Wikiquote:Votes for deletion archive/Template:WikiPtmp


 * 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. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:33, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:WikiPtmp and 36 others

 * Template:WikiPtmp
 * Template:Metatmp
 * Template talk:Lts/usage
 * Template:Lts
 * Template:Indent
 * Template:Lts/Doc
 * Template:Wikisourcetmp
 * Template:W2c
 * Template:Commonstmp
 * Template:Interwikitmp usage
 * Template:Interwikitmp-grp ineligible
 * Template:S
 * Template:Tl/doc
 * Template:Interwiki class-sisterproject
 * Template:This Sister prefix
 * Template:This Sister
 * Template:IWTG size
 * Template:WikiSpeciestmp
 * Template:Interwikitmp-grp6
 * Template:Interwikitmp-grp0
 * Template:Commonstmp1
 * Template:WikiNewstmp
 * Template:!
 * Template:WikiVersitytmp
 * Template:Interwikitmp-grps see also
 * Template:Interwikitmp-grpD
 * Template:W2
 * Template:WikiQuotetmp
 * Template:Interwikitmp-grp
 * Template:WikiBookstmp
 * Template:Wiktionarytmp
 * Template:Tlx
 * Template:Interwikigrps-see also
 * Template:TLX
 * Template:WD
 * Template:Interwikitmp-grpNN usage/doc
 * Template:I
 * Template:SP

All of these templates were created by User:Fabartus for no purpose that I can find. The templates themselves, and any accompanying documentation, are so poorly written and formatted that it's impossible to tell what, if anything, these templates were supposed to to, especially the ones that have content like "Q" and "35". These templates all include each other, but as best I can tell, are not used on any pages in the main namespace. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Vote closed. Result: delete all except withdrawn Template:! (4 deletes for all but Template:Tlx and Template:Tl/doc without dissent; 3 deletes and 1 keep for these two). I'm closing this this way by the rules, basically, but I suspect that 121a0012's concerns about the two active WP templates that we could really use here (how many times have we wanted to use tl with multiple parameters?) didn't get much attention because of the intimidation of analyzing individual templates in this huge collection. I would suggest that, if someone wants to re-create these two templates, they do so and VfD-nominate them (or "it" if combined as suggested) separately to stir up specific discussion on them. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * P.S. to deletion: I checked the 35 templates for usage before deleting them, per standard procedure, and found that there was only 1 single use of 1 template except within the templates themselves. The one exception was the use of   by Farbartus on my talk page, and he didn't use it correctly. (He clearly thought it was supposed to refer somehow to the Meta-Wiki project, but it actually just provided Wikipedia's main article on the term "meta", which has no connection to the project. I confirmed that this is how w:Template:W2 is supposed to work, so the guy who ported it used it without even understanding what it's supposed to do.) This only strengthens my point below about needless cross-project copying. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete all. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete all. ~ UDScott 16:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. With the vfd message being transcluded everywhere it is indeed difficult to understand what's going on.  (At least one of these was created by Robert, not by User:Fabartus, by the way.)  These templates comprise some utility functions, some text strings used to control other templates, and a bunch of templates common to most if not all all sister wikis.  Several of the templates are simply used for interwiki links in the template namespace.  121a0012 17:01, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Template:Tlx; move Template:Tl/doc to Template talk:Tl and clean up; delete the rest. 121a0012 03:06, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Note: I have withdrawn the nomination of Template:!. It seems like I was a little overzealous in my nominating earlier. —LrdChaos (talk) 18:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Undecided for now. [See below for my revised vote.] This is a complicated issue. Fabartus has already shown a desire to copy the most trivial templates between projects, regardless of whether they're needed, and the first template I checked in this list, Template:Interwikigrps-see also, doesn't even exist yet on WP, never mind being used. On the other hand, at least one template, Template:Indent, is in use (in a very obscure manner) on WP. I believe we need to throughly investigate what each of these templates is trying to accomplish, and whether they're actually being used by someone other than Fabartus. My general belief is that Wikiquote editing is challenging enough for our editors without introducing a slew of special-effects templates without a compelling reason, and cross-project standardization is not worth the added burden alone, because it's the hundreds of non-frequent editors who will suffer for it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:35, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * In looking at the "What links here" for these templates, I didn't notice any links outside of the Template: namespace, and while I didn't carefully study all the links, it didn't appear that any of them were being used by any templates outside of these ones (the so-called walled garden, in one sense of the term). While indent may have found a use on Wikipedia, it doesn't seem like it would be relevant to here, where we do not often (if at all) need to be able to indent text in a way that's not already provided by Wiki and/or HTML syntax (and indent would not help with the latter). —LrdChaos (talk) 20:50, 2 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment: I have created a new VfD template, vfd-template, which may be used for VfD-tagging templates so that a relatively discreet and more informative alert appears on the page transclusing the candidate template. (It's adapted from the Wikipedia Template:Tfd-inline.) Although it still causes some disruption to the using page (quite a bit for the massive set of interlocking template dependencies listed here), it's much less intrusive than the standard vfd tag, and also includes the name of the trancluded template, so readers actually known which "page" is nominated for deletion. Hopefully it will also make it a bit easier to see what the intent is of all these new templates under deletion consideration. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:53, 2 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Note: I have extended this nomination for another week, as no clear consensus has been reached and there's still one undecided vote that may change. —LrdChaos (talk) 19:40, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is a discussion, posted to my talk page by User:Fabartus under the heading "Xpost fm en.WP-- belated answer" in response to a requested I'd posted on his Wikipedia talk page, that sheds some light on this situation. I have posted it here between half-width horizontal lines but without any additional markup denoting copying because its use of templates for simple wiki elements is particularly illustrative. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)




 * from
 * re: I'm posting a note here about this issue because you don't seem to be monitoring your en:Wikiquote account or any of your template creations there. Several dozen of your templates have been nominated for deletion. Their purpose is not adequately explained, a casual inspection doesn't make clear what need there is for them, and their creator's entire Wikiquote activity seems to be copying this material from other projects. That combination of unused infrastructure creation and lack of general quote activity usually begs deletion on Wikiquote. I admit I'm reluctant to spend the time I suspect is necessary to analyze these templates without any support from their creator. Could you at least supply us with some rationale for their existence, and pointers to where this cross-project effort is being discussed? Thank you for your assistance. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm totally swamped in RL so any and all wiki's, and even email are going unlooked at the moment. Do what you will. However, the benefit of cross-linking the newer sister's and bringing in common tools and some common 'tool' categories is and should be self-evident&mdash;it empowers the greater pool of editors in the large 800# sister to make meaningful contribs with minimal learning curves if familiar tools are available.

Admittedly, many tools in some of the wiki's are less important&mdash; when category and template analysis and management are small side tasks (Wikinews and Wikiquote being most applicable there), but the infrastructrure and interwiki linking is hardly adversely affecting anything. When in doubt, if something seems 'broken', import the new version from en.wikipedia. I'd planned on completing the evolution and documenting the newer simpler system the end of last month, and BAM, life intruded.

When I next have time to wrap my head about the problem(s) [it is a system after all], I'll be writing it up on, as I've also been asked to bring it up to the communications committee there for possible interlanguage adaption, I presume. Adverse reactions have been nil, save for a capitalization clash on wiktionary&mdash;their naming conventions favor the lowercase form.

Any examination of the merits of the system templates themselves should be to look at the Wikipedia versions, as I'm certain the versions off Wikipedia are (mostly) a version behind&mdash;there was a major revision/upgrade last time I worked them. System elements are identified in by being offset/sorted under '!'.

If you'd be so kind, drop me a status report if things get torn up. I don't have the time now to do wikitalk infighting. Thanks for the heads up! (Crosspost: )

Thanks! // Fra nkB   15:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)




 * Delete all. The above discussion alarms me for several reasons:
 * It shows that the person adding all this infrastructure doesn't have the time to explain it properly, leaving Wikiquote editors (even sysops) unaware of its purposes.
 * It attempts to justify making editing on other projects slightly easier for Wikipedia editors with so much experience that they freely toss around templates without bothering to see if they're actually implemented. This is exactly the wrong attitude that wiki experts should be taking. It is the people with less experience who we should try to help. Adding complex interconnected templates to save people trivial typing (like posting a link to a cross-project talk page) is actually a barrier to participation, because it subverts a key unwritten principle of Wikimedia editing: that new editors can learn how things work by examining how experts do it. Taking the "xpost" talk page example, " ", to a new editor, is rather less clear than " my wp talk ", especially when each component of the latter appears not only in other links (the " talk" convention, the colon separating namespace components, the link label separated by a pipe character) but also in the resulting page's title ("User talk:Fabartus"). Template markup, on the other hand, requires a knowledge of what each of the incredibly flexible templates is designed to accomplish, and the functions of their components vary considerably between templates.
 * Worse yet, the very convenience of changing templates to fit evolving needs makes it possible for these uses to be broken without notice. We can be far surer that "w:User talk:USERNAME" will work in the future than we can that " " won't undergo radical evolution or replacement. If the developers decide to change the former, the onus is on them to fix the problems. It's on us ordinary editors for convenience templates (as we've just demonstrated with the conversion of the VfD templates, something even most of our sysops wouldn't want to have tackled).
 * Finally, these templates needlessly use transclusion for trivial actions, like cross-project links. Templates are a great feature, so their incremental load can be justified when they provide a significant function, like making it possible to change formats of citations or collecting all pages in a maintenance category. But sprinkling them throughout basic wiki posts is absurd and unnecessary. The same effects can be accomplished by expert editors, without any server load and without confusing less experienced editors, using readily available JavaScript wiki tools or macros in text editors, something many of these experts are also familiar with. (Even if they aren't, it's a lot more reasonable to put the responsibility of learning these expert tools on the experts than it is to force newer editors to learn incredibly complex techniques to understand the content of posts from expert editors.)
 * In summary, I am against the creation of server-loading templates for the convenience of experts but the detriment to new editors, especially when their creators and users can't be bothered to integrate them fully, explain them for others, consider the maintenance issues they create, or demonstrate awareness of any of these problems. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:46, 13 October 2006 (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.