possible solution to deal with a template that the editor did not understood was to delete it. A decade ago, we could have used a spreadsheet to take the data and hard coded the wording, but a template provided greater flexibility to adjust the wording without having to fix a thousand different articles. Since it was created, some 20 different editors have modified the template to correct errors and make it more accurate and useful; they were sufficiently adept at figuring out the trivial functions of the template, despite the lack of documentation. The template has served its purpose. Deleting it will end up in the nearly one thousand articles having the exact same content that they have now. Again, meh. Alansohn (talk) 03:47, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Alansohn your edits like those at which subst the template also subst the TfD message which it shouldn't causing a lot of article pages to appear at Category:Templates for deletion. Gonnym (talk) 08:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * They will be removed. Alansohn (talk) 12:18, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Not exactly accurate and pretty snarky. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:14, 8 June 2023 (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).