Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion/Archive 4

TFD reorganization
This page has steadily grown in size and is now over 300 kb long. I propose that we split it into subpages per day (transcluded on the main page) just like it's done on WP:CFD. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 13:05, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I think we might be better served by simply closing the discussions that are really old; as of now it's got discussions dating from October 29, and seven days ago was November 11. I'm also a little concerned about the unwieldyness of doing it the transclusion way - it's very confusing until you've nominated 5 or 6 articles (templates) and have the pattern down, and newer users will tend to not bother to nominate things for deletion because it's too much effort. --  stillnotelf   has a talk page  14:23, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It isn't unwieldy - in fact, you wouldn't even notice it: you'd click on an edit link and add the reference to the template, just like you do now. Look at WP:CFD and you'll see what I mean. I specifically do not mean a subpage per nomination the way WP:MFD does it, because that would indeed be unwieldy. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 00:53, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The solution when the page reaches 300kb is to close some discussions! I would prefer to avoid subpages since they aren't really needed when the page is down to size (as it is now...), and they mean things drop off, or never get onto, my watchlist. -Splash talk 03:23, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Oversized Templates and Deletion Criteria
Currently there seem to be no rules regarding templates that, while potentially useful, are far too large to be practical. I'm thinking specifically of the Template:Navarre, which lists municipalities in Navarre. There are 272 such municipalities in Navarre, and the Template dwarfs the articles in which it is placed. So, is this already covered under current deletion criteria, or is this an acceptable template, or should it be nominated for deletion? Ziggurat 03:53, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Overlarge templates do often get deleted. Sometimes what is really needed is a standalone list, with a link in each article's "See also" section and/or a category. -Splash talk 04:04, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Deleting a useful template because it is designed badly sounds like lunacy (yes admittedly us Wikipedians are prone to that sometimes). TfD determines usefullness (and appropriateness), but design improvements should not be centralized at this location. Pcb21 Pete 10:12, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * There is now to to enhance the usefullness of a 272 entry template by design changes. There are categories, lists, and portals to serve the need of having 272 links. --Pjacobi 10:18, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Ouch. I can see where that is coming from. Sometimes a template can be made less unwieldy by reducing font size. In this particular case, however, the template duplicates Category:Navarre and has no meaningful ordering other than alphabetical. That would be reasonable grounds for deleting it, imho. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 15:52, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

templates for speedy deletion
I've made the template tsd for templates which may meet the criteria for speedy deletion. Perhaps someone might find this useful. --Ixfd64 00:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)


 * There are no spesific critereas for speedy deleting templates. You can only speedy templates that are patent nonsense, tests, pure vandalism or or if you created it yourself and no one else have edited it. Templates fiting those critereas are generaly not used in a lot of articles so there is no need for such a notice, just remove it from any articles that might be using it and slap a regular speedy template on it. --Sherool (talk) 03:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Where do redirect templates go?
I'm just wondering, where do any redirect templates for deletion go? I want to create a template regarding this, but I need to know where it should point to. --Wcquidditch | Talk 13:23, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


 * They could go on TfD or RfD, but redirects are cheap, and unles the redirected name is actively misleading, should usually not be nominated. i don't see a reason for a special template. DES (talk) 18:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay. Thanks. --Wcquidditch | Talk 23:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Am I the only one who read that as Where do all the calculators go? :)? - SoM 23:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's related to my question! (that means yes)  --Wcquidditch | Talk 23:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Yet another (non-)sisterproject box
It's pretty well-known that sister project boxes for sites that aren't actually sister projects nearly always get deleted here, and those that survive get reduced to a imdb-like external link template; so it was only a matter of time before people started trying to sneak them in by pasting the code directly into articles instead of providing a convenient template for us to shoot. Has a prohibition on such boxes ever been formalized anywhere, or am I going to be stuck playing whack-a-mole with these? I don't see anything on Sister projects or External links or their talk pages, but there's always been a very strong consensus against them here. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 15:15, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It'd be tough to convince me that any Wikicities project should ever be linked from one of our articles. They aren't authoritative and verifiability is extremely difficult.  It's probably reasonable to allow them on Talk pages, but not main articles.  Treat it like other forms of spamming... warning, then a block. -- Netoholic @ 17:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * While I don't disagree with you, this is kind of dodging the point I was getting at. What if the boxes were instead to IMDB, or some other legitimately linkable site? &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 17:14, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The authors at WikiMac would probably be disappointed to hear your opinion. Those sites should be treated like any other, and if they have good valuable information, links (not boxes) should be allowed. &mdash;Mike 01:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


 * They are treated like any other; that is, they are not considered reliable, because anyone can edit them. Using one wiki to verify another is rapidly converging on circular logic. The idea of sources on Wikipedia is not simply to say "don't blame us if this is wrong, we got it from them" - the idea is to find sources (including websites) with some special authority on a subject, and reference those. Wikicities is not such a site. If their articles reference authoritative sites then we can reference those directly ourselves. Soo 02:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

new template for use as comment
I don't know if this might help anyone, but I made a template tfd3 that will format a standard comment for a tfd. It will also add your signatore so you don't need to type your four tildes. → Aza Toth 17:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Using a template to vote is BAD. You may say it's intended to be used as a subst:, but are you going to be the one that perodically checks up on it and replaces active uses? Similar templates have been deleted before. Save us the trouble and mark it for deletion yourself.  Please, people, not every damn thing on WP needs to be done using a template.  I'd venture to say this template is even more complicated and involved than typing it yourself.  -- Netoholic @ 17:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Please no. I know you intended well, but this is overcomplicated and dangerous, in that if anyone ever forgets to sub, or the template is changed, people will have their opinions changed w/o knowing it. It takes more time to use the template than to type it out manually, IMO. Someone speedy this (or do we have to take it to tfd, horror of horrors?)? -- nae'blis (talk) 00:15, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposal change the layout of tfd page
I suggest to have simlar layout as WP:AFD, WP:CFD or WP:MEDCAB, i.e. using sub pages, becaus WP:TFD can get rather long. → Aza Toth 15:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. BD2412  T 15:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support —Locke Cole 15:58, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support Agnte 16:35, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support as it would also make it easier to watch individual TfD discussions assuming it works the same way as AfD --Qirex 00:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support - Agree with Qirex. (this comment was not added via a template. Grin.) ++Lar 14:08, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support - Would be easier to watch. Adrian Buehlmann 14:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Please don't divide it into subpages per day (whether the individual templates have subpages (like afd) or not (like cfd)); that makes tfd impossible to watchlist. An alternate solution: discuss on the templates' talk pages, and cleverly use &lt;noinclude&gt; sections so only the deletion discussion is transcluded here.  Or even just link to the talk pages from here; there's no real need to transclude. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 17:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I withdraw my objection to splitting into subpages per day, so long as the daily subpages are created by a page move from an initial seed page, which can then be watched. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 04:12, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Made a simple subst-template that could be used on the tfd-page for links User:AzaToth/Tfdl, for example Template gives:


 * 2005-12-21, Template:Tfd ( template, edit, talk, links )

It absolutely should not work the same way as AfD which is vastly confusing and wholly unnecessary when we have a scheme that already works. I wouldn't mind it being the same as CfD which is a subpage per day, but a subpage per debate here is just plain ordinary overkill. -Splash talk 00:20, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I prefer the way AfD works because the discussions are held on subpages (makes it easier to keep an eye on nominations rather than constantly visiting TfD). And as AzaToth says, the pages can get quite large and difficult to load. Further, when there's high activity, having the nominations on seperate subpages will reduce the chances of edit conflicts.
 * BTW: what is confusing about how AfD works? —Locke Cole 10:38, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Most of the discussion will have been missed by the regular denizens of this page, since the temp page's talk page was "cleverly" transcluded here, and so it didn't show up on watchlists. While this reform started out ok, at some point it transformed into a bloated, instruction-creep-ridden process that will make the process nearly unuseable. Just a handful of its problems: I run a bot every morning that cleans up incomplete afd nominations. Afd uses a system that's an order of magnitude simpler than this one, and I still have to repair anywhere from fifteen to thirty articles per day (out of about 150 total listed). If the "easy" afd system is that hard for new (or, more frequently than I care to think about, experienced) editors to handle, where the second and third steps can be handled by a simple header and transclusion, than anyone who doesn't already spend time on tfd every day isn't going to be able to get through this. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 13:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The new tfd1 template works only if it's substed, contrary to current practice. Forcing it to be substed makes it highly difficult to use correctly when it's put "within the box", as per both the current and proposed instructions.  (More precisely, it makes it very difficult to remove correctly if the template is kept.)
 * If it's not substed, it breaks... but not until the next day. This will make it impossible to notice when it's used in practice.
 * It's also forked beyond belief, and the various versions look dissimilar from each other already and will quickly diverge even more.
 * The new tfd2 template is formatted such that it's not just encouraged to use it, as per current, but required. No one's going to be able to remember all the stuff that's put inside the header line.  Even a casual inspection of TFD as it now stands shows that almost nobody uses the tfd2 template as it was, despite it being in the instructions since the end of August.
 * Since it's now required, nominations of multiple templates in a single discussion (such as the current Various icon image templates and Some User templates debates) becomes all but impossible.
 * The new tfd3 template is especially unintuitive, forcing the nominator to make an explicit vote (when in fact we're attempting reach a consensus instead), signs for the nominator using an ugly hack, and uses a cringeworthy mix of placed and named parameters.
 * Agree wholeheartedly with Cryptic. I didn't say anything up to now because I figured I would be told I was just whining or needed to learn the system better.  This is way too complicated. --TreyHarris 18:10, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Cryptic is right. Making a tfd nom at present is a very simple process: add a tag, make a new section, write a nomination. Job done. There is no reason to make life harder for merely aestethic gains. I'm concerned at Templates for deletion/Temp thinking itself nearly ready for deployment when it has massive problems and has been 'discussed' in an almost perfect vacuum. TfD isn't broke. Don't start fixing it. -Splash talk 13:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Re:Cryptic's comments. I think part of the problem with incomplete AfD's was that there were a number of "obvious" help pages that listed the AFD template, with no clear link to the instructions. I have fixed a couple of these (Template messages/Deletion and Deletion_policy) so that they do not show the AFD template, but only a link to the instructions. If the instructions for TfD are mature enough, the same should be done there. As it was before, an ordinary user could be expected to think that all he/she needed to do to get an article deleted was stick the AFD tag at the top, since the most obvious help pages implied that that was the procedure.--Srleffler 06:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I estimate only about a quarter are the result of someone just slapping the afd tag on. About half complete step II (ie, they create the actual afd subpage with a proper header) and don't do step III at all; another quarter are strange cases like this, where the afd3 template was placed in the nomination page, not the daily subpage, or otherwise attempted but not properly done (I've also seen both the afd2 and afd3 templates used on the article itself, or the talk page, etc.)  I don't think it can be written off as people just not seeing the instructions, especially now that they're linked from the afd template itself. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 15:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with this proposal. TfD is quite manageable as it is. Dan100 (Talk) 17:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree as well... all this page needs is more admins to take care of closing these things out in a more timely manner. -- Netoholic @ 06:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. More thought is needed, and it's not clear that the current system is unworkable.--Srleffler 06:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
 * See below. Substantial majority is in favor of splitting by day, and this won't make doing a nomination any harder than it is now. In fact the average user won't even notice he's now editing a daily page rather than a global page, except for the fact that there's fever load time and fever edit conflicts. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 11:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Advice sought
I would like to put up Template:Middle-earth portal for deletion, but I think that adding the TfD template will cause display problems on pages.
 * I made a new template that might help you here, it's tfd-small:


 * → Aza Toth 16:31, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah that is perfect! Thank you AzaToth :) --Qirex 00:50, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * As you can clearly tell, tfd-small now has regular tfd on it, as the "small" variety has been listed for deletion. Besides, I thought there was tfd-inline for these types of things?  It existed last time I checked... -- WC  Quidditch   &#9742;   &#9998;  20:50, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Holding cell
I've edited the holding cell template Templates for deletion/Holding cell to include a text that it is transcluded (see diff). The new link is helpful to edit the whole section at once for example to move templates between subcells. My edit seems to work but I'm not shure if it is elegant. I'm asking myself if it would not be better just to include the section title as well in the template such that clicking on the section edit button on the right of the whole Holding cell section just opens the whole Holding section (the template) for edit. Opinions? Adrian Buehlmann 15:43, 31 December 2005 (UTC)