Template talk:Lang-uk

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Templates for deletion This template survived a request for deletion. The result of the discussion was keep.

[edit] definition

Test (Ukrainian: перевiрка, perevirka; Russian: проверка, proverka) is what this is...

Let's first discuss this briefly before getting into mass-convertion from ua to uk. It's just that "uk" is a little confusing for obvious reasons. How about that? --Irpen 15:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I just discovered that template:Lang-ua was a redirect to template:Lang-uk. Lang-uk is used in over a hundred articles, but Lang-ua in only about a dozen, which I've already converted [1]. The redirect will continue to work, so there shouldn't be any problems, but now all the examples use the correct form. —Michael Z. 2005-10-6 15:59 Z
Please do not use this template and do not under any circumstances replace existing links with it. Templates strain the servers unnecessaraly and this template amounts to little more than a few saved characters.
Peter Isotalo 20:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Can you point out some documentation explaining how much templates strain the servers, and how it is unnecessary? If this is the case, then why have we not heard any general call to stop using templates on Wikipedia?
And why not make it more efficient by simplifying or removing the redundant calls to other templates instead? That would probably save a large proportion of overhead.
This template does not just save typing. It marks a span of text with language metadata. —Michael Z. 2005-10-15 20:56 Z
    <span lang="uk" xml:lang="uk"></span>
What's the point of the metadata?
Peter Isotalo 21:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that the difference between typing
{{lang-uk|foo}}
and
{{lang|uk|foo}}
is zero: there is zero benefit, and positive harm, to this template's existence. This template—and all the rest of the {{lang-xx}} templates, for that matter—serves merely to clutter up the Template: namespace with yet more redundant cruft, and slow the servers down further with unnecessary extra template instantiations.
As far as the benefits of marking the text as being in a particular language, given that the vast majority of foreign-language text in any language's Wikipedia etc. is not so marked, and that I am unaware of any (X)HTML user agents that actually process this information, I can't imagine these supposed "benefits" outweigh the negative impact on server load.
As far as template use driving up server load: Every template that is used must be fetched from the database without the benefit of the page cache, then its markup parsed, parameters substituted, and the resulting text transcluded into the calling page. Templates on their own are not the problem, users who gleefully think they can nest them indefinitely, turn them into redirects, and so on are the problem.
I've already fixed Template:LangWithName to 1) not bounce off the Template:ll-to-Template:Language link redirect, and 2) manually subst:'d the contents of Template:Language link directly into Template:LangWithName, to avoid the overhead of two gratuitous template references and a redirect.
There's no cure for this template short of its outright replacement with {{lang|uk|...}}.
IceKarmaॐ 21:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


Neither Wikipedia:Template nor meta:Help:Template discourage the use of templates or warn of their having "positive harm". The latter page discusses caching issues, and it appears that the only additional server load is extra cache rebuilding that occurs when templates are edited (and this one doesn't get edited much, nor the ones it calls). Your assumptions about the way templates work is contradicted by the documentation that I could find. Am I missing anything?
I also don't see any indication that having more templates in the namespace slows down the servers. They all start with the prefix "lang-", so this "clutter" doesn't make it any harder to create any other templates for non–language-related applications.
Marking text as a different language potentially has benefits for search engines, research projects, repurposing of Wikipedia content, and for user-agent accessibility, including specialized readers for the handicapped. It's good web authoring practice, and if it was practised more consistently then it would be better supported. And how do you know that the vast majority of foreign-language text on English Wikipedia isn't already marked using these templates, and others like template:Polytonic?
It is definitely good that you are looking at the redundancies in the templates and cleaning them up; lots of Wiki-cruft is potentially accumulating forever. But I don't think that template interdependencies are necessarily a bad thing, if they can make templates much more flexible. And there is definitely a difference between typing these two template tags, which helps editors label foreign-language text consistently.
  1. {{lang-uk|фу}}, result: Ukrainian: фу
  2. {{lang|uk|фу}}, result: фу
Perhaps a better solution is to have two alternative multi-language templates: the existing template:Lang and template:Lang-labelled, or some such thing which adds the linked name of the language.
Anyway, such a major change should be discussed with the editors who spent time creating and using this framework, and have already thought some of these things through, before embarking on a unilateral wholesale rebuilding. —Michael Z. 2005-10-15 23:09 Z
In my experience very little foreign text uses any kind of templates, Michael,
As far as the template goes, you have absolutely no idea whether it does harm or if it's going to be useful, and yet you apply it freely to hundreds (or is it even thousands?) of articles in hope that it might be useful one day. If you were a developer I could buy that, but you're just normal user. I'd say that the major change that should've required proper consensus was the idea to apply (not to create) this template in the first place. If two suspected effects of a technical issue are conflicting and have very little current practical upsides, then the negative one should always have precedence over the positive one. Doing the oppposite and hoping for the best seems like truly wreckless behavior to me.
Peter Isotalo 09:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
What are you talking about? What suspected effect? I've gone to the trouble to read the template documentation. It doesn't say that templates are harmful and shouldn't be used. I've done extra reading since you brought this up, and found one obscure note that says templates only adds server load when they're edited; and these are rarely edited. But you're saying this is incorrect, without backing it up (except by calling me ignorant: "...but you're just normal user"). Just point me to some documentation or discussion. You sound like you're just making all this up.
And regarding consensus, I haven't been applying it freely to thousands of articles, a large group of editors has been using this, without any negative comment. That's called consensus (although one user has now come along and started silently undoing our work). So what are you complaining about? I don't see any consensus for your sweeping changes.
You're saying that it's irresponsible not to assume that all Wikipedia features are harmful? Let's put a bold note at the top of each page of Wikipedia documentation saying "Wikipedia features may or may not be harmful. Don't use them without permission of your betters". —Michael Z. 2005-10-16 14:43 Z
You've not shown that this template has any existing advantages except saving a minimum of typing time. The possible meta-data upside is nothing but wishful thinking right now. Templates are not normal content the way a paragraph in an article is, they're just user tools.
Peter Isotalo 19:26, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
If templates are "just user tools", then why can't they be used to
  • save typing time
  • enforce consistent formatting and spelling of repeated elements
  • allow wholesale editing of repeated elements
  • add potentially useful metadata
  • support generally-accepted web authoring practices that are not supported by the wiktext renderer
as they have been by many editors by consensus in thousands of articles. I suggest you stop your removal crusade until you've discussed this with the many editors placing template:lang-ar, template:lang-bg, template:lang-hi, template:lang-pl, template:lang-ru, template:lang-zh, etc., etc.
How are templates harmful? I've asked you a couple of times to back up your statements, but you refuse. If you're going to cite consensus, then put your money where your mouth is, go through the right channels and list this at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion. And in the mean time, replace this template in all the pages you've removed it from. All you're doing by acting unilaterally is wasting a lot of editors' time. —Michael Z. 2005-10-16 22:09 Z
First, my mistake; I neglected to notice that {{lang-uk}} includes the "Ukranian: " text.
Second, I checked out the docs myself, and found:
Third, while I only edit a small fraction of the total articles on Wikipedia, I've yet to come across any of the {{lang}} or {{lang-xx}} templates. I've also found more instances of {{polytonic}} being used incorrectly (including for text that isn't even in Greek) than correctly, and similarly with {{ipa}}.
However, all this being said, I've pretty much come around to Michael's point of view, as long as template 'chains' and redirects-to-templates within templates are kept under control. For example, given the unlikelyhood of {{subst:ll}}'s contents changing, I don't see that substituting it directly into {{LangWithName}}, as I did, creates a maintenance problem, and even if it were desirable to continue using {{Language link}} there, I don't see the one-time costs of having to type out "language link" instead of "ll" is that big a deal, either.
IceKarmaॐ 22:32, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
After some chatting on IRC, Karma explained to me that he talked to some developers about this, and that they said that server strain is negligible. I'm backing down on the claim that it's harmful.
It would be helpful if these templates were actually linked to one another through talkpages. They're very oblique if you're not fairly coding-savvy, especially with the odd meta-linking to {{LanguageLink}}.
Peter Isotalo 00:37, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, after reading Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates, I was going to back down some on my "not harmful" ravings. That article mentions that editing a page with a template marks that template as changed, and so all the pages it's placed in must get re-cached. The other sources I saw before didn't mention that. So it's probably a good idea to have all the templates just have text and wiki code, but no templates in them.
I agree that we definitely need a central page with a list of lang-xx templates and main discussion. I keep discovering new ones, and we need a place for chats like this one. —Michael Z. 2005-10-17 03:05 Z

[edit] Italics

Please don't add italics to this template. Use of the Cyrillic alphabet already visually differentiates text, it can cause font rendering problems in some browsers when the common stress accents are applied, it reduces visual contrast to italicized transliterations, and finally, this template has been used thousands of times by editors with the assumption that italics are not built into it.

For relevant discussion, see Template talk:Lang-ru#Italicizing Cyrillic text. —Michael Z. 2006-05-18 18:15 Z