Wikipedia talk:Talk page templates

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For past, completed discussions, see /Archive 2005-05-24, /Mini talk archive.

Votes for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 18 July 2005. The result of the discussion was speedy keep.

Contents

[edit] Choices

See Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation#A choice of sizes for discussion.

User:Stevertigo proposed an interesting idea whereby users can have a choice between a standard message box (explanatory for newbies) or a compact message box (small as reason permits). This is in answer to the problem that templates are disruptive when they are too large, stacked on top of one another or are otherwise made to be permanent and ugly features of an article. I of course, am for it. Xiong, Netholic and others have expressed similar sentiments about the disruptiveness factor. Iwill offer a spectrum of alternatives at /Sizes - of course the naming should be standardized as well. Regards. -SV|t 19:09, 12 May 2005 (UTC)


[edit] move the standard to CSS

The function of the template standardization is much better served if someone writes this up as a CSS class, and adds it to our stylesheets (MediaWiki:Monobook.css). This would mean we could do away with Template:Standard template style. Please review Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates (which is a proposed guideline) for reasons why "templates within templates" are a server performance hit. Specifically, the "Alternatives" section describes that templates used to generate style should be replaced with the CSS classes. In this case, once the style is added centrally, a simple "class=" call can be added as needed, much like "class=toccolours" is presently.

.nameofclassTBD { 
   border:1px solid #C0C090;
   background-color:#F8EABA;
   width: 90%;
   margin: 0 5% 3px;"
}

Here's a version of the style I've been using. Seems to work well. Let me add one more reason for moving towards this... once a class is in use, it gives the reader the option to change their personal CSS to change its appearance from the default, if they so choose. -- Netoholic @ 17:27, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

That's a very good idea. The only thing is, your style doesn't match the standard style. Here's what should be used in Monobook.css:
.stdtmpl {
    width: 85%;
    border-spacing: 3px;
    border: 1px solid #C0C090;
    background-color: #F8EABA;
    margin-bottom: 3px;
    margin-left: auto;
    margin-right: auto;
}
Standard templates can then be created as follows:

{| class="stdtmpl"
|-
| [[Image:Nuvola apps xmag.png|Peer review]]
|align="center"|A [[Wikipedia:Peer review/{{PAGENAME}}|request]] has been made...
|}
Compare:
Peer review A request has been made for this article to be peer reviewed in order to get a broader perspective on how it may be improved. Please make any edits you see fit to improve the quality of this article.
Peer review A request has been made for this article to be peer reviewed in order to get a broader perspective on how it may be improved. Please make any edits you see fit to improve the quality of this article.
The first box was created with {{User:ClockworkSoul/Templates/peerreview}}, the second using a table construct with a local style as specified above. --MarkSweep 22:21, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
I think the "border-spacing" entry isn't needed (I realize it was in the original), and it's very unsafe because it's inconsistent. I also think 90% width is better than 85% width for very small screens. Otherwise, it's all fine. -- Netoholic @ 23:25, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
I have no opinion on this. I was merely trying to imitate ClockworkSoul's design using CSS. Let's check with him? --MarkSweep 00:17, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I totally agree with this proposal. violet/riga (t) 22:41, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

This is indeed a very good proposal. Wim van Dorst 07:28, 2005 May 15 (UTC).

Agreed entirely. Why use templates when stylesheets are so much cleaner? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 11:10, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

  • One of the reasons that I used a "style" argument in the table is so that the format could eventually be ported over to a style sheet. CSS are far cleaner and more flexible (and easier on resources) than are templates, so I'm not opposed to such a move. Regarding Netoholic's comments: experimentation shows that border spacing does indeed appear to be unnecessary; I'm torn on the width: I prefer the 85% width over the 90% though, for aesthetic reasons, and when I tested against an 800x600 resolution it was adequate in appearance (most of the screen was taken up by the browser and Wiki nav bars: the template was trivial in comparison). – ClockworkSoul 15:18, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Picking a name

Glad to hear this idea be well-received. Our baby needs a name though. The CSS class name should reflect its purpose, but not any specific format (so calling it "coffeeroll" is out). It should not be too generic ("standard") or long ("standardtemplate"), but it should be memorable for when these are in use. Suggestions? -- Netoholic @ 05:06, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

I'd go for "talktemplate" as this currently only applies to those on talk pages. violet/riga (t) 05:13, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
That sounds sensible to me, but then again, I also created the name "ClockworkSoul's Coffee Roll." – ClockworkSoul 05:15, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Not sure if using "template" as part of the name is the best option. This may become used on non-templates, like for one-time notices, it may even be used on main pages. One note the name "notice" is taken. -- Netoholic @ 05:16, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
When such a one-time notice is required then I'd suggest {{comment}}. violet/riga (t) 05:26, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Not to bothered about the name, but can we get on and do this soon, pretty please. I want to change the colour to something I like rather than what the community at large likes! :) Pcb21| Pete 07:15, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Am I correct in thinking that whatever name is chosen, it doesn't have to go into the generic CSS to be usable: ie if we simply add class="stdtmplt" or whatever to {{standard template style}}, this can be picked up by personal CSS files? Negotiation as to adding it to monobook.css can run in parallel. --Phil | Talk 16:01, May 16, 2005 (UTC)
That will only work if a) the style= argument is taken out of the style (local styles override global ones) and b) every user then puts the correct coding in their stylesheet. Not going to happen. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 18:19, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I believe that if you mark a stylesheet specification as "!important" it can override a local style. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 11:36, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
The point is to phase out the standard style template: it does unnecessarily load the servers. We really should plant this into the main CSS as soon as is reasonable. – ClockworkSoul 12:25, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
How about class="talknotice"? If no-one has objections, I'll write it into the CSS today myself. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 17:30, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Or maybe even talk_page_notice? Either way, I don't mind too much. Do it today! Pcb21| Pete 18:53, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Style done. For an example, see Template:Peerreview, which currently looks like this:
Peer review A request has been made for this article to be peer reviewed to receive a broader perspective on how it may be improved. Please make any edits you see fit to improve the quality of this article.
I cannot work out why, but IE refuses to centralise the table (Firefox does it fine). I have thus, temporarily, inserted align="center" into the <table> line. Anyone who can work out why IE does this with the styles and can work out how to fix it, go ahead... The current form works fine, I think. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 22:08, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Underscores are not valid characters in CSS element names - the templates are now no longer appearing correctly. Talrias (t | e | c) 22:18, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
The "text-align" attribute won't center the table. You have to use "margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto" as shown above. --MarkSweep 07:36, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
I have sorted the style sheet out now. Could everyone check that it now works on their browser (I have tested IE6 and Firefox 1.0.2). If it is okay, it can now be implemented using class="Talk-Notice" instead of the {{Standard template style}} argument. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 16:37, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I dislike the class="Talk-Notice" name very much. Is this the best we can come up with? -- Netoholic @ 17:43, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Seeing as it's been implemented in the stylesheet, I think this is an academic difference and changing it seems like a waste of time, time which could be spent far more constructively somewhere else. Who is going to use this on a day-to-day basis, or even infrequently after the templates have been changed? Talrias (t | e | c) 18:59, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Please, Netoholic, be my guest. Propose something better. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 19:05, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
I started this thread because it's a fairly important thing and because I couldn't really think of one. We need to decide this early on and get some general agreement because we're faced with living with it for quite some time.
Here are some random words from brain-storming, in no particular order: standardised, announcement, announce, attention, notice (replace existing one with this), noticebox, messagebox, message, status, articlestatus, pagestatus, workingstatus. -- Netoholic @ 19:31, 2005 May 19 (UTC)
I chose Talk-Notice so as to provide room to allow other possible default styles to go in if there were other, future TS contests. I believe Violetriga has already mentioned something along those lines in passing. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 19:35, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Erm, the new format seems to be broken for me - there is no box around the template when it is displayed, and the background colour is incorrect. IE6 and Windows2000 (gosh, doesn't time fly!). I seem to remember that there is a style / class problem with IE? Is this it?

This all seemed to work yesterday - I've added the live versions to Wikipedia:Template standardisation, and the ones with the new style are all broken in the same way, and the ones using the old format ({{FLC}}, {{FL}}, {{oldpeerreview}}, {{chemistry}}, {{Talk Spoken Wikipedia}}, {{comment}}) are fine. Also, {{press}} must be called something else... -- ALoan (Talk) 14:02, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Um, what is your problem? I cannot replicate this issue using IE on XP. Could you upload a screenshot? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 16:15, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Image:Clipboard-template standardisation problem.jpg
As described - there is no border around the template when it is displayed. The image has the correct background colour, but the text is displayed on the same colour as the take page/article is sits in. Here is am image. Apologies for it being quite so ugly... but I've not tried the "PrintScrn/paste into image file" thing before. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:34, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Sorry - a bit of misdirection above - I think it is a classic skin thing rather than an IE thing. The templates all looks fine and dandy when I log out and use monobook.
I have now remembered that the last time this came up was getting tables to float, when class="floatright" style="float:right" did the trick (see John Vanbrugh). -- ALoan (Talk) 16:58, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
I should have mentioned that I reverted the templates listed on Wikipedia:Template standardisation so they all use the {{standard template style}} template until these issues are resolved (Raul did fac and facfailed, and I thought it made sense to make them all consistent). -- ALoan (Talk) 08:28, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Policy and the like

Many pages in Wikipedia namespace have been tagged with 'policy', 'guideline', 'proposed' etc. Would it be a good idea to also make these templates conform to the CoffeeRoll standard? Radiant_* 07:29, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

  • I would oppose this. Simple clean text should be used whenever possible. There's no need to draw so much attention on the main pages. The CoffeeRoll standard is fine for talk pages, it can be a little garish if we overuse it elsewhere. -- Netoholic @ 19:22, 2005 May 17 (UTC)

I think this should come under a separate template standardisation project which I intend to set up in a couple of weeks (when I have the time). violet/riga (t) 19:50, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Okay, sounds good to me. Please keep us posted. Radiant_* 08:01, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • I also support this idea. I did try to apply the new standard to some of these but was (predictably if I'd thought about it) reverted by Netoholic. I look forward to a discussion wherein we can agree upon a standard which will enable us to be bold without fear of endless reversion. --Phil | Talk 11:21, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, not quite. Netoholic's word isn't law. I'm not going into a revert war against him, but if he's the sole supporter of his opinion and there is consensus for ours, we should go right ahead and make the changes. Can we get a couple more opinions please? Radiant_* 12:37, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
      • I think Coffee Roll is a touch bulky (height-wise) for an article page... possibly a cut down version with a half-sized image? plattopustalk 13:39, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
        • Good point. We don't even have an image for most WP-namespace stuff. Radiant_* 14:10, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • The tagging of the Wikipedia Namespace articles should have a different look than those used for Talk pages. Those templates should at least be a different color, if nothing else. Also, there is no reason for any of them to have any graphics in them. BlankVerse ∅ 14:23, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Coffee Roll simply wasn't meant to be used on article pages because it was meant (in part) to gently get your attention. An article space template needs to be much less bold: I have the "proposed policy" colors in mind. – ClockworkSoul 16:40, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Okay, how about we use the same color scheme and width, only make it less tall (two or three lines should suffice)? And no images required, I'd say (how does one make an icon for 'policy' anyway :) ) Radiant_* 07:16, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Colored box controversy

Just an idea I came up with that I thought I'd mention here... most templates are colored boxen to draw attention to something (a timeline, 'cleanup' tag, whatever). There is some controversial usage of templates, for instance using them as article text, signatures, votes etc. These obviously do not employ boxen. So I pose this question... would it help stopping 'misuse' of templates if the software was changed so that every non-subst'ed template comes with a box? Not a proposal, just food for thought. And comment. Radiant_* 14:10, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

  • I'm uncomfortable with the thought of changing the software to force adherance to any standardization scheme. First, because such an implementation would represent a technological solution to what is essentially a social problem; second, because it sacrifices a great deal of the flexibility of the current template system with very little return, besides standardization. – ClockworkSoul 16:36, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Such is the beauty of the English language, the plural of ox may be oxen but the plural of box isn't boxen. Pcb21| Pete 18:50, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Except for those cases where the plural is boxen. --Carnildo 19:19, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Wikipedia is not the encyclopedia that /. built. Pcb21| Pete 19:40, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
        • (sings) We built this Wiki.... we built this Wiki on Coooffeeeee Roll... :) Radiant_* 07:58, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More templates to standardise

Should we standardise the {{fpc}} and {{FeaturedPicture}} templates? What about {{cotw}} and {{COTWnow}}? The new {{FLC}} and {{FL}} templates are in "standard" form. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:57, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmm - doesn't {{protected}} go on the article page, not the talk page? Does our standardisation remit extend so far? (Admittedly, {{fpc}} and {{FeaturedPicture}} go on images pages rather than talk pages, but they are analogous to {{fac}} and {{featured}} to my mind). -- ALoan (Talk) 11:25, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, let me put it this way - is there any good reason for not having Template:protected look like a coffee roll? Radiant_* 11:38, May 20, 2005 (UTC)
  • I would say: yes to {{fac}}, {{featured}}, {{fpc}}, {{FeaturedPicture}}, {{COTW}}, and {{COTWnow}}, as these are all templates that show something about the article from a description point of view. I think the coffee roll design is too prominent to have it on article pages, which need something more subtle. One that could be put under coffee roll is {{Mprotected}}, but I reckon that other protected templates will be standardised differently, and thus Mprotected should follow them. The reason {{Protected}} shouldn't, as Radiant says, be standardised is quite how prominent Protected is. There will come a time when it can be standardised, but I don't think now is the time. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 13:00, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

And can someone standardize {{Transwikied to Wiktionary}}, {{Transwiki to Wiktionary Finished}}, and {{Transwikied and Deleted}}? Not sure I'd do it right, too much HTML stuff. --Dmcdevit 23:23, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

And actually {{Attention}}, {{Move word list}}, {{Cleanup-copyedit}}, {{Limitedgeographicscope}}, {{Mergewith}}, {{reqimage}}, {{ConvertIPA}}, {{ActiveDiscuss}}, and {{controversial3}} are all talk page templates, btw. --Dmcdevit 23:40, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Well okay, I just took a stab at those ones, and I'd appreciate if someone could check them, thanks. --Dmcdevit 08:59, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Is there a reason that {{Cleanup-copyedit}} and {{Mergewith}} are not standardised? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 09:12, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Just that I forgot :) Done now. Thanks for proofreading. Also, Mergewith confused me because Wikipedia:Template_messages/Disputes says to put it on talk pages, but it says to discuss it on talk, implying it isn't found on talk pages. Hmm... went ahead and standardized it. I guess according to that page we should do the {{cleanup}} tag too, but I've never seen that on talk pages. --Dmcdevit 09:40, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Style sheets for skins other than Monobook

This might be a dumb question, but it needs to be confirmed. The new CSS class "Talk-Notice" has been added to MediaWiki:monobook.css: has it been added to the corresponding files for the other skins? Judging by the rather skinny MediaWiki:Standard.css, MediaWiki:Cologneblue.css and MediaWiki:Nostalgia.css, it would appear not, which would explain why users of other skins are reporting problems. --Phil | Talk 07:59, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Oops. Mea maxima culpa. Now done. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 09:02, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Sorry - still doesn't work under the classic skin (the one that I am using) - I just reverted {{peerreview}} to test it and it doesn't display properly. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:03, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Not wanting to state the obvious, but have you tried clearing your cache? I tested it in every skin, and it worked for me... Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 10:14, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Please do state the obvious! I thought I had checked it properly (the templates were all working properly when they used {{standard template style}}, and {{peerreview}} was the only one that was broken when I reverted it to the "class" version) but it now works again! Presumably they should all be changed back to the class="Talk-Notice" versions? -- ALoan (Talk) 12:00, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I am not quite sure, but I think you are asking me how to clear a cache? Wikipedia:Bypass your cache. Otherwise, are you now saying that it works? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 12:18, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't clear my cache explicitly, but since the template went from working to not working when I edited it, I thought that was sufficient. However, it now works with the class="Talk-Notice", so all's well that ends well. I've started reverting the templates over to use the class. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:56, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
Cool. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 13:17, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

This is now available in all skins via Common.css. Please use class="messagebox standard-talk" when setting up the templates. "Talk-Notice" should be deprecated. -- Netoholic @ 05:01, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] subst this page

It may be a good idea to 'subst' all templates on the WP:TS page, because now that page shows up in a whole lot of unrelated categories. Radiant_* 08:54, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More standardisation?

Now that the "class" seems to be working, is there anything else that should be standardised using the same scheme? Wikipedia:Template messages provides a useful list of the "standard" templates in use: most of the templates in Wikipedia:Template messages/Talk namespace are "CoffeeRoll"ed, but what about Wikipedia:Template_messages/Image_namespace or Wikipedia:Template_messages/Disputes? -- ALoan (Talk) 13:53, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

I think that all talk page templates should use this style. violet/riga (t) 14:26, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I've blasted through the Wikipedia:Template messages subpages and been bold, converted templates to the CoffeeRoll style where I thought fit. Only one (Template:Cleanup) reverted so far... -- ALoan (Talk) 12:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
Is there a reason {{Wrongtitle}} and {{Unencyclopedic}} were not done? Also, I think that all the Image: namespace templates should be done, since its effectively a talk page, not visible to the article, and they serve the same sort of purpose. --Dmcdevit 18:22, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
I really don't think you should be blasting through templates like that unless there are few users of a template. One can come up with standards, but unilaterally imposing them on a template that is widely used borders on vandalism in the eyes of those people who have discussed it's format and used it extensively. Courtland July 4, 2005 13:53 (UTC)
  • I'm telling you templates without boxes are hella confusing. I asked normal people (those non geeks unlike us) to read pages wirh stub notices and NONE of them could figure out what the stub notice was, they ALL thought it was part of the article. On pages with a NPOV notice, which is displayed centered, with a box and icon, all of them recognized it as a notice. So take that as you will. Elfguy 3 July 2005 16:50 (UTC)
    • I think you would find a lot of counter-discussion on this point if you brought up this particular concern at the stub sorting WikiProject. There has been much resistance over time with separating the stub template from the article text (i.e. providing space between the end of the article and the template text). This has been aggressively opposed by many people (not just the stub sorting project participants) as being "ugly". You can't even get people to accept that the stub notice should appear at the end of the article .. there's many folks who insist on it being smack in the middle of the article or at the top. In other words, your notion that you've identified some kind of consensus experience is an illusion, unfortunately. It's been very difficult getting any sort of consensus on how a stub template message should appear on an article, if in fact you are talking to a person who doesn't oppose the entire idea of stubs in the first place. Courtland July 4, 2005 13:50 (UTC) (I'm a member of the stub sorting WikiProject, myself)

[edit] Mixing requirements sets and the end of discussion on standards (?)

It seems to me that you've fallen into a trap that everyone does at one time or another when doing work of this kind, that of mixing implementation (or system requirements) with user requirements. The whole business about the code here is a system requirement and should be divorced from and considered separately from standards about appearance of the templates.
Before going on, though, it seems that the standard as outlined on the project page is the standard, period, and that discussion is over essentially, considering the fact that people are changing templates to "conform" at present. Is that correct?
Courtland July 4, 2005 14:01 (UTC)

[edit] scope of the present scheme

User:Violetriga reverted my edit on this page here. My change was to make clear the scope of the current "CoffeeRoll" template standard, as it was described during the vote, before she also removed it from there. Specifically, the phrase "This is a proposal for template standardisation. Firstly it will look at templates used on talk pages for the development, status and Wikiproject information about an article."

I believe it important that we do not jump to the automatic conclusion that people were supporting this standard for every single talk page template. The scope during the vote, based on that phrase and the examples, was that it only applied to templates which state the "development, status and Wikiproject information" of an article. To contrast with that, cleanup templates have their own de facto standard, and are used quite often on talk pages. Cleanup templates, while could slightly be said to state the status of an article, are more a "request for action", whereas "development, status and Wikiproject information" is more passive information. We need to clarify this on the main Wikipedia:Template standardisation page. -- Netoholic @ 21:28, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

It's pretty clear. All talk page templates come under WP:TS. All template notices will soon appear under WP:TS when Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article goes through. Having a standard that isn't applied to all the templates simply means that it isn't a standard! The whole point of this is to make all the templates appear the same when next to each other, on talk pages for the moment and in articles soon. violet/riga (t) 21:32, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
That is not the scope as it was described during the vote, and your attitude is not helpful. -- Netoholic @ 00:14, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
Exactly what are you complaining about? Is there a particular instance you are cross about? As far as I can see, {{cleanup}} falls under no standardisation project. smoddy 21:34, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, Violetriga has threatened to blanket Cleanup and other templates with this standard. I need to establish for her sake that this guideline should apply only to the passive "status" templates, not to any others. I am concerned because Cleanup, and others, have their own 'de facto' standard and work well for their niche. -- Netoholic @ 00:13, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
No, I will be changing all talk page templates to that standard. {{Cleanup}} is not a talk page template. violet/riga (t) 11:42, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

As per the Template voting, it was as much about the usage of the template as it was about the type of page the template was on. There needs to be easily recognized differences between different types of templates, so I definately do not support having All talk page templates match the coffee roll format. BlankVerse ∅ 00:53, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

The whole point of the talk page template standardisation was to standardise all talk page templates. There were votable options for different colourings of types of templates but the set colour of CoffeeRoll was chosen. violet/riga (t) 11:42, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I have to agree that templates used on talk pages for the development, status and Wikiproject information about an article. is not at all the same thing as all talk page templates. Also, the vote being pointed to seems to be devoted to choosing a style -- it was an approval vote. That is not IMO a good method for demonstrating a consensus that a single style should be employesd on all talk page templates. Where and when was this consensus determined? It seems that violet/riga is treating this as a policy, or soemthing close to one -- something that it is proper to seek out and change to conform, and improper to revert away from, and not as a guideline, i.e. strong advice to individual editors, but not an excuse in and of itself sor making and enforcing changes. A policy ought to have a wide or clear consensus behind it. When and where was this established? I don't agree that ALL talk page tempaltes hould have a single color scheme -- it seems to me that different classes of templates, for different purposes, should quite possibly have different apperences. DES 15:22, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

There is a section on Wikipedia:Template_standardisation/vote at the very bottom entitled "Templates included" that would seem to explicitly define the scope of the votes. Was this present during the voting? Should this listing be used as a de facto scope for the voting? Courtland 11:35, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

That is a list of templates included as examples, not a complete list of those that are covered. violet/riga (t) 11:42, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

In looking through the child pages of Wikipedia:Template messages it's clear that efforts have been made in some cases to suggest whether a template belongs on a talk page or not, but there are many cases where this has not been formally stated in the descriptive table.

  • will judgements be made about whether or not a template is a talk-page template when there is not a pre-existing statement of placement?
  • in cases where there are variations from the suggested placement, will the placement be "corrected" throughout Wikipedia?

If either these two questions have "yes" as the answer, then the activity scope of ths proposal is far beyond the scope that has been debated here as it reaches into the article editing space. I'm hoping that these questions make it a little more clear why it is not desirable to address all templates in such a large and ill-defined class as "talk-page templates" in a single editing sweep, as it is clear that will be done regardless of misgivings or dissent on the part of editors who use the templates. Courtland 11:59, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

The idea of categorisation and placement is discussed at both Wikipedia:Template standardisation/article and Wikipedia:Template locations. violet/riga (t) 12:26, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
The mentions on these pages are a proposal (the former) and a survey (the latter), neither of which definitively address the question with regard to specific templates. Until such a time as the proposed explicit segregation of "article" versus "discussion" template is completed, the impact of the present activities should be limited to specific and named templates, not the fuzzy class of "talk-page templates". Could you please provide a list of templates that you (Violet/Riga) will be editing. Courtland 12:37, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
It is limited to talk page templates. The second phase of WP:TS will help to choose which templates go in the article and which go on the talk. violet/riga (t) 13:17, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I see. It would seem to follow, then, that application of the standards should wait until the templates that are to be standardized have been identified, i.e. until the completion of Phase 2. Courtland 23:48, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I think that there are some big disagreements over the scope of the current Template standardizations. As some people have discussed on this page, and has also been shown with some of the edit/revert wars over some templates, several people feel that the "standardization" of the Talk page templates was limited to the example templates in the voting and very similar templates, and was NOT supposed to be for absolutely every template that goes on a Talk page. Another question is whether these "standards" are Wikipedia Policy or just guidelines. As some of the discussion is showing for the Article page templates, there are quite a few people who feel that there needs to be some differentiation in the style of the templates based upon the function or type of template. Unfortunately the vote for Talk page templates never allowed or even considered that there should be any differences in the Talk page templates. My own opinion is that I think that the basic format for the Talk page templates is okay, but there should be some allowances for some variation. I see no problem with This week's improvement drive, for example, standardizing on a nice pastel green for all of their templates, while still using the rest of the talk page "standard". The featured picture notice ({{PromotedFPC}}) also uses the same color, or very similar color, and I see no problem with that either. BlankVerse ∅ 09:38, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Enforcement

Regardless of the outcome of the discussion on the scope of this guideline, I'm curious as to how enforcement will be accomplished. Courtland 21:40, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

I've already seen it. Enforcement is exactly what this is becoming, and it is a bad direction. This is still a guideline, and there are goo d reasons for setting it aside, especially for classes of templates that have a special purpose. I dislike being told "it's on the talk page, so it must be formatted according to WP:TS". -- Netoholic @ 00:08, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Netoholic. Standardization can be carried too far. Maurreen 00:33, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, it is a guideline, and I am open to people suggesting why a template should be exempt from the standard. There are reasons, yes, but this should be properly discussed and the default should be the chosen (CoffeeRoll) standard. Perhaps talk templates for AID, COTW and the like could be made to stand out, but a) they should at least maintain the general style (perhaps the colour being the only tweak), and b) be decided upon as a whole. In other words, lets discuss them as a separate issue and decide on a style for them. violet/riga (t) 12:23, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
As far as I am concerned, this should not be an opt out process in light of the way in which templates are initiated and revised over time by multiple people for particular purposes. Courtland 12:40, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
I disagree, else what is the point of standardisation? There are very few new notice templates that will be made, anyway, as they are all covered by existing ones. violet/riga (t) 13:15, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
At the risk of being redundant, I'll restate something that I wrote elsewhere in these pages: standaridisation means identification and application of standards not make everything look and work the same. If this is accepted, then an opt-in approach would be acceptable. Courtland 23:43, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
The standards are listed on the main page, and they include size, layout and colour. I can't see how you can have a standard if there are lots of templates that don't conform to it. violet/riga (t) 07:43, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Current situation clarification

The current WP:TS covers talk page templates only. The new one, currently under discussion at /article, looks at templates by category. This groups, for example, maintenance templates together under one uniform style. It will include a vote that allows people to decide the positioning (article/talk, top/bottom, etc.) and the design.

The whole point of template standardisation is to make them all look like they're part of a properly organised system. The original WP:TS came about because of the unprofessional appearance of many talk pages when more than one template was used. This is not so much of an issue for article templates, but they should still be standardised. It aims to eliminate the arguments about styles that have been ongoing for a very long time, and allows CSS customisation to override the defaults. Eventually I would love to see a page containing various style submissions that any user can choose and, following the guide, add to their personal CSS script. violet/riga (t) 14:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

The unprofessional appearance aspect should be handled on a template-by-template basis; as it stands, the assumption seems to be that anything that isn't formatted according to the voted for scheme is de facto unprofessional. This should be addressed separately from achieving the "organised system" approach. Mixing these has led to some of the discomfort churn seen here. Identification of elements that contribute to a professional look or detract from it should feed into the standards identification process; the top-down standards setting approach taken here does not lend itself well to the Wikipedia environment, unfortunately. Courtland 23:57, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. You are talking about the templates themselves looking unprofessional, whereas I'm talking about templates stacked together looking unprofessional. When different templates are next to each other it looks (looked) pretty awful, with a bright, wide template with large writing and a black border sitting next to a small pastel box with a grey border. That was the whole point of WP:TS and that's what was chosen - there was a "no standardisation" option but it was massively voted down. violet/riga (t) 07:52, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please back up or at least pause

Mainly because standardization has engendered some bad feelings, I ask people working on this to at least cease any further changes to see if an amicable solution can be found through more or wider discussion. Further, it would be a positive gesture if any disputed templates are returned to their prior status during such discussion. Thanks. Maurreen 15:46, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disputed template(s)

The WP:IDRIVE templates were not listed in the "Included templates", their status as talk page templates is uncertain. Therefore they were not included in the vote, and any changes are not justified by this project. Templates are not really high on my priority list. But I had hoped a discussion could be good, but someone decided not to discuss and just do. Maurreen 03:16, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

  • {{todo}}: This is a template that serves a very different purpose from most templates and I feel strongly that it should be set apart from the "standard" Coffee Roll Talk page templates. A different color would be a start, but I suggest that it should probably be even more distinctive—perhaps using a dashed line for the outline box instead of a solid line, for example. On the other hand, the rest of the Coffee Roll standard as far as text, spacing, ect. should probably still be used. BlankVerse ∅ 09:53, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My view and feelings

The WP:TS page clearly stated:

To try and ensure some level of design consistency throughout Wikipedia the template standardisation page explains how talk page templates should appear.

To me that is not ambiguous. It clearly stated, at the time of the vote, that talk templates should be standardised to the same style. There were three main options in the vote:

  1. One colour for all templates
  2. Different colours for different types of template
  3. No standardisation

The latter was supported by 5 people, the winning design "ClockworkSoul's Coffee Roll" received 42 support votes. This clearly shows the preferred option and the vote and discussions were heavily publicised and open for quite a long time before the decision was made. I'm sorry if people feel that there needs to be different colours for different types (option 2) but that was voted down.

I am a complete aesthete and hate to see the situation that we used to have with four templates of varying design on one page - that's why this was done. To ignore these guidelines there should be a very good reason, in my opinion - with most templates in line with each other it looks silly to have one that isn't. Yes, a compromise can be reached by sticking to the standards but varying the colour, but that was an option in the vote and it was not chosen (mainly because people didn't want "lots of different shades of pastel boxes". Please note that CoffeeRoll wasn't in fact my preferred option and I too wanted differentiation between types of notice.

Being the person that initiated all of this and spent a very long time sorting it all out I am obviously going to be pretty defensive of it. It's rather distressing to work on something for such a long time, making many compromises along the way, just to have people having a go at me. Not everyone will be happy with the decision, that's a given, but all I'm trying to do is make this place look better - some people are acting as if this is entirely my decision, but I only went along with the consensually chosen option. It wasn't just me that implemented it, either.

I'm sorry if I've come across as trying to enforce my ideals. I believe that discussions regarding the layout of templates should be done as a whole instead of per template - that is the only way to ensure a properly continual look and feel. One of the reasons for WP:TS is to avoid confrontations and arguments over the design - such debates and edit wars have been a regular feature of many templates over an extended period of time. Netoholic has done some very good work on the CSS to work towards customisation and I'd like that to be tied in with this even more as I see that as the way forward - I think it would be great to be able to highlight the templates you are interested in, such as the cleanup tags. violet/riga (t) 11:13, 19 July 2005

[edit] Response

I appreciate that a number of people have done substantial work on this with good intentions. However:

  1. Whatever publicity was done, it appears that a number of people were surprised after the fact.
  2. The voting page specifically lists "Templates included". The indication is at least implicit that only those templates would be included in any such standard.
  3. WP distinguishes between its guidelines and policies. According to its template, WP:TS is a guideline. According to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, guidelines are "less rigid rules of thumb that are generally accepted by consensus to apply in many cases." This contrasts with the template language for policies -- that any policy has "wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that everyone should follow". Maurreen 14:11, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
The publicity could not really have been any bigger. A few of us publicised it on WikiEn-L, IRC, WP:VP, WP:CS, WP:SIGN and various other places. As for the implication regarding "templates included" that was referring to those included as examples in the design and not an explicit list of what was to be affected. I see where there is a slight confusion with that, but I believe it is more of an excuse made by people looking back on it rather than what people actually thought during the vote. violet/riga (t) 14:32, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response 2

It is the nature of consensus that it is sometimes difficult to achieve and frustrating to pursue, neither of which undermine its value. Patience with concerned parties for expressing their opinions outside the previously prescribed frame is much appreciated. Courtland 10:43, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response 3

I will be honest—I hadn't really followed the Template standardization vote closely, although I did look in on it when it first started and then checked backed a few times after that to see how it was developing. What I saw seemed pretty reasonable. There were some example templates to be standardized that all had similar purposes and I thought that they probably should have a similar look. The project was also just a guideline and seemed to have a limited scope ("templates used on talk pages for the development, status and Wikiproject information about an article"), which I thought was a good way to to handle such major changes to templates that appeared on numerous pages.

I also figured that if there were any disagreements over specific templates, they would be handled the Wiki-way—through consensus (the same way that although the MOS says to use the most common English spelling, that when most city and country names are put to a survey the consensus is usually to use the "official" spelling or transliteration). Since I am a firm believer of "Don't vote on everything on the Wikipedia", I saw no reason to vote at WP:TS. On the other hand, if I had noticed anything about treating the Template standardization as Wikipedia Policy instead of a Guideline, or that the Template standardization was meant for absolutely every Talk page template, or that there would be enforcement of the Tempate stadard and revert wars over templates, I would have jumped in and voted "No bloody way!".

So what has happened after the vote? Violetriga has started enforcing the Talk page template standard as if it was Policy and not just a Guideline, and doing it for ALL Talk page templates and not just those mentioned in the vote. She even reverted back a non-standard version (using Admin Rollback powers to do it) and then suggested that it was "vandalism" instead of admitting that there was an honest disagreement between two Wikipedia editors (see Rollback). [Both sides of that template argument did a very poor job of assuming good faith in my opinion!]

I think that although Violetriga has done plenty of good work with this project, I think that she has now got too much invested in it. She has taken ownership over the Template standardization project, and that is not good for the project or the Wikipedia. Furthermore, if the Talk page template standard is going to be applied to absolutely every Talk page template no matter what, and there is going to be enforcement of the standard as if it was Policy and not just a Guideline, then I think that the issue needs to be revisited with another survey because none of that was mentioned in the original survey (and every WikiProject and other Wikipedia group that has templates that would be affected (e.g. WP:FPC) should be notified of the new survey). BlankVerse ∅ 13:07, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

You may wish to note that a number of people implemented the standard on various templates. I've explained about the consensus-building for individual templates but it looks like you've chosen to ignore that. Same can be said for "none of that was mentioned in the original survey", which I also clearly answered. violet/riga (t) 15:56, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
re:original survey: No, you have not clearly answered that. It is very clear that you think that the original survey said one thing, but from the numerous comments that have been made here on the talk page, it is very clear that others think that the original vote only covered a limited set of Talk page templates. They then think that you have expanded the scope and mandate of the Template standardization after the vote to include ALL Talk page templates. My own opinion is that since this debate shows that it was not OBVIOUS that the vote was meant to cover all Talk page templates, then the standardization should only apply to the example templates, very similar templates, and the three classes of Talk page templates mentioned in the original description. If you want the "Coffee Roll" standard to apply to absolutely every template used on Talk pages, you will need to conduct a new survey.
re: "consensus-building for individual templates": Perhaps I am blind, so you will have to point out where you explained that. All I can find is your "my way or the highway" attitude (as exemplified by your revert war and comments to User:Fenice over {{AIDcur}}). BlankVerse ∅ 05:11, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
Sorry but "how talk page templates should appear" does not say "how some specific talk page templates should appear" and that was the intro the the WP:TS page during the vote. Your call for a second survey is clearly biased. violet/riga (t) 12:49, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
I took a look at Rollback which User:BlankVerse had provided a link to above. I am disturbed to see User:Violetriga having enforced guideline as policy using administrative powers. This is sufficiently serious that removal of administrative authority, perhaps for a limited time, should be considered. I am very sensitive to the blurring of lines between guideline and policy. In my opinion, anything that crosses that line or blurs it further should be dealt with using a sledgehammer. Courtland 14:18, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
To be fair to her, she did reply that she made a mistake. However, if you think this way, please see Wikipedia:Possible misuses of sysop rights - that is the correct place to raise a complaint. Talrias (t | e | c) 15:52, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
It's hardly an abuse of powers - it's more an act of laziness. Abuse of powers would've been protecting it on my version, and for you to suggest such action is more than a little offensive. It's like saying that I once trod on a spider and should therefore but treated as an animal abuser. violet/riga (t) 15:56, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for minimizing my concern to a matter of trivia. In response to "this is not the place to complain" (the post from Talrias), I am of the belief that admins should seek sanction of admins and that we non-admins should provide input on the matter but neither initiate nor close such activities. That's not policy, it's just my (perhaps twisted) operating procedure. Courtland 14:02, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
If you are concerned about someone's use of admin powers, who else will report it but you? Talrias (t | e | c) 17:38, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
If mine is the only voice in such a large community as this, then my concern is too minor to rise to the level of such action. Actions that bring calls of concern such as this are not private goings on. In the matter of the Admin community policing itself, which is another way of phrasing my personal desire, I trust that the members of that community are not deaf to the concerns of non-admin folk. Courtland 18:36, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
As it says at WP:RFA "Admins have no special authority on Wikipedia, but are held to high standards, as they are perceived by some users as the "official face" of Wikipedia. Admins should be courteous, and should exercise good judgment and patience in dealing with others." Unfortunately, instead of Admins being held to a higher standard, in most cases Admins are allowed much more leeway than other editors for their behavior and misbehavior. Still, using your Admin revert powers in the service of edits wars has been used as a reason for Abitration Committee sanctions (e.g. User:Everyking). BlankVerse ∅ 05:11, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
I think that this is an appropriate place to complain. For one thing, it enables a more-friendly discussion which might avoid the need for stronger enforcement. Maurreen 18:03, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
I can't see how that requires more of a response than the previous one. violet/riga (t) 12:49, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

It might be more productive to focus on the future than the past. I am interested in hearing from the members of the standardization project on how they intend to proceed, especially concerning any possible "enforcement." Maurreen 16:39, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response 4, next step?

I see two amicable ways we could proceed here:

1. The standardization project decides not to try to enforce template standards, but just to encourage them in a friendly way, or

this is the "guideline" route User:Ceyockey

2. the standardization project clarify its intention and planned procedures and invite community input before deciding it has enforcement authority. Maurreen 15:19, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

...and this is the "policy" route. User:Ceyockey

[edit] Other options

A couple possibilities:

  1. Handle templates or articles individually.
  2. Work to cut down the number of templates used on any article at any given time. Maurreen 15:03, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Customisation of the standards

Yes, I know it sounds funny, but I have confirmed that it is possible to over-ride particular settings (for example, use a different background colour) whilst retaining the basic look-and-feel. Maybe if we made this more public, this would mollify those people who are worried about simply being rolled over? —Phil | Talk 16:18, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad it's working. I think it needs fully documenting with example customisations. It might be best to wait until the templates are categorised properly before such documentation is written, though. violet/riga (t) 17:41, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
Let's be clear, are you talking about customization on a user by user basis, or on a template by template basis. The former does nothing to address my concerns, at least. DES 18:21, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking of a situation wherein a particular WikiProject has decided to use a particular colour to unify all associated templates: they can take advantage of the existing standards for layout, etc, and simply over-ride the colour. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 07:06, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling?

I'm pretty sure it's standardization, not standardisation. At least according to my spellcheck. Is this a regional variance? That's why I moved it in the first place and fixed all the redirects. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 13:49, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

In American English, the z is often used in place of the s used in British English, hence, I'm guessing, your confusion. According to the Manual of Style:
If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please don't be too quick to make accusations!)
Since the article/page was originally in British English, we are advised to continue to use British English. Wikipedia has not, and probably will never, adopt a specific type of English. Note also that a redirect exists, so that the page can be found using either spelling. -- Ec5618 14:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Did something change?

I went over the converstion, but I can't find out why suddenly a bunch of templates are broken. Did someone change something during that last week that would cause this monstrosity to appear all over the place:

Featured picture star This is a featured picture, which means that community consensus has identified it as one of the finest images on Wikipedia, adding significantly to its accompanying article. If you have an image of similar quality, be sure to upload it, using the proper free license tag, then add it to a relevant article and nominate it.

It's highly ironic that the featured pictures are marred with such an unsightly error message. Isn't there a better way to identify and fix the CSS issue without making a whole bunch of templates look like crap for all of the people that aren't interested in fixing CSS code? Cacophony 19:42, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Somebody forgot to change it over to the new style. I've fixed it now ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 19:44, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing that one, but it appears that many other templates have the same ugly error message. This is something that has changed recently and I'd like to notify whomever made the modification that the new error message has an error. The links to Wikipedia:Template standardisation appear like [[Wikipedia:Template standardisation]]. Even if they can find the page, there is no discussion about how to fix the CSS error. Cacophony 05:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Which templates use this? To fix them, yhe templates should use class="messagebox standard-talk", rather than class="Talk-Notice". Talrias (t | e | c) 09:47, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Last night I went through and changed about 125 templatesfrom class=talk notice to class=messagebox standard, but I am still confused as to what changed in the last week that caused 100+ templates to be broken. Is there a way that could have prevented many thousands of pages to display broken templates for a week+? Could there have been a better way to fix them problem than waiting for some random person (me) to discover the problem and fix it? I am dissapointed in the piss poor planning that caused this to happen. Cacophony 21:39, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I've fixed a few of those myself, and I'm still running into CSS errors on templates. I guess it gave me an excuse to read up on templates a little, but it took me a bit of puzzling to figure exactly what broke. I am curious about where the discussions were about the change over from "talk-notice" to "messagebox standard-talk". Somewhere on meta? Or maybe the local planning department on Alpha Centauri? ;) –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 09:04, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and one other thing, I think it may be browser-specific whether the CSS error is visible. Looking at a template with the old class in Safari, I see the notice, but in Firefox I don't. –Abe Dashiell (t/c) 09:18, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What the?

CSS is messed up somewhere. Please have a look at talk:G-caron:

  1. "The CSS for this template should be changed"—there ain't no template there. Please rewrite the note so it makes sense.
  2. "See [[Wikipedia:Template Standardisation]]"—that link redirects. Please correct the capitalization in the CSS.

Thanks. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 03:22 Z

[edit] Request: manditory links

It is my opinion that all templates should contain manditory view/edit/talk links. -b 01:32, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright tag standardization

Please see Wikipedia talk:Image copyright tags#Template standardization for discussion on a related proposal. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Take a look at this

 This page is part of WikiProject Stargate, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Stargate on Wikipedia.
stargate-sg-1-atlantis - edit talk + - Portal - project - talk + - join

This should be changed, no? ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 06:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Yep. violet/riga (t) 11:06, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

"While this is not a firm policy, it is advised that any new talk page templates should be based on the standard design."

WikiProject Stargate is a well organized WikiProject that does a very good job of using tasteful and useful design choses in templates and articles. They feel that using a different color works better for their project, and have discussed the issue of the color choice before. The group has a large consensus and valid rational for being excluded from the color requirement, while meeting other requirements. For a guideline, this is about as far as it can go. If you want them to change it then you'll have to upgrade this page to policy or try to convince them in discussion. -- Ned Scott 12:18, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's an idea (apart from the fact that the rest of Wikipedia takes precedence over a little WikiProject) Why don't you make the main part of the template the real colour, and leave the lower bar as it is. You get the best of both worlds, then ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 08:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Consensus within a WikiProject does not trump consensus of Wikipedia as a whole. Quite the contrary. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
You have no strong consensus, and the guideline specifically says "...this is not a firm policy, it is advised that any new talk page templates should be based on the standard design." Guidelines are guidelines because they can have exceptions that are not addressed on a large scale. From WP:PAG#The differences between policies, guidelines, essays, etc.: "Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. ". So, actually, consensus in a WikiProject (in this situation) does trump the "consensus" of this guideline. I can't tell you how often I've had to explain to people that guidelines are NOT the same thing as policy. -- Ned Scott 21:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
It's also advised that you don't fart at the dinner table, but.... ....(Complain)(Let us to it pell-mell) 06:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Guideline proposed about "mini templates"

A new policy had been preposed to reduce the size of templates here: your help with integrating the designs into the current design standards would be appreciated. Dev920 (check out this proposal) 08:00, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The correct link is Wikipedia:Mini Talkpage Template. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:19, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improving template code

I've made a proposal for converting disambiguation templates from table layouts to CSS-based ones atMediaWiki_talk:Common.css#Improving_template_code. —Michael Z. 2006-11-07 05:32 Z

[edit] Featured article candidate?

In the example section, the templates should be substituted and the categories removed, because now this page is sorted into categories it doesn't belong in!!! Unless anyone objects or beats me to it I will do this myself later.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 11:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Small Option

Could anyone (not you Ned) tell me why they call it a small "option"? Can individual users disable it so it still appears normal to them? Otherwise I don't see the point of calling it an "option". 10:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Quadzilla99 (talk • contribs).

Well, that's a bit rude. It's called the small option because it's large by default. I'm not too familiar with editing, but it should be possible to make banners show large all the time if you edit your monobook.css file. m:Help:User style might be a good place to start. -- Ned Scott 15:33, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
The user has no option, the option is for the template. Quadzilla99 08:11, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

It is alleged by some here that "small=yes" is a failure, and that there is already consensus about that. Does anyone have any views about whether that is so or not? Personally I think small is nifty and a much better solution to the readability problem than a template container. ++Lar: t/c 19:19, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template clutter being reduced

In case the people watching this page aren't aware of it, there is a new way to reduce template clutter. See Template:ArticleHistory for a template combining FA/GA/FAC/AfD notices, and see Template talk:Multiproject for discussions on how to combine WikiProject templates. This may affect whether people decide to use the small=yes option on a talk page. Carcharoth 10:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:WikiProjectBanners

Template:WikiProjectBanners has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- Ned Scott 08:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk page templates considered harmful

I would prefer no banners on talkpages, because talkpages are solely for talk. All banners are basically advertising; they serve the needs of the people placing them and not the people reading them. Thoughts? --Ideogram 02:33, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:PROJGUIDE#Recruiting. :-\ Kirill Lokshin 02:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
(And that aside, even, from the fact that "Talk" is actually doubling as "Article metadata".) Kirill Lokshin 02:37, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
That's exactly the problem, all kinds of junk is being put on the talk page because it has nowhere else to go, and it's interfering with the primary function of the talk pages, which is talk. Wikipedia veterans have no need to see the same article history templates and "this was cited in the National Enquirer" and "this appeared in Do You Care" announcements. If you want an article metadata page, create it. I don't watch TV commercials and I don't want to see Wikipedia commercials. --Ideogram 02:42, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Remember, there are the novice users who are seeing the page for the first time, and the veterans who already know it all. Don't force the veterans to cater to the needs of the novices. --Ideogram 02:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
The stuff has to go somewhere; we're well past the point where the project can function smoothly without tracking a variety of metadata for articles. If you want to lobby the devs to provide a separate namespace for it, be my guest; but, for the time being, the talk pages are simply the only place where it can be kept.
It's worth pointing out, of course, that only a small fraction of article talk pages ever contain actual discussion; the vast majority are deserted, and will contain either metadata or nothing at all.
(Novices outnumber veterans by several orders of magnitude, incidentally; so that's not really a convincing argument.) Kirill Lokshin 02:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
What's funny about this is that I was just thinking about how great it would be to have some sort of "2nd" talk page, but where people could put WikiProject banners, but more than that, could list relevant guidelines to help new users see what they should read for their particular article (make it quick and easily to filter the stuff to see and not see, that kind of idea). There would be no "talk" on this page, and it would be more about notices and useful editor links.
I don't buy the idea that WikiProject promotion is bad and that it doesn't help editors. The only reason I defend them is because banners have lead me to some of the most helpful resources I could find when I was a newbie. I understand that now that is the minority, but wasn't always like it is now. There is nothing wrong with promoting editing collaboration, and in the past it really did work (and still does, but tends to get lost in the sea of less-useful ones). -- Ned Scott 03:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) The veterans spend orders of magnitude more time on Wikipedia than the novices, the veterans do orders of magnitude more work, and each individual user is a novice only once.

Metadata is only placed on pages by people who go there. I guarantee you the vast majority of pages with no talk also have no metadata.

Let me ask you a question: why don't we put project banners on article pages? I'll answer it too: because most people are only interested in reading an article and not joining a project. By the same token, the vast majority of views of a project banner on a talk page are by people who have already decided whether to join the project or not. You want to show project banners to users who are already (or likely to be) interested in joining a wikiproject.

Let me also note that this recruiting motivation rewards wikiprojects for plastering their banners over as many articles as possible, in a land grab. This is a tragedy of the commons where the reader's attention is the commons. --Ideogram 03:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Right now, I am interested in joining a Linguistics WikiProject. I have read some articles but haven't seen a banner. What do I do now? Assume it doesn't exist? The banners are not serving my needs, and they should, because I, as a veteran, will likely contribute more to a WikiProject than the average novice. --Ideogram 03:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I think we have some agreement here that it would be desirable to have a separate metadata page for each article. Can we work towards that goal instead of adding epicycles to talk page banners? --Ideogram 03:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Wow, you couldn't be more wrong. A great deal of newbies join WikiProjects, start accounts just to join WikiProjects, and even start WikiProjects as newbies. A lot of projects are started to help avoid confusion for new editors by placing guidelines and centralized discussion where they can easily find it. This isn't just an idea, this actually happens every day on Wikipedia.
I would love to have some other data fork for this info, such as another page, but that would require a lot of software development and is not likely to happen soon. -- Ned Scott 03:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
And since Wikipedia is changing all the time, you can easily become a newbie more than once in regards to some things. -- Ned Scott 03:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
You are not listening to me. Joining a wikiproject, creating an account, and even starting a wikiproject are not substantial contribution. Editing pages and participatiing in discussions is. As for the newbie argument, I can be a newbie when it comes to looking for a new wikiproject, but I can only be a newbie to viewing a talk page once. After that I don't need to see the same banners over and over again. --Ideogram 03:19, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Add messagebox.standard-talk { display: none } to your CSS, and you need never see them again. Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Always and never are both wrong choices. --Ideogram 03:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Didn't you just say that you wanted "no banners on talkpages"? Kirill Lokshin 03:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I said I wanted a metadata page. --Ideogram 03:33, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) So you're arguing that we have 600,000 talk pages with actual discussion on them? Not to put too fine a point on it, but somehow I think your numbers may be just a little bit off. ;-)
There is no way we tagged 600,000 articles by hand. Your figures only serve to illustrate the problem: if every wikiproject tagged the same number of articles talk pages would be overwhelmed. --Ideogram 03:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
But, beyond that, keep in mind that I'm not making a theoretical point here. I'm speaking entirely from practical experience. WikiProjects that actively tag talk pages have a much easier time keeping up with attrition than projects that don't; indeed, there are very few truly active projects that don't use banners. You're extrapolating from yourself when you're quite far from the average case: you already know what a WikiProject is! Most newer editors don't, and almost certainly won't unless they happen to spot a banner announcing one.
The reason we don't put project banners on articles is more WP:ASR than anything else, incidentally. (Trust me, people have tried. Repeatedly.) Kirill Lokshin 03:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Your point does not address my objection, namely, the tragedy of the commons. If every wikiproject takes the same approach of tagging as many articles as possible, Wikipedia as a whole will lose. You think it's great that WP:MILHIST has succeeded because it has banners all over the place; what do you think will happen when every talk page has dozens of banners? This is not a theoretical point either, it is happening right now. --Ideogram 03:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
We'll have lots of projects like MILHIST?
(Basically, you're making an assumption that more tags will somehow lead to... what? Less recruits for each project? That doesn't at all match up with what we're seeing in practice. The only practical drawback of more banners is the actual visual real estate they occupy, and that's a technical concern that can be dealt with by technical means.) Kirill Lokshin 03:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I AM talking about visual real estate. You do realize that these new articlehistory and wikiprojectbanner templates are really metadata pages implemented by other means? --Ideogram 03:37, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't know about you, but I already have to scroll down because new discussion is towards the bottom of talk pages, not at the top. Having said that, I do agree that we need to clean up clutter, but not all talk pages are cluttered and not all banners should be considered the bad part of that clutter. -- Ned Scott 03:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to have to scroll to see the table of contents. --Ideogram 03:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, yes. It's being done that way because (a) making the devs do anything is hard, (b) moving things to a whole new namespace is hard, and, most importanly, (c) the scope of the problem is very limited. As I said above, the majority of talk pages contain banners and nothing else; it's only when there's actual discussion present that we need to remove the big block o'banners from the top, and these new templates do so fairly adequately, and without requiring the massive technical changes of a full-blown metadata namespace. Kirill Lokshin 03:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
At this point I think we are vehemently agreeing. I would be a fool to advocate a specific technical solution to the general problem of conserving visual real estate. Having a single button you can click on to expand a collection of banners does not differ in usability from creating a metadata namespace. As long as we can limit it to one button for article history, one button for wikiprojects, and one button for everything else that doesn't belong on a talk page, I am satisfied. --Ideogram 03:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
What we need is a way to inform every interested user of what WikiProjects are, and then give them a way to find one that interests them. --Ideogram 03:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Here's an example of a banner that I've had a big hand in, {{WikiProject DIGI}}. Yes, it's a WikiProject for... Digimon.. But put your fears to rest, the goals of this project is to actually reduce things like fancruft and the hundreds of articles about these mostly non-notable little guys. The banner does a few things, one is that it has a second banner explaining the current mass-merging effort going on in hundreds of articles. Editors are seeing a lot of changes happen and who knows what they'll think of it, jumping to conclusions and getting into revert wars. Adding a notice helps people to understand what's going on and how they can be involved in the discussion. That alone has been a world of help in our merging efforts. Also take note that it's pretty small compared to most banners, using the show button for all those little extras that most banners have at the main level. Clicking show revolves direct links to important guidelines that many of these fly-by-night fan editors won't normally take the time to find themselves. I'd like to know what you think about this template and it's uses. The talk pages this is seen on are pretty clean and free of banner clutter. At most a page will have two banners total (not including that sub-banner), even when sharing an article with another project. These are the kinds of situations I want to defend, and are the kinds of situations I'm not sure everyone is considering. -- Ned Scott 03:37, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I had not considered the benefits of using WikiProject templates to announce wikiproject-wide news. I think that is very useful. Unfortunately I don't see how it will work when nested inside another expanding banner. The show button, as I noted above, is fine.
I can see that this is an effective solution for your situation. My situation involves WPCHINA, and obviously a lot of our articles are part of, or going to be part of, a lot of other wikiprojects. I was horrified by Talk:Go (board game). If that can be fixed to have exactly the three buttons I mentioned eariler, preferably in a horizontal line, I will be fine. --Ideogram 04:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Solution to a more general problem

I hate navigation templates. They take up a huge amount of room and display tons of links in the hope that they will interest the reader.

It appears this is the same kind of problem as the multiplying banners. Whoever solves this problem, I would also like some kind of solution that allows navigational templates to be hidden behind a button. Right now some of them have a show button, but this (a) doesn't combine multiple nav templates and (b) still forces it to take up a whole horizontal line. --Ideogram 23:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Holy smokes, I know what you mean. Some nav templates are just insane. I figure they should only be used for a series of articles, but many people are just using them to tie similar articles together, which is what internal linking and the see also section is for. -- Ned Scott 06:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
For my current solution to this problem, see User:Ideogram/navigation templates. --Ideogram 06:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I dunno.. Again, this is a situation where I'd much rather just remove needless nav templates and come up with some aggressive guidelines. -- Ned Scott 06:53, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I tried removing them and got into an argument. This was a compromise. --Ideogram 06:55, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Most maintenance templates should be placed on the talk page

Copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) to Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/article#Most maintenance templates should be placed on the talk page --Philip Baird Shearer 13:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Village pump conversation regarding templates

See here this concerns several aspects of the WikiProject templates and their implementation. Quadzilla99 00:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] eh...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt the fact that {{Shortcut}} boxes are occasionally used on talk pages could reasonably be construed to mean they have anything to do with the formatting guidelines on this page. —freak(talk) 10:02, Apr. 16, 2007 (UTC)

"This scheme is to be used for all talk page templates." Some of the elements can be modified when needed (and note that smaller, right-aligned boxes are displayed on the page), but they should be followed unless there's a good reason not to. Your personal opinion that the coloring is "ugly" is not such a reason.
For the record, I happen to think that having the box not match the other talk page templates that it often sits next to makes it ugly. But that isn't why I changed {{shortcut}} to display with the standard talk page template coloring when used on talk pages. I did so because this coloring indicates whether or not a template is appropriate for use on talk pages. This standard is important, as it discourages users from accidentally placing talk page templates in articles (and vice versa). That always was one of the main ideas behind this standardization. (It was not, as you wrote, something intended to apply strictly to "banners that stack in the middle 85% of the page," which merely describes the default configuration.)
You wrote that a "template should not change color depending on where it's used," which appears to be another personal opinion (and not based on any policy, guideline, or community discussion). To me, this seems like an excellent method of conveying the fact that a template is appropriate for use on talk pages and non-talk pages. More importantly, we don't have to worry about users seeing a non-"Coffee Roll" template widely used on talk pages and believing that it's appropriate to follow suit with others (which are intended for use on non-talk pages). —David Levy 11:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, David, but you've already told me what you think. I was hoping I could get a reply from someone other than yourself. Otherwise, why would I have posted here? —freak(talk) 15:41, Apr. 16, 2007 (UTC)
I'm not stopping other people from weighing in. I'm merely explaining the reasoning behind my opinion and addressing your statements (some of which I believe to be incorrect). —David Levy 22:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Small option as default?

Considering the large amounts of illwill talkpage banners invoke in some users, could we make small=yes the default for most/all of them? Has this been suggested/rejected before?

See particularly this thread at wikien-l, wherein they discuss creating a 3rd meta-page for each article, to move banners to. Partially to stop banners from clogging the top of talkpages, partially to leave the redlink for "discussion" intact if there hasn't actually been any there yet.

Thanks. --Quiddity 18:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Not really a good idea, in my opinion, as it would interfere with the use of things like {{WikiProjectBanners}}/{{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. Kirill 00:28, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
{{WikiProjectBanners}} already has small=yes coded in. {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} doesn't but it could be added. --Quiddity 05:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh man, I'd love a 3rd page. We could list guidelines and stuff that applied to the article there too, which would be a huge help. -- Ned Scott 02:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
It seems too much like process-creep. Plus people would inevitably campaign for categories to be moved there too (not a good idea). The harder things are to find, the less they get used/noticed, and the more they get complained about.
(heh, I see that one in the archives now too. Figures :)
As for small=yes as default:
Take an example like Talk:Vitamin C: Only the "To do" list deserves/needs to be fullsize, the other 4 templates could all fit better next to the initial-content/TOC
Or the example used on the projectpage, Talk:Islam: In the mini-talkarchive I see this given as an example of a bad diff, but that's just what the actual talkpage looks like currently! If small is always "optional", people don't tend to use it.
Refined suggestion: Make certain types of talk-template default to small=yes (tobedetermined, obviously. e.g. wikiproject banners, previous collabs, etc). "Small" was/is a good solution, it just hasn't been perfectly implemented yet.
That's my current perspective anyway :) "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler", as the great man said. --Quiddity 05:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
small as default still would be a good idea--what is the status? As for a third page, I am reluctant to clutter up the interface, and obtrusive as the multiple banners & notices can be, I think they'd just get ignored there. The goal should be compactness, realizing that a tag cant explain everything fully. —DGG (talk) 08:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template width

On the front page of this project it says "Size is 85% width and the whole template is centered" but in MediaWiki:Common.css the class .messagebox clearly states "width: 80%;" and the class .messagebox.standard-talk does not override. And the templates I see on talk pages are indeed 80% wide. So should we update the front page to say 80% width? --David Göthberg 17:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I updated the project page to say 80% width now, since no one protested in a week. --David Göthberg 16:02, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Protection templates, new style

The protection templates are being redesigned.

The Wikipedia:Article message boxes project has now changed and standardised the styles for most of the message boxes that goes on article pages. We are now planning to change the protection templates to have a matching look when on article pages.

While we are at it we intend to also change their look when they are on talk pages. To have the look designed by this project. Thus I thought you who watch this talk page might be interested to have a look and voice your opinion about it.

The new design can be viewed here: {{pp-meta}}

The new design is discussed here: Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes#Protection templates, new meta template

--David Göthberg 09:01, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to proceed with a new talk page template?

Hello everyone. I'm currently working on a template for talk pages which would indicate which optional MoS element (em vs. en dashes for example) is being used in an article. Once we've got something stable, is there a formal approval process (as with bots), or do we just start using it and add it to Cat:Wikipedia templates (as with the userbox index)? Thanks in advance. – Scartol · Talk 14:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

There doesn't exist an "approval process" but there are some traditions: If you think your template might need some discussion then just code it up but don't add links to it from "official" pages. Instead announce it on several or even many talk pages like this one. That is, on talk pages that are likely to be watched by people that are interested in your template. Ask them to come to the talk page of your template to discuss it. Then wait some day and see what happens. If no one objects then go one and link to it from all the official places.
--David Göthberg (talk) 03:45, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category message boxes

For those of you interested, a similar standardization project is starting up for category message boxes. Your input would be greatly appreciated at Wikipedia:Category message boxes. Cheers, Rocket000 06:30, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Main talk other

From the (in)famous creator of the {{ambox}}, here comes a new meta-template:

I have coded up a solution for the message boxes that are used on several types of pages. Take a look at the {{main talk other}} template. It helps other templates detect what type of page they are on, so they can change appearance. And I think I have managed to make it really easy to use.

If you also need to detect category pages then there is a template for that too: {{main talk category other}}.

Disclaimer: The first sentence above is a joke. The ambox was very much a teamwork and a lot of people worked hard in that project.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:49, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Help with Ohio Template

I added a portal nav box to Template:OH-Project, here's the problem:
{{OH-Project}}
{{OH-Project}}
When I add the class syntax the portal box disappears. Thanks for the help. §tepshep • ¡Talk to me! 21:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem seems to be fixed, so I tnull'ed the templates. For requests like this, please use Wikipedia:Requested templates. Thank you. eDenE 04:35, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] hide/show

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but... could a hide/show button be added to Template:FAQ ? Would be useful for long FAQs on busy talk pages. Thanks Tvoz |talk 18:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Message box standardisation

To standardise the look of message boxes in image space and category space we have now coded up some suggestions. See the new meta-templates {{imbox}} and {{cmbox}} and discuss the design for them at their talk pages.

I will announce this standardisation effort in the appropriate places here at Wikipedia during the next few days.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Now we have coded up the {{tmbox}} for talk pages and the {{ombox}} for all other types of pages such as "Wikipedia:" pages. This means all the namespaces are covered. Everyone is invited to take a look at the new boxes and have a say at their talk pages.
Note that we are suggesting some colour changes for talk page and "other pages" message boxes. So we really would like some input from some more editors before we deploy this all over Wikipedia.
For instance, this is a {{tmbox}} with the suggested style for "minor warnings and problems".
And this is an {{ombox}} with the suggested style for "major warnings and problems".
--David Göthberg (talk) 12:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)