Template talk:WikiProjectBanners/Archive 1

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[edit] Functionality

"close to all the functionality found on most of them..."

Nope. Not close, not anywhere near close. In fact, it doesn't support almost any useful functionality, at the moment; it's a raw display table, nothing more.

(It also rolls back years of common-sense template design principles by requiring things like images to be specified on a per-page basis, but that's a minor point in comparison.)

I am quite disturbed that the people pushing this little project seem to be entirely unwilling to respond to any of the concerns that have already been raised about the basic design being advocated here. There has been no explanation provided for how, exactly, a combined template is supposed to retain the rich functionality of the current set. The attitude here seems to be that keeping the templates useful is not as important as making a pretty table; this is frankly insulting to those of us who have spent enormous amounts of time getting the existing templates to work in the sophisticated manner they currently do. Kirill Lokshin 05:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Amen! I haven't been part of the discussion yet, but I can agree with that! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:06, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the proposed template looks good, but having used whatlinks here and categories incorporated in talk page templates, I can understand the concerns about losing functionality. Kirill, can you explain exactly what this "rich functionality" is that you are referring to? Does the same argument apply to the FA/GA/FAC etc combined template, or is this specific to the WikiProject templates? Carcharoth 15:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Let's see now... how about, oh, say, this template: how would you suggest converting it into this new model without losing any of the features?

(And, no, this doesn't apply to the FA/GA/etc. templates, since all of those were basically single-feature to begin with. WikiProject templates, on the other hand, generally each support more features than {{ArticleHistory}} does now.) Kirill Lokshin 16:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Tsk, tsk, tsk! That's a WikiProject that needs decentralising. Joke! Joke! :-) I see what you mean about a WikiProject template being complicated, especially when it has all those taskforces. Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Automation is just scary! Though it is well-organised, I must admit. I like the 5 criteria for class-B articles, that is something to think about. How many other WikiProjects use the features in the MILHIST template - or putting it another way, which are exclusive features? Do you know of any example of this template using lots of these features? How much room does it take up when all possible parameters are activated? Carcharoth 00:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Let's see:

• Regarding other projects: well, off the top of my head, I'm not sure. The thing about such features is that they tend to spread virally, as people notice ones they like and adopt them for their own projects. The basic idea of task force tags are pretty standard among the larger WikiProjects (see, for example, {{WP India}}, {{WPBiography}}, {{WP Australia}}, etc.); the other parameters are more variable. I know WP:GREECE borrowed the 5 criteria & accompanying code recently, for example.
• Regarding size: not much more than it does with none of them activated, since they're all contained inside show/hide blocks; the only overhead is two extra lines for the show/hide buttons themselves. I'm pretty sure the most parameter-rich example I've seen in practice is on Talk:World War II, but I haven't exactly been looking for them.

Kirill Lokshin 00:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The two most parameter-rich ones I've seen are {{WPBiography}} and {{Film}}. But, as Kirill said, I haven't gone looking for them. And they don't hold a candle to WPMILHIST.

On another note, is there a way the parameters could just be sent "as is" on to the embedded project's template? I haven't thought this through, and I'm not expert in wikicoding, but can parameters be accessed as a set? In other words, something like enclosing {{WPMILHIST {{{parameter_set()}}} }} inside this template. Just a thought. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Not per se; there's no way of collecting parameters automatically, and parameter names will overlap between different templates anyways. But an equivalent functionality would be trivial. All you'd be making is an outer shell, of sorts, that would include the actual project templates within itself; this shell could, for example, be a collapsible block. On the talk page, you'd get something like this:

{{WikiProjects

|{{WPMILHIST|class=B|...}}

|{{WPBiography|class=A|...}}

...

}}

I'm not sure that it would be particularl useful, though; it would need to be added to each page individually, and if you're doing that, you might as well use the small-option calls (or even impose the small option globally).

That has nothing to do with what's being attempted here, however; the intent of this effort is to replace project templates rather than just wrapping them up in some fancy formatting. Kirill Lokshin 02:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

If you do want to see something like that (basically wrapping templates in a collapsible table), have a look at User:Dr_pda/Sandbox. --Dr pda 02:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Not bad, but why the multiple templates? Wouldn't it be cleaner to have the sub-templates simply passed in as parameters to a single template? And I don't think the multiple levels of show/hide functionality are useful, particularly given that many project templates include their own show/hide functionality, meaning that pages with this will have three nested levels of it; maybe it would be better to simply have all the templates contained in a single show/hide block? Kirill Lokshin 02:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

This was just a quick proof-of-concept. I used multiple templates (succession box style) because when I tried just passing the templates in as parameters, it didn't work :) That isn't to say it can't be done. Yes, one level of show/hide could probably go; being able to see the different projects at a glance is nice so I'd be inclined to remove the show/hide from the top level. Dr pda 03:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, here's a proof-of-concept that handles the templates as parameters to the overall one. I've made two versions, one with the separate blocks and one without; I'm still not convinced as to which one is more useful, but if the second type is to be used, we'll probably need some way to standardize the displayed text for each project. Kirill Lokshin 03:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Single box, single box. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Or multiple, if it can be toggled to one line only. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

It could be, but if it defaults to that, then the secondary blocks become pretty pointless. Kirill Lokshin 03:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Yours is a more elegant way of handling it. I'm not sure why it didn't work when I tried it, probably the interaction of parser functions with wiki table syntax.Dr pda 03:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I like the approach Kirill has taken here, specifically the single show/hide box for all wikiproject templates. I think something similar was tried for all talk page templates when the 'small' template approach was designed and rolled out at Wikipedia:Talk page templates. I've commented back at the ArticleHistory template on which option is preferred. Maybe people can chose between having a small style or an all-inclusive style, or even a small version of the ArticleHistory style templates? Carcharoth 10:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Kirill's single-box solution looks very good. (My only concern is a small aesthetic one - that it should use standard talk colors instead of purple; I've tweaked it as such). Does anyone object to it? Raul654 16:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)