Template talk:High-use

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[edit] About this template

The {{intricate}} template has long been used for a similar purposes as this {{high-use}} template. But I have always felt that one doesn't really fit for high-risk / high-use templates, since it mostly talks about the code being intricate.

That a template is intricate is usually obvious when one looks at the code, no need to tell that. What is not obvious from just looking at a template and its code is if a template is used on many thousands of pages. So this template is a way of telling that.

Also, I have noticed that many admins are sloppy and don't use sandboxes, instead they try things out directly on protected widely used high-risk templates. Edit comments like "just testing" on templates used on 100,000 pages or more are all too common. This template points them to the /sandbox and /testcases, even if those subpages have not yet been created. This also means that non-admins are pointed to those subpages and thus can help out by experimenting in the /sandbox.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wording

This discussion was moved here from David's talkpage:

Since you are a native English speaker and I am not, and you are not me and thus might see things I have missed: I would like some help to check and correct the text of some templates and their documentation that I have created lately. And if anything in their explanations is unclear ask me and I'll explain and thus I will know what might need a better explanation.

• {{high-use}} – I think this one should be pretty straightforward to understand, so mostly a language/wording check.

Looking forward for your comments on this!

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:36, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Please take a look at User:Matthewedwards/Sandbox/Template:High-use. I re-worded the template slightly, and will take a stab at the documentation later tonight. -- Matthewedwards (talk · contribs · count · email) 23:24, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I like your rewording of {{high-use}}. I think we should use your rewording pretty much as is, except two details: I think we should keep "server load" instead of "server bandwidth" since it is not about connection bandwidth but about CPU load. That is, every time you change a template all pages that use it has to be re-rendered. And perhaps (but just perhaps) we should say "please discuss any changes" instead of "please discuss any major changes" since for the really high-use templates I think even tiny changes should first be discussed. Put perhaps people will think it is too much to ask that? Or something like this is perhaps in between: "please discuss your changes". Or would that sound weird?

Thanks for taking a look and for the improved {{high-use}} text!

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:18, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't sure if "Bandwidth" was correct, but I wonder if the majority of users will understand "server load" and what it means regarding every page being re-rendered? Personally, I don't like second-person usage, so instead of "your", how about "please discuss any changes"? -- Matthewedwards (talk · contribs · count · email) 06:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I have now updated the text of {{high-use}} using a slightly modified version of your text.

And yeah, "load" can mean any kind of load. But since "bandwidth" would be untrue I prefer to use "load" even thought the word might seem less clear. I think we need to link to more explanation somewhere. There already are two pages explaining these things ( Wikipedia:Template test cases and Wikipedia:High-risk templates ) but their explanations are currently pretty bad and I didn't know how point to them in a nice way in this message box so I left that out for the moment. I am thinking we should perhaps instead add an explanation at the top of the message box's documentation about server load and why testing is a good thing before deploying (lots of good reasons for that). And then perhaps link to that explanation from the message box? This message box is only used on template pages so we are allowed to link to its own documentation like that.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)