Today I dealt with three very questionable templates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unencyclopedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Nonnotable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Vanity
(Template:Vanity was OK in its intention, but it was improperly placed on article pages.)
The problem with templates is that it is very easy to create them, and very hard to get rid of them. Virtually all problem templates I've seen have survived being listed on "Templates for deletion" because, usually, there are multiple passionate fans -- the people who have been using the template and who don't want to modify their existing workflows.
This has led to an abundance of pastel colored boxes, as every editor seems to want a template to call their own.
I believe we have to treat new templates in the same way we treat new policy proposals. We can keep them around as proposals, but before we actually *use* them, there has to be a consensus to do so.
That way, we fix the current asymmetry: We make it harder to *adopt* templates; then it doesn't matter so much that it's hard to *delete* them.
In practice, I suggest putting the
{{Proposed template}}
tag on top of dubious templates which do not yet have community support. That effectively locks the template from being used until the discussion page shows that people agree on what to do with it.
Hopefully, this will help to stem the tide of questionable templates.
All best,
Erik
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Erik Moeller wrote:
The problem with templates is that it is very easy to create them, and very hard to get rid of them. Virtually all problem templates I've seen have survived being listed on "Templates for deletion" because, usually, there are multiple passionate fans -- the people who have been using the template and who don't want to modify their existing workflows.
I think that if TFD votes keep for too many templates, it won't make a difference if there's {{propsed template}}, since people will just vote keep there instead. In fact, it may have more people voting keep since it won't be visible to such a large group of people.
Do you see my point? I'm not sure if I'm being clear or not...everyone who votes keep on TFD would've voted "use" on the discussion page anyways; everyone who votes "delete" on TFD would also vote "don't use" on the discussion page. Unless I'm missing something, I think that this would just make things more complex, and is unecessary considering the fact that we already have TFD.
This has led to an abundance of pastel colored boxes, as every editor seems to want a template to call their own.
Very true, I've found myself doing it with one of my templates also. It's my baby, and I can't bear to see it go.
I believe we have to treat new templates in the same way we treat new policy proposals. We can keep them around as proposals, but before we actually *use* them, there has to be a consensus to do so.
Why not just nominate them for deletion if you feel they deserve to be gone? Surely there will be more "passionate fans" on the discussion page of that particular template than on TFD.
That effectively locks the template from being used until the discussion page shows that people agree on what to do with it.
Again, I feel that TFD would do better here. The lag is only 5 days...the only advantage I see of that system is that it gives editors a little less time to put it on pages, which means that it's easier to depopulate. However, I don't agree with the dogma that things should be "guilty until proven innocent"- so in this case, "detrimental until proven beneficial." There are a lot of templates on TFD that people really do think are good. If we "freeze" templates, that would mean that any template deletionist would get their way for five days (or whatever the lag time is), regardless of how beneficial it is seen to be.
When there is obvious disapproval of a template, it: a) isn't added to pages in the first place, unless by the creator of said template b) is usually removed by people watching that article, like the "unresolved objections" banner on [[clitoris]] a while back. c) is sometimes depopulated early if it's obviously something that needs to go
Just my 2 cents on the matter.
- -- Blog: http://frazzydee.ca
Faraaz-
it's the asymmetry that needs to be addressed. A template that is supported by 3 people but opposed by 7 may not pass TFD because consensus is required for deletion. Hence, we end up with lots of templates that are supported only by a minority of users. Both sides of the debate often see an unsuccessful TFD as a victory for the template-supporters and accept its use.
We need to make clear that a template is a fundamental intrusion into the article namespace and, like a policy, needs broad community support before being put into active use. If 3 people strongly oppose a template and 7 support it, then their objections need to be resolved just as much as in the opposite situation, *before* the template is tagged onto articles. Marking templates as "proposed" is an important step towards clarifying the distinction between merely keeping a template and allowing its use.
Erik
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
When there are significant problems with a template, but it is still decided that it should be kept (eg. "poorly written", "shouldn't be a box"), a note is made on the talk page about this. In theory, the problem should be rectified if it to be kept.
For example, {{deletedpage}} simply said "This page has been deleted and should not be re-created" before it was put on TFD. Consensus was to keep it, but nearly everybody felt that it was worded badly, and should be improved. It was therefore improved after the TFD process had concluded, and was only put on pages after it had been improved. The same can happen for the asymmetry that you have discussed.
In short, if a note is made on the talk page that most voters felt that it needed x, y and z improvements, that should be sufficient for people to see it and say "hey, let's do this before we actually put it on pages." That should also be a sufficient argument for removing it from pages (although just improving the template is almost always easier than removing it, improving it, and then putting it back).
- -Faraaz Damji - -- Blog: http://frazzydee.ca
Erik Moeller wrote:
Faraaz-
it's the asymmetry that needs to be addressed. A template that is supported by 3 people but opposed by 7 may not pass TFD because consensus is required for deletion. Hence, we end up with lots of templates that are supported only by a minority of users. Both sides of the debate often see an unsuccessful TFD as a victory for the template-supporters and accept its use.
We need to make clear that a template is a fundamental intrusion into the article namespace and, like a policy, needs broad community support before being put into active use. If 3 people strongly oppose a template and 7 support it, then their objections need to be resolved just as much as in the opposite situation, *before* the template is tagged onto articles. Marking templates as "proposed" is an important step towards clarifying the distinction between merely keeping a template and allowing its use.
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Erik Moeller wrote
We need to make clear that a template is a fundamental intrusion into the article namespace and, like a policy, needs broad community support before being put into active use.
It's an argument. Another argument is that restricting the creation of templates is un-wiki as an approach. It says that excluding some bad ideas is more important than allowing the inclusion of some good ideas, that don't have general support in advance of being tried..
Marking templates as "proposed" is an important step towards clarifying the distinction between merely keeping a template and allowing its use.
Again, goes against 'be bold'. In general it has served WP well to let things happen, take the consequences, set up procedures, such as template deletion; and not be too scared about things that are foolish for a while. For example: a low-use and not very useful template can be removed from enough pages by anyone who is annoyed enough. A popular but silly template presumably needs tweaking to preserve the reason for popularity.
A wiki is in general a system of permissions rather than a system of restrictions. This is surely still a major asset to Wikipedia. New people constantly arrive, and I suppose find this aspect attractive.
Charles
Erik Moeller (erik_moeller@gmx.de) [050505 08:28]:
The problem with templates is that it is very easy to create them, and very hard to get rid of them. Virtually all problem templates I've seen have survived being listed on "Templates for deletion" because, usually, there are multiple passionate fans -- the people who have been using the template and who don't want to modify their existing workflows. This has led to an abundance of pastel colored boxes, as every editor seems to want a template to call their own. I believe we have to treat new templates in the same way we treat new policy proposals. We can keep them around as proposals, but before we actually *use* them, there has to be a consensus to do so. That way, we fix the current asymmetry: We make it harder to *adopt* templates; then it doesn't matter so much that it's hard to *delete* them.
OH YES PLEASE.
- d.
On Thu, 5 May 2005, Erik Moeller wrote:
[snip]
The problem with templates is that it is very easy to create them, and very hard to get rid of them. Virtually all problem templates I've seen have survived being listed on "Templates for deletion" because, usually, there are multiple passionate fans -- the people who have been using the template and who don't want to modify their existing workflows.
This has led to an abundance of pastel colored boxes, as every editor seems to want a template to call their own.
I believe we have to treat new templates in the same way we treat new policy proposals. We can keep them around as proposals, but before we actually *use* them, there has to be a consensus to do so.
That way, we fix the current asymmetry: We make it harder to *adopt* templates; then it doesn't matter so much that it's hard to *delete* them.
In practice, I suggest putting the
{{Proposed template}}
tag on top of dubious templates which do not yet have community support. That effectively locks the template from being used until the discussion page shows that people agree on what to do with it.
Hopefully, this will help to stem the tide of questionable templates.
One useful step would be to help educate our fellow Wikipedians about what Templates there are, which ones would work best -- & which ones should be deprecated.
I mention this only because I've recently learned about {{Succession}}, which can be successfully applied to at least 98% of all imaginable cases -- succession patterns of Roman Emperors, Popes, Presidents, & Internet Kooks of the Month [*]. I've been using it quite happily in writing my contributions of Ethiopian Emperors. And I'm sure there are several other simple, flexible Templates that can be used to replace countless others.
Once these simple & flexible ones are found & used to replace their competition, then we can start deleting these templates on the basis that they aren't used.
[*] The only case I can think of where {{Succession}} wouldn't work is with Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs -- because not only would the office -- Pharaoh -- need to be included, but also the period of Egyptian history (e.g., Old Kingdom, Second Intermediate, etc.) & the Dynasty. However, I haven't been able to create a consensus about including the Dynasty in such a template, so perhaps even this exception could be subsumed into this template.
Geoff
On Thursday, May 05, 2005 5:11 AM, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
I mention this only because I've recently learned about {{Succession}}, which can be successfully applied to at least 98% of all imaginable cases -- succession patterns of Roman Emperors, Popes, Presidents, & Internet Kooks of the Month [*]. I've been using it quite happily in writing my contributions of Ethiopian Emperors. And I'm sure there are several other simple, flexible Templates that can be used to replace countless others.
There's also {{succession box}} and all of its cohorts that are used on thousands of pages that I created to be more flexible than {{Succession}} itself, and includes the years of office; you may want to use those, instead.
Once these simple & flexible ones are found & used to replace their competition, then we can start deleting these templates on the basis that they aren't used.
Agreed. But perhaps we're getting there already?
[*] The only case I can think of where {{Succession}} wouldn't work is with Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs -- because not only would the office -- Pharaoh -- need to be included, but also the period of Egyptian history (e.g., Old Kingdom, Second Intermediate, etc.) & the Dynasty. However, I haven't been able to create a consensus about including the Dynasty in such a template, so perhaps even this exception could be subsumed into this template.
The standard way to do that would be to encode it into the office, so (made up):
{{succession box | before=[[Pharaoh of Egypt]]'''<br /><small>''of the [[Old Kingdom]]'''''</small> title=[[Pha]] | years=[[1000 BC]]–[[980 BC]] | after=[[Bar]] }}
Also, when positions change, similar syntax is used on the successor/predecessor (from [[Virginia Bottomley]]):
{{succession box | before=[[Stephen Dorrell]] | title=[[Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport|Secretary of State for National Heritage]] | years=1995–1997 | after=[[Chris Smith (UK politician)|Chris Smith]]'''<br /><small>''Sec. State Culture, Media and Sport'''''</small> }}
It's a little bit of a hack, yes, but it's not that common a problem. I might encode it into a series of sub-templates if people really think it necessary.
Yours,
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Timwi wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
In practice, I suggest putting the
{{Proposed template}}
tag on top of dubious templates which do not yet have community support.
But you're not following your own doctrine. You didn't put it on top of [[Template:Proposed template]].
[[Template:Proposed template]] doesn't go in the article namespace ;)
- -- Alphax GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis