Template talk:Texas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is part of WikiProject Texas, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Texas. |
| Template | This article has been rated as Template-Class on the quality scale. |
 Archives |
|---|
Contents |
[edit] Nav-box index crisis
15-Dec-2007: As the nav-box Template:Texas continues to be expanded with more cities or topics, and transcluded into more articles, the Wikipedia indexing is becoming a so-called "N-squared problem" or more accurately an "NxM (N-by-M) problem": when 2,500 articles use a nav-box having 200 wikilinks, the overall effect generates 500,000 entries into the Wikipedia index-file database: the seemingly small nav-box (with just 200 city/region names and topics) snowballs into a massive half-million entries in the Wikipedia link-files database.
The problem is encouraged because some people treat nav-box templates as being shared subroutines or common menus, but they are not: in MediaWiki language 1.6, nav-box templates are actually copied as multiple instances for each page when used, rather than implemented as a shared common routine. If just 10 pages use a nav-box linking 150 cities/regions, that's 1,500 index entries, and the current result has become the thousands of index entries already created by Template:Texas. Solutions are being implemented to avoid the growing nav-box index crisis, as discussed below. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Template:Texas reduces nav-box crisis
15-Dec-2007: As a very simple solution to nav-box overlinking, the Template:Texas does not contain box links to the 254 counties in Texas (most of any state); instead, Template:Texas merely links the full-length counties article by "See: List of Texas counties". Although Template:Texas gives a simple solution reducing the nav-box crisis, it has the drawback of linking a very long article to provide county-name links, rather than a short nav-box template of county-names. Instead, I suggest using a condensed state-counties template for only counties of a state, similar to Template:Texas, but with only box links to county-names, avoiding a full-length article listing descriptions of all counties. Then, that kind of state-counties template ("Template:Texas_counties") would only be transcluded into a few hundred articles about counties, rather than several hundred. Meanwhile, each state-template could be substantially shortened (by using "See: Table of Texas counties" to also reduce overall wikilinks by 50,000 or so), when a condensed state-counties template has been developed and verified, for each state. Long term, the general solution would be multiple smaller templates:
-
-
- Template:Texas - simplified as links to other templates;
- Template:Texas_counties - condensed table of county names;
- Template:Texas_cities - condensed table of major cities;
- Template:Texas_regions - condensed table of major regions;
- Template:Texas_topics - condensed table of topic articles;
- Template:Texas_roads - condensed table of roadways;
- Template:Texas_railways - condensed table of railways.
-
Other templates could be added for future subjects. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:39, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Linking both counties table and list
16-Dec-2007: Although Template:Texas reduces the nav-box index crisis by not including box links to the 254 counties, it instead links to a very long article about the counties, including 254 map images of those counties. I am changing Template:Texas to link to both a quick "Table of Texas counties" aka Template:Texas_counties, as well as the original list. Linking to that Table of counties will restore the functionality lost in August 2007, when the 254 county-links were removed; however, since the table is a separate article, it will not re-generate the "254,000" additional wiki-links as in the July version of Template:Texas. That table combines the benefits of the old, with the efficiency of the new. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
