Template talk:Todo/Archive 1

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Todo vs to-do vs To do

All instances of "todo" need to be changed to "to do" or "to-do". — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 09:36, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Clarification: a hyphen is necessary when the expression is used as an adjective, e.g. "to-do list". Otherwise, it is simply spaced, e.g. "things to do". — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 22:46, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Does that include this template itself? Should it be Template:todo, Template:to-do, or Template:to do? Seems like if you want to standardize, it should be done all the way. -- Netoholic 02:35, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
While it doesn't really matter much, I prefer "todo" as the template name. It's one less keystroke, and we don't need to to be perfectly correct in what are essentially Wikicode macro names. — Matt 02:49, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I've changed most of the instances to "to do" but I agree with leaving the template as {{todo}}, its similar to {{copyvio}} and other templates.. We can change ones called "to do list" to "to-do list" if thats correct, but i think "to-do" is used to mean a commontion or stir, and "to do" is always the correct phrase in this case. (at least, thats what I got out of dictionary.com, and the OED) —siroχo 06:35, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
The dictionaries aren't wrong, but what they aren't telling you is the general rule about two-word expressions used adjectivally before the noun. An inspection done on site is an on-site inspection. A family with two cars is a two-car family. A list of things to do is a to-do list. Get it? It's fine for the template to be wrong though, in the same way that it doesn't matter that copyvio is not correct English. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 08:31, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
K, got it. Anyways, lets leave the page that goes with each to-do list as "/to do", simply because each page has to be moved if we change it again, and "to do" by itself seems gramatically correct to leave it that way. —siroχo 09:30, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

Categories issues

I've noticed there are two categories: [[Category:To do of popular articles]] and [[Category:To-do of popular articles]]. They need to be merged. In fact, they should be pluralised: [[Category:To-do's of popular articles]] or [[Category:To-do lists of popular articles]]. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 11:01, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pcarbonn has been working on sorting articles by popularity and that category (Category:To do of popular articles and Category:To-do of popular articles) in general. If it can be made to work in a straightforward way it might be a very useful feature indeed. But yes, those categories should be merged.
However, keep in mind that every time we rename a category, we have to resave all the pages that are in that category (ie all the talk pages w/ todo lists) because the wiki software doesn't currently support "moving" of categories. —siroχo 14:00, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I know. I recently moved Melée weapons to Mêlée weapons and it was a pain in the arse. I think it should be the responsibility of people who misname things in the first place. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:28, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Article to-do priorities / parameter as sort key

For some reason, Wiki does not evaluate the parameter {{{1}}} in the sort key. It should evaluate to the priority given as a parameter in the call to this template, {{todo|7}} for example. A bug report has been entered to the wiki developer (bug n°: 1002735).

In the meantime, please do not change the category: I believe sufficient warnings are given to the reader that say that the category is not working. Pcarbonn 16:37, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not a fan of using the template for this purpose. One category for all the "to do"'s, sure, but this priority mechanism seems more trouble than it's worth, even if it were working. It relies too much on people adding a parameter which is not yet standardized (A/B/C, 1/2/3) and may change in the future, making for rework. It's also not very easy for an average editor to know that the priority number is needed and what it means when they see it. Try using {{todo|priority=}} on the Talk pages, and in the template use {{{if defined:priority|[[Category:To do of popular articles|{{{priority}}}]] }}}, as described in Meta:Extended template syntax. -- Netoholic 18:41, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. The ideal would be to have a new variable that depends on the article, {{Popularity}}, which would give the popularity of the article: this way, the editors would not have to enter the parameter anymore. I have introduced a request for enhancement (n° 1000952) to that effect, and I've seen it has been set to high priority... Would that be the solution to your concerns ?
I agree that the parameter is far from ideal, and that it would eventually be superseded by the "Popularity" variable, if ever implemented. The idea to use the "if defined" construct is interesting. Is it currently available though ?
My concern is that the alphabetical listing in the category will quickly show its limitation once the list of articles with "To do's" becomes bigger, to the point where it becomes useless. Don't you share that concern ? Pcarbonn 22:03, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, an alphabetical listing in the category will likely become overwhelming in time. But so will your scheme... all "to do" pages will still be in the "popular articles" category if that's part of the template, just not necessarily sorted well. What is your goal with this? To get popular pages special editorial ttention, right? Well, first off, popular pages already have many active editors (because they are popular). If particular pages need special attention, there are already better ways of requesting work to be done, like Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, Wikipedia:Cleanup. {{Todo}} is a nice tool on its own, but your "to do" categories, no matter how they are sorted, will become bloated with too many pages to be practical. Right now, it looks like "if defined" is still just a proposal, but it may be useful if implemented, because the category won't have to be added to all "to do"'s, only those with the "priority=" set. -- Netoholic 23:25, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You say "popular pages already have many active editors". You may have a point there. However, I have the feeling that much more edit attention goes to secondary pages than popular ones, ie. that popular ones deserve more attention than they currently have. Do you share this view ?
In line with that view, I do not believe that "Pages needing attention" and "Cleanup" are better ways to attract attention, because popular pages would be lost among the many more secondary pages, and thus would not get the attention they deserve.
You also have a point that the categories will become bloated, whatever the sort . It could be better to define sub-categories with pages of varying popularity: I'm pretty sure that the top priority category would not have so many pages to make it impractical, on the contrary. But in any case, this would require software update on Wiki. Pcarbonn 06:13, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have now found a way to make it work, by using sub-categories. This requires the use of 10 different templates : todo, todo1, todo2, ..., todo9. I have already created 2 of them. Because of the multiplicity of templates and the difficulty of moving articles from one category to another, we should finalize the category names before implementing it fully. Here is what I propose:

  • Articles with a to-do list, priority 1 (Top)
  • Articles with a to-do list, priority 2
  • ...
  • Articles with a to-do list, priority 9
  • Articles with a to-do list, priority not defined yet

Pcarbonn 15:23, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My prediction... 90% of articles will end up in "priority 1". Its just human nature to want to put their article interests ahead of others. Who's going to clean up? Are there going to be arguments about whether an article is priority 4 or 5? Who is going to make sure all the todo templates are kept looking alike? Sorry, this priority scheme is getting silly. -- Netoholic 16:59, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think the original idea was that priority would be decided ONLY based on how many internal links linked to the article. It would be a rough estimate of how often people would stumble upon an article. But there is no automated way to do this yet. —siroχo 22:49, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I'm ready to put the effort to maintain those templates and categories, and to enforce the rules about popularity. I hope that others will too. The To-do list idea was generated by the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Science : we needed a way to establish and communicate tasks to do on articles. My goal in this is to maintain a list of To do's for science, and to invite Wikipedians to contribute to the project in the best order of priority. I invite other projects to do the same. Nobody knows yet whether it will succeed, but Wikipedia is there to show that goodwill is available aplenty, and is stronger than bad will. And indeed, as you say, some may abuse the system and put their articles in priority 1. I expect this to be the minority though, and I don't think it should stop us. But who knows, without trying ? Pcarbonn 20:31, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I understand that the argument above will not convince everyone. So let's try to find a way that does not disrupt the "normal operation" of the "To do" category, while still offering the priority thing as an option. I guess that the issue is "how much reference to the prioritized category" can we accept. Here is my proposal:
  • Is it OK to make a link to the Category:Articles with a to-do list, by priority (still to be created) from the Wikipedia:To-do list article ? yes
  • from the Category:To do ? yes
  • in the "todo" template itself ? No (I have seen that the link had been removed on Aug 7, why ?)
Pcarbonn 21:25, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

what is a Todo editorial To-do list ?

Following the latest change, the template now links to an empty Todo page: why ? what is that page supposed to contain ? Shouldn't we just say "here is the editorial To-do list for this page ?" Pcarbonn 10:20, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ideally, that should read "Here is the PAGENAME editorial to-do list ? to update the list, click here". It currently only works properly in articles, but not in other namespaces. Take a look at Talk:Thermodynamics for a working example. -- Netoholic 13:12, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
OK Pcarbonn 15:23, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A good idea. The technical problem is that if we use [[{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}]] it'll use the talk namespace. There must be some way of automatically linking to an article from its talk page, though. —siroχo 22:54, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)
It isn't necessary to link to the article from the template -- there's a standard View article navigational link on every talk page anyway. Subpages also have navigational links to their ancestors. --Eequor 08:20, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Kneejerk reactions

It's strange that I'm called overzealous by User:Netoholic when sen edits change the entire appearance of the template. Some points about my edits, for clarification:

  • The table has one row. Using rowspan="2" is pointless.
    • Point taken. Obviously it didn't break anything, and looks like it was simply left over. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • There is a useful {{edit}} template which produces an [edit] link for any given page.
    • Having one template depend on another is not a good direction. What if Template:Edit changes? -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Most likely, it would be quickly changed back. It's a useful template. --Eequor 16:59, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • It's simpler to use align="right" as an attribute of a table cell than to use a <div>.
    • Only using one div to place the "edit this page" link on the right. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The term editorial tasks does not make much sense.
    • Seems OK to me. Any better ideas? -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • Removing "editorial" is better. --Eequor 16:59, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • High-priority does not make much sense either, as there is no reference point. Also this is a generic template; the users of the to-do list probably have their own priorities.
    • Again, suggest something better than "Here is the to-do list for xx". -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • "This is the to-do list for xyz" is at least better than "high priority editorial tasks". --Eequor 16:59, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I changed the spacing a little because it looked better to me.
  • <font> is deprecated.
    • Replaced with <big><b>. The look is different, because of how BIG is styled in the main CSS, but not drastically. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • The template shouldn't place emphasis on the heading. The important part is the actual to-do list, and the template should not distract users. --Eequor 16:59, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
        • I think its important to bold the title here, so it feels more like the general wikipedia style. Section headings are bold, and so it makes sense to bold the title of this "section". People are not going to miss the grey box regardless. —siroχo 12:19, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)
  • Placing the To-do link inside the table is more intuitive and doesn't interfere with the negative space to the left of the table.
    • disagree that its intuitive. The to-do link refers to the template itself, not the article. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • The category should be at the bottom, as that is the standard location for categories. It's hard to find if it's in the middle of a table.
    • category placement can go anywhere. Its stripped out by wiki anyway. Its there to avoid weird extraneous blank lines. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • There is no need to include a link to the parent page in the template; see above.
    • I think it ties the two together. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
      • They are tied together by the standard navigational links already. I agree that the name of the article should be included, but making a link to it is unnecessary. Also using {{PAGENAME}} only (instead of {{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}} will not work for articles outside the main namespace. --Eequor 16:59, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • cellspacing and cellpadding have the same effect as margin and padding in CSS, except they work when the table contains more than one cell.
    • Better that the style be applied to the table if we ever get above two cells. For now it looks fine. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Placing a border on a table allows multiple cells inside the border.
    • see above. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It feels ridiculous to be arguing some of these. Please think about why changes may have been made before undoing them in a kneejerk reaction. --Eequor 09:26, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Per my message on your talk page, it felt more like you were blind-siding the efforts here, since this is the first real discussion you've put into it. -- Netoholic 10:18, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I felt that I wasn't making significant changes. -_-;; --Eequor 16:59, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Real estate

There's plenty of "real estate" inside the border; there's very little text there currently. Negative space has value, just as positive space does, and placing a link under the image wastes that. Notice that most of the templates at Wikipedia:Template messages#Open_tasks are fairly generous with empty space near the same image. --Eequor 10:09, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Recent edits by —siroχo

I made three edits just now to the template, and want to explain them

  1. I removed "editorial", it was redundant since the talk page is for editors to discuss, and it also just seemed like an extra word.
  2. I moved the "edit this list" link to the top, so its not hidden if there is a long list. We want the page to be relatively easy to edit, this also takes care of the real estate issue. (horizontal real estate does not matter on a page-wide template like this). Also, I don't think we should use the {{edit}} template, because one word is not clear enough to people who are new to todo lists and talk pages in general. And the parentheses and brackets look like HTML/wiki markup leftovers in a way, so we should just leave them off to keep it clean.
    The brackets are meant to allude to the standard [edit] links for article sections, so the link in the template appears consistent. --Eequor
  3. Make sure to keep {{{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}/to_do}} on a newline (no spaces), or else the first asterisk does not register as a list item.

Also, i have a couple more notes,

  • keep the category inline with something else (anythign else that doesn't mess up the formatting) so extra blank lines aren't added.
  • Please keep the category as [[category:to do|{{PAGENAME}}]] (ie keep the pagename in there) or else everything goes under "T" for talk.

Lastly, keep things neat here. Eequor and Netholic, you both have excellent ideas for this template we'll work all these issues out.

—siroχo 12:35, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know why I didn't think to put the edit link there at the top. I really like the way this looks now. -- Netoholic 13:57, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't argue with the look, that's just fine. I'm just worried that todo lists may grow to be 10 or more items long, making the link less easily seen by new editors. At the top its one of the first things people will see. I did keep it right aligned as you had done, that fixes the awkwardness of the previous "click here" link. —siroχo 15:04, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Usage

Netoholic, are you currently using this template for a to-do list on a different page? You haven't edited any "to do" subpages, that I can see. Why should your opinions set the precedent for people who will actually use the template? --Eequor 17:29, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I find that comment rude and short-sighted. This template is very new, and is still a bit in flux (like the "priority" ranking). Its still very much a work in progress, but one I am interested in contributing to in anticipation of using it on some of the pages that interest me most. Please don't be so judgemental, it destracts from everyone's experience here. Comment on content, not on the contributor. -- Netoholic 03:13, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion, not only has Netoholic made many useful edits to this site, but his usage of the template has no effect on whether or not his edits are valid. You've made several useful edits as well, and as the wikiproccess rolls, both you, Netoholic, and other who have worked on this page's ideas are coming together to create something better. Remember that wikipedia is larger than any user, and will last for a long time. There's no need to be impatient about anything, especially on a page so young as this. Eequor, I'd request that you take some time familiarizing yourself with wikiquette before pushing any issues you have with anyone, on this page. —siroχo 12:14, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Note on wording

Pending tasks is an improvement over high-priority editorial tasks, but it's still somewhat of a misnomer. To-do lists in current use sometimes strike out supposedly resolved issues, in which case they are no longer "pending". --Eequor 21:45, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Image alt text

People using a text-only browser, or a graphical browser with images disabled, lose nothing by not seeing the "Evolution-tasks.png" image. They also don't need to see browser-supplied text saying something like "there should be an image here but I can't display it" or "Evolution-tasks.png". Therefore, the image should be have empty alt text, but that's impossible, and the next best thing is to have a single space as the alt text. This is done with [[Image:Evolution-tasks.png| ]] (see Wikipedia:Alternative text for images).

Netoholic says that that didn't work for him, but it worked fine for me. The [[Image:Evolution-tasks.png|Tasks]] that Netoholic used means that people using text-only browsers will see the text "Tasks To-do list" in the left hand column of the table. I don't like that, and would prefer to see just "To-do list". So, I would like to go back to alt="(space)", as I used in this edit. —AlanBarrett 09:25, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. When I checked, it displayed only <img... title=" "...> but no alt=" ". I'm fine with " " as long as it works. -- Netoholic 15:18, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I get <a href="..." class="image" title=" "><img src="..." alt=" " /></a>, with the alt text being repeated both in the title attribute of the a tag, and in the alt attribute of the img tag. This seems acceptable to me, though I wish it were possible to put different text in the two places. I'll change the alt text back to " " now. —AlanBarrett 20:55, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
See also Alt text. Andy Mabbett 13:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Template for non-article namespace

I believe that the easiest way to do that is to create a {Wtodo} template, separate from the existing one. Pcarbonn 05:16, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think someone did that, check out Template:WikipediaTodo —siroχo 07:32, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

I think this will work, but I wanted to discuss it first. Add a parameter to the template that gives the parent namespace name including a trailing colon, like this:

in "Template:todo": To-do list for [[{{{1}}}{{PAGENAME}}]]
at the top of the talk page for an article in the main namespace: {{todo}}
at the top the talk page for an article in the Template namespace: {{todo|Template:}}

—AlanBarrett 13:27, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just use "{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}" which produces - "Template talk:Todo/Archive 1" -- Netoholic 13:52, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I see the problem now. I like your idea. For normal articles, the parameter would be optional. To simplify though, you can include the trailing colon in the template itself.
  • in "Template:todo": To-do list for [[{{{1}}}:{{PAGENAME}}]]
  • at the top of the talk page for an article in the main namespace: {{todo}}
  • at the top the talk page for an article in the Wikipedia namespace: {{todo|Wikipedia}}
I've updated the Template:Todo to include this. -- Netoholic 14:13, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Please revert the last changes ASAP: the template does not work correctly for normal articles anymore !! e.g. for Train station or Voltron: the link to the main article is broken. Pcarbonn 15:03, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yep, this is because every place {{Todo}} is used, a parameter pointing to the parent namespace would have to be defined. This is a great idea, but damn hard to make it work right! -- Netoholic 16:05, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New "namespace friendly version" causing edit links: Check out some of the articles that use {{todo}} for example Talk:Baseball. The link back to the article is a red edit link. This happened after {{{1}}} was added in. I really hope we can fix this, but i'm not sure how. Maybe we could delay this feature until the {{{if defined:''parameter''|''text''}}} syntax is introduced into mediawiki (see meta:extended template syntax)

(btw, be careful when you check for this, many articles with todos are using some other sorts of templates now ({{todo1}}, etc.) I'm not completely sure where that came from, but i'll check it out later, time for bed. —siroχo 15:05, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

I have created the todo1 templates in order to create the To do, by priority category, as previously discussed in other threads. Pcarbonn 16:10, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Apparently, when template parameter 1 is undefined, {{{1}}} does not expand to an empty string; the inner {{1}} expands to the expansion of {{Template:1}}, and the outer {} remains unchanged. See m:Help:Template#Parameters. —AlanBarrett 16:00, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I suspect that the easiest way to fix this would be to request the developers to add a new {{{NAMESPACE_NO_TALK}}} magic variable, or similar. —AlanBarrett 16:00, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • I found a way to fix the template and make it work in all namespaces at the same way; see the section down here. --Ggonnell 15:04, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

<big> vs <h3>

The reason I chose to change to <h3> was because it looks more like the standard wiki heading typefaces. What's the problem with accessibility? —siroχo 07:36, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

H headings are used to describe a hierarchy or outline, and are meant to be nested H1>H2>H3. Text browsers, screen readers, and other alternate browsers would render that incorrectly or it may cause confusion, , especially because it's inside a table. The proper heading would be H2, but I doubt that would look good visually. I've updated it so that the cell is a TH (header), which I think is the most appropiate format. Visually, it's very a very subtle difference. -- Netoholic 12:34, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Gotcha. —siroχo 15:05, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

Ever-expanding category

The to do category will become too large. So a suggested solution, have the link (inserted when a to do list is created), link to [[Category:<Article's category>/To do]]. So most or all categories would have a subcategory called "to do", with links to the articles in the parent category which have to dos. If this suggestion is somewhat unclear, I can make another attempt to explain it. Zoney 15:22, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there isn't really any way to automatically extract the categories an article belongs to. There also doesn't seem to be any way to find the proper (non-talk) namespace that a talk page belongs to, and so no way to refer to the parent article. --Eequor 15:57, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I believe I understand. You would enter a parameter in the template, e.g. {{todo|Science}}, and then use this parameter to insert the todo page in the [[Categor:Science/To do]] category. They have been many attempts to use parameters to the template, but all have failed. So I wish you good luck ! Pcarbonn 16:06, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A way around this would be to multiply the number of templates, and use {{todoScience}} for example. This is the approach that was taken for the "To do, by priority" category (see {{todo1}} template). However, this solution is not ideal if we have 100+ templates. Pcarbonn 16:06, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Please note there are currently only 34 real articles in Category:To do. It's unclear whether the number of to-do lists will increase significantly; as things are now, dividing the to-do lists by category would probably result in to-do categories with one article each.
My concern is mainly due to the fact that if use of the category does expand - it's easier to apply a scheme now rather than later... Zoney 16:56, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The current to-do category is probably little-used. I doubt anyone would browse the list to find a to-do list with a need they could fill. It's likely that editors will refer to the flat lists at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, Wikipedia:Cleanup, or Wikipedia:Requests for expansion instead. --Eequor 16:27, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another solution would be to add categories to the /todo page (the one that only contains the list of tasks), and not in the template. For example, the Atom/todo page could be added to the Science, Requested images, ... and any category the editor wants. So the article would appear in the appropriate lists. When all the tasks are done, simply remove the category entiesy from the /todo page. This gives a lot of flexibility, and is quite intuitive. Pcarbonn 17:08, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I have tested that, and it works. So I have updated the procedures in Wikipedia:To-do list accordingly. Please check. Pcarbonn 20:35, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Todo for page

We should have a Template:TodoForPage so that you could include a todo for an article to your userpage with something like {{TodoForPage|World War II}} I can't get it to work, and perhaps it is not possible. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 21:11, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're active on CotW, so you've probably already seen this by now: Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/To do is an example of what you were trying to do. :-) • Benc • 19:24, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Namespace friendly version

I've finally created a version that in all my tests (that I did in it.wiki) works perfectly in every namespace. To do this I designed a template that functions almost as a variable, similarly to NAMESPACE, but it gives always the name of the "article" namespace (e.g. "Wikipedia" for "Wikipedia Talk"; empty value for "Talk"; etc.). I hope it's not a problem to rely on a secondary template. Note that when you look the template page the link in the title in the Template:Todo does not appear as link as the link in this case now refers to the page itself Template:Todo and not anymore to Todo This modification eliminates the need of a dinstinct Template:WikipediaTodo - see for example Wikipedia_talk:Chemistry.--Ggonnell 19:54, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nice workaround, thanks - I took the liberty to adopt the idea for the German Wiki. However, I also wanted to assure, that there can only be a single todo-list for each article, located at the discussion page. If you create a TODO-template in the article section and one in the discussion section, you get two different todo-lists. 
{{{{TALKSPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}/to_do}}
results in something like 
{{{{TALKSPACE}}:Todo/to_do}}
instead of importing the to_do-List...
Now here is the problem, that this templates are not real vaiables, i.e. nesting does not work. Any ideas how to acchieve this? --TheFilz 22:46, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

bugzilla:531#c6

Background

I noticed that the background of the template recently changed color (or added color, I'm not sure of exactly what kind of change was made). It used to be grayish and basically blended into the background; now, it's tangerine. Would it be possible to change the color back, or to change it to something more neutral (like a darker shade of gray) so that it doesn't stick out so much? I don't mean to sound like a whiner, but I really liked it as it was. I'd make the change myself, but I feel like it effects enough users that I should make the request here rather than taking it upon myself to change it. Essjay (talk) 13:22, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

Watch instead of Add to Watchlist

Any objections against changing the text in the template from "Add to watchlist" to "Watch"? It would give us more horizontal space for the headline (which incurs a line break in all but the shortest articles) and it is also consistent with the verb used on the article tab itself. Arbor 13:52, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, let me expand that request to include the Edit link as well. Let's just call it "Edit". Arbor 13:57, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I say do it. Makeup, murder, and template text: Less is more. Essjay · talk 14:19, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
Done it, boldly. Let's see if there is any big reaction to it. By tomorrow, I will edit the Todo How-to to make the instructions conform with the new link texts. (Done, hope I found them all) Arbor 15:59, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If you're still watching here, and chance you can wikify the link to the "Todo How-to"? I've been unable to find it under any permutation, and with such common words, search is wores than useless. --Kgf0 23:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Why all this categories?

Why does the template todo has all these priority categories (from 1 to 9). I can hardly think how could one user decide if the article is at priority 3 or 4. It's a useless waist of time. I suggest we remove them all and keep a small number of categories (low and high priority only). CG 20:40, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Dotted border

Get rid of this annoying dashed border and replace it with a solid one.

This was taken from the to-do list on top of this page. But why? Are dots all that awfull? I don't think so. jοτομικρόν | talk 19:20, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

To do lists in Category talk pages

This template does not work right when used on category talk pages. For an example see Category talk:Anime. Instead of having a link to Category:Anime, it is categorizing the talk page in the category. Either this gets fixed (which I would not dare attempt myself), or the templates have to be Subst'ed (I don't know if this is an option), or they have to be removed from category talk pages. Any ideas? -- Samuel Wantman 11:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

The offending code is
<big> [[Wikipedia:To-do list|To-do list]] for [[{{ARTICLESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}]]:</big>
Articlespace:Pagename parses into Category:Anime which is why it was doing that. I have subst'd the template onto Category:Anime for now since it will be merged into Template:WikiProject Anime and manga/to do as soon as I have completed a few more of the requests in that to do list. --Squilibob 12:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your help with this. It looks like Subst'ing is an option, though fixing the code so this doesn't happen might be better. I'm going to add a note that this doesn't work with categories, and that a better place to post this is a project page instead of a category talk page. Few people look at category talk pages. -- Samuel Wantman 20:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Restyled version

I've decided to make a new todo template since I think this one looks a little big and clumsy. The new one is smaller and doesn't use the black dotted line. You can find it at Template:Todo2. —Michiel Sikma, 20:17, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

To-do list for Template:Todo/Archive 1:

Template talk:Todo/Archive 1/to do

New version (parameters)

I've made a new version of this Todo template that uses parameters. It allows one to set a width, height, the location of the edit links (top, bottom) and the float value (left, right, none). Of course, it's possible to not set any parameters, in which case it will show up like a normal todo template. Maybe you would like to take a look at it. It's located at Template:Todo3. Maybe I can add some of the parameters that you have tried to add to this template; what functionality did you try to add? —Michiel Sikma, 12:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there a version which takes the location of the todo page as a parameter?

I'd like to collect together multiple to-do lists on a WikiProject page. This would require a version of the template that doesn't use the default /todo location. Is there such a beast? With the new conditional code feature, I could easily add the option to this one (warning about making changes and testing them in a sandbox first is duly noted). --kingboyk 09:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I made one. See Template:Todo-Named. --kingboyk 10:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Different image?

Nuvola apps knotes.png
Nuvola apps knotes.png

I know its not public domain, but it is GPL, so should we use Image:Nuvola apps knotes.png in place of Notes.svg? See it in action to the left.--Draicone (talk) 06:46, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

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