Template talk:Vfd-new2

Conditional syntax swap
I noticed that the expansion of was failing to remove the conditional-argument syntax, leaving the heading with extra baggage; e.g.:
 * and
 * }
 * }

I had to stare at that for quite a while before I realized that we wanted  instead of , because the second parameter is the default if the first (named) is not used. (The other way around, the default was, with "pg" already substituted. I guess MediaWiki treats numbered parameters a little differently.) Just to be sure, I tested this with Wikipedia's Template:X8 and my WP sandbox, using nearly every reasonable combination of variables (and a few unreasonable ones, too). After confirming it worked, I updated our vfd-new2. Aren't templates such fun? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:21, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Multi-article deletion discussions
I have come up with a basic revision for this template that allows the following:


 * If "pg" and "text" are specified (or 1 for pg and 2 for text are given), the linked "pg" will appear in the heading and the "text" discussion text will appear under it. (This is the standard system LrdChaos implemented.)
 * If "discussion" and "text" are specified, the heading will be the value of "discussion", without a link, and "text" will be the text as before. ("pg" is ignored if it is also specified.) This allows for nominations like "Lots of junk articles", where the articles only appear in the "text".

The syntax I came up with is:



The problem is the same that vfd-new3 is currently experiencing. Even though the displayed material looks and works exactly as it should, the heading has unexpanded junk left over from the template. Specifically, the following template usage:



displays a proper "" heading with the appropriate text, but editing it reveals:

== ==  Person not indentified.

I'm obviously missing something that, once resolved, should make it relatively easy to use the new process for both Steps II & III to nominate groups of articles under an unlinked descriptive heading (or a manually-linked short list of multiple articles).

Meanwhile, I am using Template:X0 to experiment. My first pass at using this vfd-new2 variation can be seen at this version of my sandbox. Note that everything looks fine on the displayed page, but editing it reveals the leftover junk in the headings. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I think it will be less confusing to use "heading" or something else as a non-linked discussion-heading variable, instead of "discussion" when this is implemented, because "discussion" is more descriptive of what WP (and now WQ) refer to as "text". ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Adding closures and nominator votes
Wikiquote has two traditional VfD nomination elements not usually included in Wikipedia's AfD Step II process:


 * Adding "Vote closes" timestamps for formal discussion deadlines. (Wikipedia has no formal deadlines.)
 * Adding a separate vote apart from the nomination.

The vote closure can easily be added later, and a bolded vote can easily be added to the "text" parameter during the nomination, so neither is a show-stopper. (Some editors don't even bother with a formal vote, allowing the nomination to imply their opinion.) I've continued doing all three steps (nomination, vote closure, vote) through the simple expedient of tacking the last two onto the template usage:



It somewhat defeats the purpose of a template for Step II, but on the other hand, many users (especially those coming from Wikipedia) may very well expect to do only the nomination, anyway. I'm not sure what we might do about this, but I wanted to point out this variation from Wikipedia. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * One thing that's different about Wikipedia's Articles for deletion process, at least in terms of voting, is that the initial nominator generally doesn't record a separate vote, unless they're simply listing an orphaned nomination. It's assumed, in the absence of any disclaimer, that the lister is voting for deletion (or else they wouldn't have nominated it in the first place). I think that if we started taking the same attitude, we could eliminate the initial vote. (We might also want to think about maing closures a little easier by losing the hard count, which might only serve to reinforce the (mistaken) idea that it's a 'traditional' vote). As to the close time, I personally think that it's the sort of thing that should be added by a sysop or a knowledgeable nominator (as it's always been, really). I don't think there's any need for including in the "how to" for listing a page for deletion. —LrdChaos (talk) 03:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Just another comment, Wikipedia doesn't have formal deadlines because there are so many! It takes us a while to get through the daily logs (there is about 5 days and then they will be closed, slowly).  Also, they try not to refer to it as voting, they call it "discussing".  That is because there are a great number o possible voters that may not know the proper policies.  Wikiquote is smaller and has many of the same people voting in all the discussions, and most of them understand and can apply the policies very well (leading to your voting more as opposed to discussing) (except for you Jeff, you normally write a book on your stance :) ).  Cbrown1023  talk  03:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Jeff, it's great the way you have it!  Cbrown1023  talk  03:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't worry, Cbrown1023 — I'm quite aware of (and often poke fun at) my own verbosity on these matters. (I even had an editor who is an attorney tell me that I write like a lawyer, which I took as a compliment from her. &#9786;)


 * I pushed for both the formal vote, the specific close date, and the vote count because we had so few active sysops at the time (Kalki and three brand-new ones, myself included) that I was extremely uncomfortable with the opportunity for arguments between VfD participants over the results if everything were not made explicit. (The close date was made a policy, but the other elements were all things I routinely did to encourage by example, and for good and ill, most currently active sysops have picked up these habits. I've since reversed myself on "voting", but I still total up the results because it provides a context in which to make explicit judgment-call arguments (like dismissing one-shot or prankster editors' votes, or making clear how I made close calls).


 * Vote closing dates have occasionally been added by non-sysops with no significant problems. I see no need to limit it to sysops because it's easy to follow our tradition of setting the close time to 168 hours (1 week) from nomination, rounded up to the next whole hour.


 * The problem with the lack of a nominator's explicit vote is that an article is often nominated not because someone expects it to be deleted, but because the nominator wants to call urgent attention to its problems in the hopes that they'll be addressed quickly. The truth of en:Wikiquote (so far) is that there are only two community pages that all regular editors routinely participate on — WQ:VFD and WQ:VP — and participation on the village pump is quite variable, with some questions never getting a response, let alone an answer. Pressing issues of style and content practices often get their boost to resolution from a deletion nomination of an example article. To this end, it's good to have a means for a nominator to be able to state a case in the nomination separate from their opinion. But this isn't really required, and, as I said above, if a nominator wants to be sure of taking a clear position, there's no reason they can't do so in the nomination.


 * Okay, I've rambled enough on this for now. My closing point is that I agree with LrdChaos that none of these extra things need to be stuffed into a clear, concise "how-to". Our sysops can add closure dates as needed and can be trusted to deduce the nominator's opinion if not made explicit, or ask for an explicit call if unclear. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Done, Evaluation requested
I've added a new feature using parser functions that automatically addes a vote closing time 7 days and the exact hour from the nomination time. I'd like to get feedback on this.  Cbrown1023  talk  01:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The first thing I notice is that the hour is wrong; it takes the hour from the current time, but VFD nominations close at the first :00 after the nomination (to ensure that the full 7 days/168 hours/10,080 minutes are given, plus a little buffer). I'm not too familiar with some of the parser function stuff, but is there any way to make it do math to fix that? I suspect not, but again, I don't know it very well, though it wouldn't be just as simple as adding one, due to wrapping from 23:00 to 00:00 (which I usually bump to 01:00 when I nominate at that hour, to avoid confusion). —LrdChaos (talk) 04:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Fixed.  Cbrown1023  talk  18:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I just found another issue: this one occurs when a page is nominated during the 23:00 hour. While the hour math does the right thing and goes to 00:00 (which is technically correct; however, I prefer to give these an extra hour (to 01:00) to avoid ambiguity), but the close date is seven days from the 23:00 day, not the 00:00 day, so these are given only a 6-day period instead of 7. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:18, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I just did another nomination where this problem popped up; is there any way to fix the template so it automatically handles this, or will we just need to change the date manually? —LrdChaos (talk) 23:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)