Wondering how difficult to write a template (or templates) to deal with the future tense / past event problem. I imagine that its not too difficult for someone who knows what they are doing, and simply involves writing a conditional switch template that shows one text until a certain date, upon which it shows another.
"The re-imagined Sledge Hammer! {{dateswitch|will premeire|premeired|on June 19th, 2009|in mid-June}}, starring Paul Reubens as the titular character, and Abe Vigoda as his sidekick, Abe."
Naturally the "dateswitch" template takes the two values and by some genious of technology hides the one and shows the other, switching them on the stated date. I added the "in mid-June" just to indicate the possibility that the date itself might not be desired visible text, but I'm not clear about how words like "on" would affect the parsing of a timestamp.
The uncertainty of stating something "will" or "is due to" doesn't seem to be as big an issue as the past-tense problem.
-SV
Better to say "as of <DATE>, this is known". That way the reader knows they are reading something written at a certain date, and editors know from what point they need to carry on updating. If things change, the conditional template will be saying the wrong thing. I'm also wary of having templates spit out article text, as changes to the template will affect not only current versions of the article, but also the old versions of the article if you look at them in the page history.
Carcharoth
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 2:16 AM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Wondering how difficult to write a template (or templates) to deal with the future tense / past event problem. I imagine that its not too difficult for someone who knows what they are doing, and simply involves writing a conditional switch template that shows one text until a certain date, upon which it shows another.
"The re-imagined Sledge Hammer! {{dateswitch|will premeire|premeired|on June 19th, 2009|in mid-June}}, starring Paul Reubens as the titular character, and Abe Vigoda as his sidekick, Abe."
Naturally the "dateswitch" template takes the two values and by some genious of technology hides the one and shows the other, switching them on the stated date. I added the "in mid-June" just to indicate the possibility that the date itself might not be desired visible text, but I'm not clear about how words like "on" would affect the parsing of a timestamp.
The uncertainty of stating something "will" or "is due to" doesn't seem to be as big an issue as the past-tense problem.
-SV _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
Better to say "as of <DATE>, this is known". That way the reader knows they are reading something written at a certain date, and editors know from what point they need to carry on updating. If things change, the conditional template will be saying the wrong thing. I'm also wary of having templates spit out article text, as changes to the template will affect not only current versions of the article, but also the old versions of the article if you look at them in the page history.
"As of" is great for ongoing concepts which require only occasiona updates, but that convention doesn't deal at all with the problem that we make dated statements because we have to, but this leaves the problem that they must then be manually updated. We don't for example say:
"As of May 2009, the 2009 Wikimania will be held on August 26-28, 2009." Different concept altogether, though they are indeed both date-related.
Better to do something like: "Wikimania {{dateswitch|is scheduled to begin on|began on|August 26, 2009}}, and {{dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}"
Or (simpler): "Wikimania {{dateswitch|will run from|ran from|August 26-28, 2009}}.
Producing: ante) "Wikimania will run from August 26-28, 2009. post) "Wikimania ran from August 26-28, 2009.
BTW, a bot can cull any templates which have been switched to their post position, replacing the tag with plain text. And we use in-article templates all the time now, anyway, so I dunno what your concern was there. The real concern should be in removing any such outdated phrasing, and making the usage of tense clauses less of a hassle, and more uniform.
-SV
I've whipped up a quick example at < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Luna_Santin/Dateswitch%3E, currently:
- {{#ifexpr: {{#time:U| {{{date|{{{3|}}}}}} }} > {{#time:U}} | {{{pre|{{{1|}}}}}} | {{{post|{{{2|}}}}}} }}
Which would give us:
- {{dateswitch | text before date | text on or after date | date}}
This might have some problems with page cache, and honestly I'm a bit dubious about its utility, but from a template standpoint it shouldn't be too hard.
-Luna
On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 10:41 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp@googlemail.com
wrote:
Better to say "as of <DATE>, this is known". That way the reader knows they are reading something written at a certain date, and editors know from what point they need to carry on updating. If things change, the conditional template will be saying the wrong thing. I'm also wary of having templates spit out article text, as changes to the template will affect not only current versions of the article, but also the old versions of the article if you look at them in the page history.
"As of" is great for ongoing concepts which require only occasiona updates, but that convention doesn't deal at all with the problem that we make dated statements because we have to, but this leaves the problem that they must then be manually updated. We don't for example say:
"As of May 2009, the 2009 Wikimania will be held on August 26-28, 2009." Different concept altogether, though they are indeed both date-related.
Better to do something like: "Wikimania {{dateswitch|is scheduled to begin on|began on|August 26, 2009}}, and {{dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}"
Or (simpler): "Wikimania {{dateswitch|will run from|ran from|August 26-28, 2009}}.
Producing: ante) "Wikimania will run from August 26-28, 2009. post) "Wikimania ran from August 26-28, 2009.
BTW, a bot can cull any templates which have been switched to their post position, replacing the tag with plain text. And we use in-article templates all the time now, anyway, so I dunno what your concern was there. The real concern should be in removing any such outdated phrasing, and making the usage of tense clauses less of a hassle, and more uniform.
-SV _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
I've whipped up a quick example at < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Luna_Santin/Dateswitch%3E, currently:
- {{#ifexpr: {{#time:U| {{{date|{{{3|}}}}}} }} > {{#time:U}} | {{{pre|{{{1|}}}}}} | {{{post|{{{2|}}}}}} }}
Which would give us:
- {{dateswitch | text before date | text on or after date | date}}
This might have some problems with page cache, and honestly I'm a bit dubious about its utility, but from a template standpoint it shouldn't be too hard.
Pages with date magic should have their caches invalidated after 24 hours, I think.
Sam
On 12/05/2009, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
honestly I'm a bit dubious about its utility
The problem is, you don't know whether it actually happened or not. There's going to be problems if it was supposed to happen, and then got cancelled. Either you have to use it with a built-in fact template or you only use it for things that nothing can even conceivably stop (things that need *no* human input), like orbital mechanics, rotation of the Earth or centenaries etc.
I suppose you could add a category to the template to help find things that have passed so as to permit people to remove the template and check that it actually happened; that would at least be an improvement.
-Luna
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 2:53 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
I suppose you could add a category to the template to help find things that have passed so as to permit people to remove the template and check that it actually happened; that would at least be an improvement.
Yes. Indeed, I believe that is the purpose of [[As of 2006|2006]] links -- so you can use WhatLinksHere to find statements that need updating.
Sam
2009/5/12 Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com:
Yes. Indeed, I believe that is the purpose of [[As of 2006|2006]] links -- so you can use WhatLinksHere to find statements that need updating.
FWIW, these have all been replaced now, it seems, in favour of this system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:As_of
...which puts a template in the article text and silently creates a category.
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Luna lunasantin@gmail.com wrote:
I've whipped up a quick example at < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Luna_Santin/Dateswitch%3E, currently:
- {{dateswitch | text before date | text on or after date | date}}
:D
Nice, Luna Santin. I just tried it out briefly on the Wikimania article. I tried to use:
"The upcoming [[Wikimania 2009]] {{User:Luna Santin/Dateswitch|will be held on|was held on|August 26-28, 2009}} in [[Buenos Aires]], [[Argentina]]."
But this does not work, probably due to the hyphenated dating?
Trying to reformulate it as separate dating gave me:
The upcoming [[Wikimania 2009]] {{dateswitch|will begin on|began on|August 26, 2009}} and {{dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}, in [[Buenos Aires]], [[Argentina]].
Not terrible, but presents the problem of redundancy, and putting the compound dates before the location makes it read not smoothly. Working it the other way presents another issue that "in [Buenos..]" must be replaced with a tense verb. So a similar more generalized date-based switch that does not show the date might work:
The upcoming [[Wikimania 2009]] {{tenseswitch|will be held|was held|August 28, 2009}} in [[Buenos Aires]], [[Argentina]], {{User:Luna Santin/Dateswitch|will begin on|began on|August 26, 2009}} and {{User:Luna Santin/Dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}.
Dunno though. One date-tense template has now led to two, and two might lede to three, and then ninety, which would be unacceptable to some people. Thoughts?
-SV
Isn't it easier just to change the tense when the event has happened: it needs a human eye to reword and update it anyway.
----- Original Message ----- From: "stevertigo" stvrtg@gmail.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tuesday, 12 May, 2009 06:41:25 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Date conditional switching templates
On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
Better to say "as of <DATE>, this is known". That way the reader knows they are reading something written at a certain date, and editors know from what point they need to carry on updating. If things change, the conditional template will be saying the wrong thing. I'm also wary of having templates spit out article text, as changes to the template will affect not only current versions of the article, but also the old versions of the article if you look at them in the page history.
"As of" is great for ongoing concepts which require only occasiona updates, but that convention doesn't deal at all with the problem that we make dated statements because we have to, but this leaves the problem that they must then be manually updated. We don't for example say:
"As of May 2009, the 2009 Wikimania will be held on August 26-28, 2009." Different concept altogether, though they are indeed both date-related.
Better to do something like: "Wikimania {{dateswitch|is scheduled to begin on|began on|August 26, 2009}}, and {{dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}"
Or (simpler): "Wikimania {{dateswitch|will run from|ran from|August 26-28, 2009}}.
Producing: ante) "Wikimania will run from August 26-28, 2009. post) "Wikimania ran from August 26-28, 2009.
BTW, a bot can cull any templates which have been switched to their post position, replacing the tag with plain text. And we use in-article templates all the time now, anyway, so I dunno what your concern was there. The real concern should be in removing any such outdated phrasing, and making the usage of tense clauses less of a hassle, and more uniform.
-SV _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
2009/5/12 stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com:
Better to do something like: "Wikimania {{dateswitch|is scheduled to begin on|began on|August 26, 2009}}, and {{dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}"
Or (simpler): "Wikimania {{dateswitch|will run from|ran from|August 26-28, 2009}}.
Producing: ante) "Wikimania will run from August 26-28, 2009. post) "Wikimania ran from August 26-28, 2009.
Is having "Wikimania will run...", read after the fact, really a problem for us? I mean, people read things all the time that refer to ongoing or past events in the future tense; they just notice the text is a bit out-of-date and carry on. Yeah, it's suboptimal, but people don't seem unduly distressed by it on a day-to-day basis.
More importantly, there's two new problems that this template would introduce, aside from the markup concerns.
a) It makes us a hostage to fortune.
b) It gives a spurious sense of timeliness.
The first is fairly clear - if the event *doesn't* happen, for whatever reason, or is postponed, or the like, then unless we remember to go and fix it, we've published an article claiming it did. This is pretty definitely bad, because it's taken a factually-accurate statement (intended to begin X) and turned it into a factually-incorrect one (began X).
The second is a little fuzzier - if I read an article which says something was intended to happen last week, I know that it's an old article, that it may not be right. If I read an article which says something *did* happen last week, however, I assume it's been written in the past few days, that it's fairly up-to-date, etc. Are we doing our readers a disservice by giving off these signals when the actual content of the article hasn't been changed?
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 7:26 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
2009/5/12 stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com:
Better to do something like: "Wikimania {{dateswitch|is scheduled to begin on|began on|August 26, 2009}}, and {{dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}"
Or (simpler): "Wikimania {{dateswitch|will run from|ran from|August 26-28, 2009}}.
Producing: ante) "Wikimania will run from August 26-28, 2009. post) "Wikimania ran from August 26-28, 2009.
Is having "Wikimania will run...", read after the fact, really a problem for us? I mean, people read things all the time that refer to ongoing or past events in the future tense; they just notice the text is a bit out-of-date and carry on. Yeah, it's suboptimal, but people don't seem unduly distressed by it on a day-to-day basis.
More importantly, there's two new problems that this template would introduce, aside from the markup concerns.
a) It makes us a hostage to fortune.
b) It gives a spurious sense of timeliness.
The first is fairly clear - if the event *doesn't* happen, for whatever reason, or is postponed, or the like, then unless we remember to go and fix it, we've published an article claiming it did. This is pretty definitely bad, because it's taken a factually-accurate statement (intended to begin X) and turned it into a factually-incorrect one (began X).
The second is a little fuzzier - if I read an article which says something was intended to happen last week, I know that it's an old article, that it may not be right. If I read an article which says something *did* happen last week, however, I assume it's been written in the past few days, that it's fairly up-to-date, etc. Are we doing our readers a disservice by giving off these signals when the actual content of the article hasn't been changed?
Agree wholeheartedly with Andrew Grey here. For the reasons he gives, this sort of thing doesn't really work.
Carcharoth
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.comwrote:
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 7:26 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk wrote:
2009/5/12 stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com:
Better to do something like: "Wikimania {{dateswitch|is scheduled to begin on|began on|August 26,
2009}},
and {{dateswitch|will run until|ran until|August 28, 2009}}"
Or (simpler): "Wikimania {{dateswitch|will run from|ran from|August 26-28, 2009}}.
Producing: ante) "Wikimania will run from August 26-28, 2009. post) "Wikimania ran from August 26-28, 2009.
Is having "Wikimania will run...", read after the fact, really a problem for us? I mean, people read things all the time that refer to ongoing or past events in the future tense; they just notice the text is a bit out-of-date and carry on. Yeah, it's suboptimal, but people don't seem unduly distressed by it on a day-to-day basis.
More importantly, there's two new problems that this template would introduce, aside from the markup concerns.
a) It makes us a hostage to fortune.
b) It gives a spurious sense of timeliness.
The first is fairly clear - if the event *doesn't* happen, for whatever reason, or is postponed, or the like, then unless we remember to go and fix it, we've published an article claiming it did. This is pretty definitely bad, because it's taken a factually-accurate statement (intended to begin X) and turned it into a factually-incorrect one (began X).
The second is a little fuzzier - if I read an article which says something was intended to happen last week, I know that it's an old article, that it may not be right. If I read an article which says something *did* happen last week, however, I assume it's been written in the past few days, that it's fairly up-to-date, etc. Are we doing our readers a disservice by giving off these signals when the actual content of the article hasn't been changed?
Agree wholeheartedly with Andrew Grey here. For the reasons he gives, this sort of thing doesn't really work.
Carcharoth
Likewise, his reasoning has convinced me that it's better to leave it in the future tense and be right, than to automatically change it and risk being wrong.
--Falcorian
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.ukwrote:
Yeah, it's suboptimal, but people don't seem unduly distressed by it on a day-to-day basis.
"Suboptimal" means something like "not as good as it could be" doesn't it? Are you promoting a status quo or else an editorial standard that WP should be not quite all that it can be? I agree its not quite as useful as finding water in the Sahara, but I disagree that any suboptimal situation that can be corrected, shouldn't, nor any attempt at such be made.
More importantly, there's two new problems that this template would
introduce, aside from the markup concerns. a) It makes us a hostage to fortune. b) It gives a spurious sense of timeliness.
Using language like "hostage to fortune" and "spurious... timeliness" is a bit dispensensational and hyperbolic.
Assuming this possible "factually incorrect" aspect will be any more compounded than it already is, or else is worse than the incorrectness of future/past tense clauses, one possible solution is simply to have the dateswitch show a small flag. Maybe a red colored asterix next to the datestamp, indicating that a date flag has been switched and needs to be checked: "Wikimania will begin on August 26, 2009*." Don't know how to deal with the containment problem with the period being outside the tag.
And I also don't know if its wise to use visible inline editorial tags anyway, though I do know we currently use a dozen or more even more conspicuous such tags and they appear to work extremely well.
If I read an article which says something *did* happen last week, however, I assume it's been written in the past few days, that it's fairly up-to-date, etc. Are we doing our readers a disservice by giving off these signals when the actual content of the article hasn't been changed?
Disservice? Using basic tagging, template computing, server automation and scheduling funtionalities to make uniform switching between tenses accross all articles is a disservice?
-SV
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 1:10 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe a red colored asterix next to the datestamp, indicating that a date flag has been switched and needs to be checked: "Wikimania will begin on August 26, 2009*."
Should be "Wikimania began on August 26, 2009*."
Thing is though, you can always use a future tense like:
The London Olympics {{dateswitch | is due to start | was scheduled to start | 05052012}} on 5th May 2012; that way, you're always right, even if it later rescheduled.
So, I think this is a slight improvement over the 'as of' system, if used carefully.
On 12/05/2009, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 1:10 PM, stevertigo stvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe a red colored asterix next to the datestamp, indicating that a date flag has been switched and needs to be checked: "Wikimania will begin on August 26, 2009*."
Should be "Wikimania began on August 26, 2009*." _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The thing about the template is that after the date it's useless; it can just be plain text. So, someone will come and remove it, which is just the same as having to update the date manually.
On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Mark Nilrad marknilrad@yahoo.com wrote:
The thing about the template is that after the date it's useless; it can just be plain text. So, someone will come and remove it, which is just the same as having to update the date manually.
I suggested above that because these template tags can be categorized, and are distinct from other text, and can contain also a simple way of indicating (visibly or in code) their switched position, that they would be easily visible to a bot, which could then check and replace switched tags with the past tense text.
We could also I suppose automate other kinds of content in other simple ways, but I can't think of anything that would be computationally feasible. I suppose we already do present auto-calculated personal age based on their birth date, or their birth and death date. Any other [[Wikipedia:Content automation]] templates/tags/processes?
-SV