G'day G1ggy,
Don't template anyone? Dear god, what are we
coming too. Then
again, I'm a bit biased on this, see [[WP:TTR]]
<reads [[WP:TTR]] />
Good grief, man, did that hurt? It certainly looks like something you
should only admit to having written after accepting what I believe is
referred to in the patois of the streets as "a severe beat-down".
Boilerplate warning templates are a necessary evil. They are necessary
for two reasons:
1) Not everyone wants to expend the energy required to constantly
rewrite the same message to new users they don't yet care about.
2) Many --- *many* --- CVUers, RC patrollers, etc. are utterly lacking
in the social graces. Indeed, some even have trouble forming
coherent sentences without reference to 'net zp34k or the word
"fuck", and thus boilerplate templates could be seen as infinitely
better than the alternative. This is one reason why the rise of
the Anti-Vandal Admin should be viewed with alarm.
I try to explain what I mean in plain English[0] whenever possible.
Generally, I get better results than with templates (occasionally, my
results are no better than they would have been; they are never worse,
because I do not belong in category '2' above). I often find that there
is no template that properly expresses what I need to say; the CVU
approach is to use the templates anyway[2], mine is to sit down and damn
well *say* it.
There are times when I will use the templates. This is when the
template is good enough, and I don't really care enough about the user
in question to bother using my own words; or when the template really
does say best exactly what I intend (rare, but has occurred).
In what way is this approach illegitimate, or even inferior to "template
'em until they glow"?
[0] For a certain value of "plain". I am, after all, Aussie[1].
[1] Well, I pretend to be. Really I'm an old granny in a council flat
in Essex ...
[2] And to say that saying something in one's own words is somehow
illegitimate. There was a case last year --- April? --- of an RfA
candidate being opposed because he didn't always use {{test-n}}
templates to warn people, but sometimes spoke to them on a
human-to-human level. I can only imagine that things have gotten
stupider since, in accordance with the Second Coming Law of
Thermodynamics.
--
Mark Gallagher
"'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten
in the leg by a personal friend."
- P G Wodehouse, /Carry On, Jeeves/