Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Template:Interwiki doc page pattern, Template:CAT, Template:Template doc page viewed directly


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: delete all. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:Interwiki doc page pattern, Template:CAT, Template:Template doc page viewed directly
These are a few new templates created by User:Fabartus, of Template:WikiPtmp and 36 others fame. As before, they're unused, the documentation is unclear, and they have lots of references to nonexistent templates. They don't seem to serve any useful purpose, and User:Fabartus has yet to offer a sufficiently clear explanation as to what these templates do (the closest they've come is this).


 * Vote closed. Result: delete all (7 deletes; 1 implicit (but vociferous!) keep). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all. —LrdChaos (talk) 16:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all. ~ UDScott 16:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all.  Cbrown1023  talk  20:41, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all Even if it is better to keep them somewhere, it wouldn't be on each local project but some centralizing place like meta. Aphaia 10:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all. Once again, Fabartus (aka FrankB) is just slapping templates onto the project without spending the time and effort to make clear why we even should have them, making only vague claims about interwiki "communication". He can't even be bothered to summarize what he's doing, instead referring people to w:Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing, a WikiProject of which he is currently the only member. The project itself points to a template deletion discussion to explain what it is (and doesn't even do this correctly; the complete link is w:Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 January 15). He feels that explaining his work, documenting it properly, and making it properly functional is merely "getting all the eye's dotted and tees crossed". He has yet to demonstrate why any of this stuff is useful, let alone necessary (especially when some of it is duplicating more robust and well-documented methods). He seems to know enough to do some technical work, but unaware (and unwilling to learn) how to integrate it into both the existing template environment and the communities he expects to use it. (In fact, if it hasn't already been coined, I'd coin the term "WikiProject disease" for this kind of naive eagerness to build ineffective and often malfunctioning or useless support constructs for wiki work. Something like what we went through with "Wikiquote Esperanza", only with a technically savvy editor.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 14:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Agreed with JeffQ. I propose hereby to put a block on this account due to lack of accountability and hence incapacity of collaboration with other editors, unless he is moved with our discussion on the above and annoyance. I think already we tried to persuade to listen to others. --Aphaia 18:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm uncomfortable with blocking an editor for willful foolishness, just as I was with our Esperanza promoter, unless they are noticeably disrupting Wikiquote. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, in my humble opinion creation of over 40 useless templates and thus deletion targets is enough be called "disruptive". --Aphaia 11:40, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. - InvisibleSun 19:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete because I'm a member of the tribe. Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 23:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Add Votes_for_deletion up here too, you're picking apart a system of interconnected parts.

Hmmmm, the 'local tribe's' out in force: "willful foolishness", "Famous" (meaning infamous), "this kind of naive eagerness to build ineffective and often malfunctioning or useless support constructs" (Thanks, I haven't been called Naive in 30+ years of programming!) 'some centralized place like meta' (Didn't you LOOK? TRY THIS!)

Sigh! Do you really need that kind of prejudicial judmental unfounded rhetoric? Let's talk facts. Fact: I'm an experienced wiki-editor with several years experience and circa 10,000 edits with a lot of experience integrating between the Commons, and wikipedia in both templates and categories. I participate regularly in those talk forums, XfD pages, and on the wikipedia Help desk, when not editing articles--my preference as a wiki-activity, and frankly, developing this has been much 'too much like work', but I perceived a need, and have sold the idea elsewhere, and am implementing that now that I can invest the time again. I've been writing software successfully since '76, one way and another, and am an engineer used to dealing with complexity. So dismiss the charges that this is either ill-conceived or unworkable -- it's coming along fine -- or would be without THIS disruption to the schedule.

'However badly Pass-1 test version stunk the place up last fall, this is not then, and this is a very different implementation. There was of course ZERO reason to pick on it THEN, or now. It could have sat around quiescent, as it did elsewhere. It is/was harming nothing, and neither was that pass. The naivity and childishness is in expecting something obviously complex (last fall) or containing complexity (now, but more elegant) to be explained before all the factors have been identified, or worked out. Some people do, some people talk, some people talk about doing and never do. I think it's obvious where I don't belong there! 

But some people either have an over-developed sense of neatness, or too much time on their hands, it would appear. I would have been around to tidy up, or as I have [ here today, for example], or to continue the mission. It is sad to me, LrdChaos, that you and Jeffq apparently have no faith in other people. Perhaps some of you reading this are a homebody, and academic or cheat on the boss's time to put in wiki-hours; for some of us, it takes us away from actually feeding the family. I am such a one. I stayed up all of last night and suffered most of the day for it today to further this, as I did last week, and likely will again. Sorry my schedule and yours aren't in synch better, but I got here as soon as was practicable after the heads up from Aphaia, but was starting my real world work at the time.

Secondly, these things you are contemplating discarding are in wide use, and mostly are things I'm merely importing after adding user friendly 'How to' documentation-- as something undocumented and esoteric goes unused. (Some are subst'd--bringing the pieces for uniformity is part of the solution.) Some are here because I used them extensively for self-documenting the system--which displays badly unless they come along (I, I0, I2, I5, and Indent, all discussed Indent family usage. Some like Template:R_from_other_capitalisation are pieces that are just generally good ideas for tracking redirects by kind and type lifted from wikipedia practices (again a compatibility thing--I could ignore redirect categorization, but then the pages would be different, or need parserfunction logic making simple tasks more complex. Bad enough to have to do that for some categorization matters. Was too complicated in a template redirect), that I've integrated into the minimally intrusive skeleton of categories that comes with Interwikitmp-grp and the interconnectivity.

Suffice to say for now, that the concept is both undisruptive, unobtrusive, and minimal. THIS discussion is disruptive comparatively. Much of the cumbersome pass one prototype trial version of last summer is gone or depreciated (All the suffixed interwikitmp-grpNN versions soon will be vaporware&mdash; you are all reacting to like this is identical and it is in concept and intent, but not in implementation, nor page counts. Fortunately the page count--the necessary self-linking pages-- is way down from the prototype you all discussed last fall without my input and looks to shrink more once the next generation/evolutionary step is ready. Interwiktmp-grp now references just over a handful of other templates, not several dozen just to cite one comparative measure even a non-template person should understand. At least three more of those will disconnect when the debugging and tracking stuff is further reduced to just a functional template without excess baggage.

Set aside that none of it has begun to deliver the goodies yet... you are attacking the system for better communications and better productivity on the sister here you call home, AND potentially handicapping yourself and your productivity if you happen to make the odd contribution to another project, as I do on occasion.

Never mind that I was a consistent 'steady' force pushing for the capability to do just such quick reference notations on templates, and my arguments carried the day last summer (this was but one outcome of that, as are the two 'Doc page' templates heading the section title on irc chats and various talks, so that all these 'enigmatic mysteries' usually only poorly documented in techno-speak on yet another page to visit (Talk pages) are gradually becoming retrofitted with comprehensible everyday usage with examples so the casual lay-editor can indeed just look, compare with something similar, and get on with work... but time savings to the thousands of people over any span of years aren't of interest HERE, nor apparently is a system to make sure any of us would find the same category (ties, starting points) system on another wiki with the means of seeing whether the same tools are at least present or not, and the empowering time-saving that might give whilst trying to get something done.

'SCUSE ME? Is there some reason you want to handicap people that work with you, newcomers who might mount the frustrating learning curves, and make a contribution you will value, or are you so mired in 'Today's problems' that you won't look at the big picture for a moment? Anything we do on the wiki's to make it easier for newcomers to integrate their knowledge with yours should help all of us have a better product AND less work over short, mid, and long term periods. Ditto for those going to a sister for a brief contribution or lookup. (In that regard, for God's sake, tie your template categories together into a interlinked system. If you don't want sub-cats like most sisters, use cat see also as we've been doing on wikipedia and the commons, but provide some kind of navigation one to another! (But don't delete it then! )

But don't look at factors that, or why something is being put forth. Just nominate it for deletion without asking a specific question about the item in question. It's easier to pillory someone without facts -- I wouldn't want to trouble your primative tribal reactions with salient thoughts... OKAY, so I would and will. I wasn't available last fall, and this is premature NOW, a couple of weeks down the road, and these matters would be clear.

Consider first most Meta tools are also Wikipedia tools (usually first--the wikipedia dynamic is larger and has more demanding and varied tasking needs) and vice versa, as the people who wrote them are usually the same... and some of 'them' have been occasionally assisting me and indeed encouraging me with this concept. Or did you think it survived from inception in August without being seen, used, or championed? This concept will be at Meta itself, once it's proved.

But it is complicated in many ways as I have also had to assay the 'local tribe' in their insular city-states, step carefully around such local taboos like a prior use of a name used differently (CAT/w:template:cat/CAT/cat is a good example, as are 'c', 'w' and 's' and 'tl', for that fact, if you test such off your local patch), or their own current category names and then have to arrange for a plan that takes such into account on all the English sisters. So yes, it's got some complexity, but there's more complexity in tribal dealings than in the concept itself. The resultant channel of cross tagging links will allow less focus on vetted templates, and more work elsewhere, and better work here at 'HOME' if some of the tools and utility stuff finds a use here by some one or a few. THEY DO NOT PRESAGE a bombardment of imported templates, by the way, in conjunction with the documentation upgrades, the idea is to suggest on your local community talk that such a list of templates might find use here, advertising as it were. [W:Wikipedia:Wikiproject template sharing]] will be using w:template:template list (which has interwiki capability) to give a list of suggestions. Importing such are local decisions outside the tagging system. But with Interwikitmp-grp in place on common templates, a newcomer or template tyro will never again have to struggle to find whether there is a tool to do a task he/she has, or where to go to find out if the local 'HOME' is well equipped at all. All they'll need do is follow the link to a sister project and poke around in the categories there... efficient. So is having the same name for equivalent function, though the template manages several kinds of exceptions.

But it's supposed to be 'done' when being conceived, per the nom, and I'm supposed to write about it and spend my time talking about it before knowing all the parameters, and apparently, demonstrate it's utility without the basic system of templates in place. Sorry, can't happen if you're going to disable the matter before it's introduced, and attack it before the skeleton is in place. I'd thought I'd reached that point this morning--only now someone disconnected the very functionality just when we could converse on such like they are some computer virus instead of property of Wikimedia Foundation in widespread use elsewhere. That's very over the top-- good dirty trick though, as your fellow editors here have nothing to study. (Pssst-- go look at the Wikipedia or commons or Meta versions in that order, I'm a bit behind updating the two latter ones, so some stuff is still outdated.)

I'm glad something which is admittedly complex, you all expect it to be a walking, talking adult able to stand on own when being birthed. You must live in a wonderfully different life than a typical reality. Different people have different schedules, different manners of thinking, different manners of problem solving, and so do what they can when they can, as they can--but I cannot demonstrate it's efficaciousness and desirable features if you are going to disable some of the very templates I would commend to you as means of doing some of your tasks better and more efficiently. Hell, you don't as a society, even have your collection of templates in your template categories tied together in any normal categorical hierarchical system, but have them scattered willy nilly as separate disparate lists without even bothering to link those as sub-categories into a tree structure!

But you have time to hastily nominate something I contacted you and Jeffq about a few short days ago because I'm not part of your tribe? Piffle on your broadmindedness or sense of fair play, LrdChaos. Haven't seen a return post to my talk or by email either, so I suggest you try doing something constructive rather than being prematurely disruptive. If you don't understand something, I do answer questions. My email is on. You don't have the excuse that you don't know that this is my Home wiki--that's well established, and common courtesy would be to at least drop a note on my talk here as Aphaia did this morning my time. That such a page is useful is evidenced here--as the directions say, it is subst'd as used. As is This (Substd in practice, most of the time)] You pick on CAT... a name case work around for naming collisions, it lets the same documentation and links be present on any sister project (except wikitionary with there anti-capitalization phobia), not just this one.Obviously has no utility. Do you want to count that?

Secondly, I came not as a thief in the night, but contacted the nom and Jeffq and I was apologetic that I was unavailable last fall. Apparently my ATTEMPT TO ADD THE FEW TOOLS WHICH CREATE THE SYSTEM are somehow a burning urgent matter that needs disposed of before the whole is put into place. This attitude has a place on a wiki? When, save when vandalism is involved, is speed sans discourse ever needed on a wiki -- they're perennial works in progress, unlike putting together interwikitmp-grp, which is a one shot deal, albeit a current WIP as well.

IF the rest of you will look at the templates in the now disabled indent family usage, you will find for example that they do formatting features like double-spacing, variable indenting, maintaining indentation on a wiki-markup margin which wiki-markup cannot do on it's own. That you have this discussion without as basic an analysis tool as boggles the mind. You find tl and tlx of use, might there not be other better tools for different needs? ,, are precisely some of those, yet someone apparently never even looked at just why those are present, or how it might be of use here.

I cannot be expected to be familiar with all the local politics on all the sister's and still have time to get enough of this system in place to begin explaining it. Writing here against this rush to judgment , is keeping me directly from additional evolution of w:Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing, which alas, is just in gestation, certainly hasn't been publicized, nor have I asked for comment on it yet from normal collaborators. I daresay it's been seen by a few patrolling new pages, but with around 10,000 edits or so I'm fairly well known in Wikipedia and the Commons, in category and template and policy talks, so the people there know they only need give me a few days. Might you not do the same? Incidentally, it's shaping up better in another browser though, so you may want to see the birth or visit in a few days... I don't make a lot of little saves--just good one's.

It just so happens that I am not omniscent and all knowing, so cannot predict some of the more vexing name collisions, and indeed embedded a large excess of potential names and test links in the current go simply so such matters can be settled and put to bed. When I am not defending knee jerk reactions and NIMBY syndromes, I actually have time to tweak that--if I'm not otherwise engaged, and I have no intention of dragging any of this out now that I've taken the effort to push it forward again. Neither will I take my time to again import these basic functional parts, of what will become a sanctioned program if you all insist on pushing this discussion here and now before it's a sensible time, you can rebuild it yourself later if needed. As of saving this, I'll turn off the default connection to this site on the master template, so no one will even know you're here, or inadvertently share a tool or update with you.

That you have these discussions without even as basic a meta-wiki tool such as lts(W:template:lts), nor have respect for your own seven day deadline so that the much nicer cleaner (and less cumbersome) current version of interwikitmp-grp can be viewed by your own society membership boggles the mind, and is baffling. Brass balls, six feet in diameter. Best regards to all, someone better reign in the dictator here. He/she are hiding decision factors by turning such stuff off. // Fra nkB 07:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you for making my point, Fabartus. You can spend hours composing invective, but you don't see the need to spend that time doing basic interoperability testing and documentation (let alone the comprehensive regression testing that any experienced software engineer should know is essential) before you foist your "helpful" template infrastructure on a project. You also make repeated claims of your material being "widely used", but every time I check your work on Wikipedia, it has little use or participation from anyone else. (Word to the not-at-all-willfully-foolish: if your work isn't accepted on en:Wikipedia, you have zero chance selling it here. en:Wikipedians are far more prepared to performed un-natural selection on evolving competing templates.)


 * As an apparent amateur cultural anthropologist, you'll have to pardon the "local tribe" for being unimpressed by your efforts. But your work is very obviously not designed to help newcomers, who can't — and shouldn't — be expected to learn the use of all these templates when the whole philosophy of wikis is to make editing simple! (Anyone who uses an indentation template to separate sentences in his talk-page posts clearly has an inadequate grasp of the concept of "simple".)


 * I called you "naive" not about your programming skills, although your tendency to work on projects XP-style rather than as an mature software engineer belies your focus on technical sophistication rather than usability. (No offense intended toward Extreme Programmers; in general, the methodology is quite valuable. XPers also know how to establish their environments before deploying them.) I meant "naive" in your interaction with the culture and communities that you expect to adopt your oh-so-clever mechanisms.


 * The famously eccentric mathematician Paul Erdős had great difficulty interacting with ordinary mortals, but no one questioned his amazing accomplishments. Complete your project on Wikipedia and demonstrate widespread use (not by claims but with proper, ordinary, working links to examples of its uses there), and we may reconsider. Understand, however, that most of Wikiquote work is done by anonymous editors and infrequent registered users, who will not sit still for any discussion of basic template use, let alone stuff like "separate your sentences with instead of ordinary spaces". You may find that we eventually respect you as an Erdős without being able to make use of your work. Such is the nature of life in a local tribe.


 * And one other note: anyone who attempts to do interproject work damn well better understand each community. Each project must deal with its own community, and the people participating in these communities vary incredibly between projects. A sure way to get your work rejected is to loftily assert that you "cannot be expected to be familiar with all the local politics", as if it's somehow beneath you or not worth your time. (This is yet another example of your failure to understand that a wiki project is not just about its content, but just as much about the people who create that content.) You might want to talk a bit more to Aphaia about this, as she is our Ambassador to Wikimedia and is familiar with the problems of working with many different projects. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

On this para: '': Thank you for making my point, Fabartus. You can spend hours composing invective, but you don't see the need to spend that time doing basic interoperability testing and documentation (let alone the comprehensive regression testing that any experienced software engineer should know is essential) before you foist your "helpful" template infrastructure on a project. You also make repeated claims of your material being "widely used", but every time I check your work on Wikipedia, it has little use or participation from anyone else. (Word to the not-at-all-willfully-foolish: if your work isn't accepted on en:Wikipedia, you have zero chance selling it here. en:Wikipedians are far more prepared to performed un-natural selection on evolving competing templates.)''
 * Xpost:


 * Bullshit Much goes on by email.
 * That the interoperability testing is being interfered with by your overly quick responses is Exactly the point.
 * One cannot write documentation, nor discuss fine points until the parameters of the problem, and the likely scope of needs are explored.
 * How does regression testing come into this? How do utility templates like indent, lts, la, cat, etc. challenge your infrastructure? Or threaten your project. This are blind prejudicial nominations, sans needs.
 * I addressed the participation sufficiently, I think, there ARE a few things to pin down and juggle, in case you hadn't noticed. Try porting a few yourself. // Fra nkB 17:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * And
 * Thank you for your advice, but I'm quite familiar with the tribal nature of the different communities. HAS YOURS Adequately considered that their demands for premature discussions is more than a bit juvenile? Take your seven day limit which someone here is violating... very narrow mindset, AND DEMANDING and assumes every working man has the same involvement and ample time to respond. Do you have a courtesy notification by email in place? My point is simple. You are reacting to something which is being widely used... prematurely. I don't give a hill of beans whether some newcomer knows how to incorporate the main template, as that's the perview of the documentation your interference is delaying... though the newest version (W:template:interwikitmp-grp not yet distributed)  overcomes that usage need for the newcomer, I suspect. It certainly will in conjunction with W:template:Interwikitmp-grp/doc when the next pass of updates is completed. But why you are all picking on small parts is beyond me.

If you test the Indent behavior (BTW- This is a pretty good example of how it helps clarity in talks) in talks, by the way, it doesn't break the HTML by introducing an end div, so wiki-markup wrapping continues without getting disturbed. That is, it allows text to be processed as if characterized within a HTML blockquote-- a work around for less useful aspects of wikimarkup language.

THAT Helps a great deal in clear presentations by numbering or alpha prefixed paragraphing presentations, when one is italicising, when one doesn't need wide space indentation for a sub-point, etcetera. Take a look at W:template talk:indent head to head comparisons and the blocked 'Indent family usage'.

Sorry that I don't see the need to have an collaborator jarring my elbow whilst this was being developed, but I have had a fair bit of help from others, though admittedly most of that is by email. If you take a look at the 'Links here' on the various sisters, you'll see a fair smattering of talk discussions, so it's hardly been 'secretive or unknown', nor limited solely to wikipedia talk. Patrick over at Meta has been assisting here and there as well as David Kernow on the commons-- some just have sense to stay out of the way long enough to let things develop. There have been a few others contribute as well. So your argument and preconception is valid insofar as I am the conciever, and current chief programmer. That's about to end, or I wouldn't have stubbed up W:Wikipedia:WikiProject template sharing. JeffQ says we should talk Alphaia, since this will be going to meta and the communications committee there soon as well, that seems a good idea. // Fra nkB 17:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the scope of the problem. Allow me to make this clear:
 * en:Wikiquote is not a sandbox.
 * Please do not use Wikiquote to experiment with interacting templates that don't meet the pressing needs of Wikiquote itself, as defined by the Wikiquote community. Even we sysops tread very carefully with "innovations" like implementing Wikipedia's three-step article deletion process, because our community is not as robust as Wikipedia. Do you experiments there, document them when they're finished, and then present us with a fait accompli. Further argument here is pointless and actively undermines any chance you have of selling your work down the road. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:00, 10 February 2007 (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 article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.