Template talk:WPBeatles/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archive 1
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Contents

"Above"

"above" doesn't always work (unless we move all the usage notes out). I liked it with more detail. ++Lar: t/c 22:39, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

self reference

Is there a reason why the self reference no longer works? I think it would be a good idea to have a category listing all the pages that are tagged with this template. Estrose 03:15, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Had me worried for a moment that you were using subst :-) As long as the template is transcluded and not substituted, we can see which pages use it by checking Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:WPBeatles. I think a category is not a bad idea at all, my only objection was against having the template place articles directly into Category:WikiProject The Beatles. A subcat such as (straight off the top of my head) Category:WikiProject The Beatles articles would be fine?
Thanks for the work you're doing. Please consider signing your name at Wikipedia:WikiProject_The_Beatles#Participants if you haven't already. --kingboyk 03:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, let's use that category. I think it's a good thing. Or is it? It only applies to talk pages so that it's an internal category seems goodness. I can turn it back on if no one has strong feelings. ++Lar: t/c 16:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
As long as people include the template and don't substitute, whatever we do is easily reversible. If you see a need be bold and go for it. 'Nod' (in Lar speak) about the Talk pages. --kingboyk 17:10, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Importing content from Template:British-English

The idea was mooted at Talk:The Beatles of adding a bit to this template to indicate that Beatles articles should be written in British English. Opinions? -GTBacchus(talk) 02:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I would want to see the content kept inside the tan box, with a heading that suggest that more guidelines might be coming along. But ya, seems a good idea. Before we do it would like to hear more thoughts from other project participants. ++Lar: t/c 02:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll have a play in my sandbox if you like. Can then delete or do a history merge depending on if people disprove/approve. --kingboyk 02:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
A history merge may be a bit of overkill to just see what it looks like, you can just paste the change in to the real template once we like it, presumably... but sure! Sounds good. ++Lar: t/c 02:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Ya, I meant once it had been approved and hacked about. It's currently in User:Kingboyk/Sandbox but read only for a few mins pse. --kingboyk 02:59, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I think the current text (modded and edited down) of {{British-English}} should be inside the upper tan box as a bullet point under the heading "suggested article guidelines" (coming up with at least one more guideline would help make sense of that I guess) Maybe you're working on it! If you don't follow, LMK and I'll have a go... ++Lar: t/c 03:06, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Hack away. --kingboyk 03:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok. I will. ++Lar: t/c 03:06, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Personally I like it seperate. My reason for including it in the template was ease of propogation. YMMV. --kingboyk 03:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm thinking it's just one of several guidelines we'll want to introduce though... we don't want to cruft all the articles up with a bunch of boxes because they included one template. The guideline text should be smaller but I was messing about with font and div and small and stuff to no effect. If it's the ONLY guideline, then ya. See how it looks now and then say what you think (I added another guideline bullet, it may not be a keeper but it gives an idea.++Lar: t/c 03:16, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Nice job. Is there any way of adding an optional argument to turn the British English message off for articles to which it probably shouldn't apply (of which there won't be many, if any)? I'm pretty sure there is but I forget (qif??). --kingboyk 03:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
{{qif}} should do it, I think but I forget too. There's also a way to do it with css (class "hidden structure) I expect, see {{Infobox Bridge}} for example. (that includes things if a parm IS present, we want the opposite though...) before you copy it over let me have a hack by using table cell formatting to see if I can get the text smaller. Probably time to archive off all the stuff that I commented out back when (the cover image we can't use, for example) too... Gimme a few min. However now that we've both been hacking, ya, technically under GFDL a history merge is needed... ++Lar: t/c 03:34, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
We can leave it in the sandbox until we have at least a 3rd opinion (and until you're done) and then I can move it into place. Trust me I'm a wiki-doctor! (Lar shudders) --kingboyk 03:36, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Ya, but are you in National Health or private practice? Trust you??? You've been reading talk:Seduction Community and its links again haven't you? OK, give it a boo, it's at 80%. Reformatted but not all the commented out stuff removed yet. I did not do the qif thing though... Try including it from some other page as a test, and point us back here will ya? (this whole convo will redlink once we're done I guess) Totally down with waiting for the final surgery till we hear from others. ++Lar: t/c 03:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
As is often the case, I've no idea what you're talking about so will just vaguely agree! :P I've read "The Game" though - cracking read. OK, I'll take a look. Convo won't so much redlink as point to whatever garbage happens to me in my sandbox at any given moment :) --kingboyk 03:58, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

<-- I think it's too small, but I'm sick of my own voice so let's wait until User:GTBacchus comes back or someone else shows up with an opinion. --kingboyk 04:00, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

It may well be too small... I had it at 85% and decided to "push it" to 80%... even 90% would make it seem smaller and therefore not the dominant part of the box so that's certainly an option. I'm done for now, then... we've got time of course. What I mean by try including it from some other page is just to do an inclusion as a test to see what it looks like included (we're looking at it when the "noinclude" switches are tripped)... go here: User:Lar/Sandbox to see it included. ++Lar: t/c 04:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm personally wondering about the need to include this at all. I'm pretty sure the guidelines (or is it policy) are that all articles should be in what is termed 'British English' by default, unless the subject of the article is based in a country which speaks a different dialect of English. I think it might be best to simply state that the articles in question are part of the project, and re-enforce the policy on the main project page (along with the note on categories). Has there been much trouble regarding dialects? --Mal 05:17, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that, I actually seem to recall the opposite, that all articles are to be in American English (WM foundation is a Florida corporation, Jimbo is a US citizen, etc.) unless the subject is based in a country which speaks a different dialect... 98% of these articles (but not all, articles on American record company activities or memorable US shows, to make up some examples, which I have no idea of their existance or not) are British english subject matter. But I don't have a cite to back me up at the moment. Good thing we're doing this in sandboxes then, I guess. I'm not too sussed if we ditch it. Or ref some project standards guideline, as suggested below. The advantage of having it in the box is that it's in sight. Out of sight, out of mind. Links you have to follow don't always get followed, so some inyourface-ness may be good, if it's polite. ++Lar: t/c 05:37, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
PS, here's some cites... style actually is as given here: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Usage_and_spelling (read at least through

"National Varieties of English" and here Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(spelling) ... so I wasn't quite right, but close. ++Lar

  • Articles should use the same dialect throughout.
  • If an article's subject has a strong tie to a specific region/dialect, it should use that dialect.
  • If there's no strong tie, try to find synonyms that can be used in any dialect.
  • If no such words can be agreed upon, the dialect of the first significant contributor (not a stub) should be used.

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English --kingboyk 06:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Afterthought: if people are determined that some note about English usages should be mentioned in the template, then how about a simple note saying "For editing guidelines see pageX" where pageX contains the editing guidelines for this project (and the page is obviously wiki'ed). --Mal 05:20, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

That's not the guidelines at all. The guidelines are that the dialect of the original author is retained, unless the article is on persons/places/concepts which are geographical. I prefer the seperate box though, I think, because it's a Wikipedia policy not ours. (See Talk:The Beatles for how this discussion arose, by the way). --kingboyk 05:30, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
You still like the separate box better? it doesn't always apply, and as soon as we mod it, it's our sub-policy, not overall project. ++Lar: t/c 05:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I see. OK - in that case I still think the suggestion I made in my afterthought makes sense. --Mal 05:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

lol, I'm getting a headache now. Nothing suggested so far has been outrageous or disagreeable so somebody please be bold :) If that involves moving a sandbox and restoring page history give me a shout. --kingboyk 06:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thread copied to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_The_Beatles/Policy#.22Importing_content_from_Template:British-English.22_thread_copied_from_Template_talk:TheBeatlesArticle. Please take any future policy discussion to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_The_Beatles/Policy. Technical discussion about the template should of course take place here. --kingboyk 18:31, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Headache? It can wait

Tomorrow's soon enough. I'd like to hear from the editor that suggested we talk here but then, yes, I plan to be bold and go with the version in Kingboyk(Steve)'s sandbox. Steve'll need to do the merging of history (although I have half a mind to just do a diff on the two pages and apply all those changes at one go and call them all mine, I don't think Steve had that many non minor edits to it. ++Lar: t/c 06:41, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

That would work. I can just delete the sandbox afterwards. --kingboyk 06:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm back. Overall, I'd say it looks good enough to go live with. Not knowing much about the coding involved, I don't have any fancy technical suggestions. I previewed the sandbox version with both 85% and 90% for the text size, and I like either one better than 80%, which renders funny from where I'm sitting. If there are any problems, somobody will point them out when it appears on 64 talk pages. -GTBacchus(talk) 20:33, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've taken the sandbox version live. --kingboyk 06:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Cool. I MEANT to do it but my wikitime this weekend was spent on other stuff. Sorry! Let's go with 85% ? ++Lar: t/c 13:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

show/hide todolist

Hey, I liked that... why'd you go back? It's cool. ++Lar: t/c 16:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

what do you mean? Should still work? I think it's very cool too, thank WikiProject Japan for the idea. --kingboyk 16:12, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Um, I dunno. Maybe I was thinking of the revert you did to remove the edit link? ++Lar: t/c 17:34, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Is this broken? In my browser it starts off saying "Hide" and the 1st click doesn't work. --kingboyk 20:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

(HELP! - good change or not?)

Awesome change. Keep it. Nice work ++Lar: t/c 20:59, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The only thing that bothers me is that people might click on HELP! rather than "Show". I could change the link I suppose :) (Dastardly plan maybe, but I'd like to see some stuff get crossed off that list. Seems like it's the 2 or 3 of us at the moment). --kingboyk 21:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

This template just got serious :)

Myself and Wing Commander Lar have made some changes to this template to have it display our article classifications. The default is just as before, but there's now a groovy set of values to be passed as an optional parameter. For example, {{WPBeatles|FA}} produces the following:



Featured article FA
This article has
been rated as
FA-Class on the
assessment scale.
  This article is part of The Beatles WikiProject, an attempt to improve and expand Wikipedia coverage of The Beatles and related topics. If you would like to participate, you can edit the attached page, do a task from our to-do list, or visit the project page, where you are more than welcome to join the project and/or contribute to discussion.
  Suggested article edit guidelines:
  • Most articles should be written in British English. Some terms may be different from - or non-existent in - American English, and some spellings may differ. For more information, see American and British English differences. Document exceptions on the talk page of the article and here.
  • It is Project policy that (with possible exceptions depending on context) all article references to the band's name should be in title case ("The Beatles" and not "the Beatles")
  • Please give careful thought to categories. There are a lot already, and it may be a good idea to discuss new ones on the project talk page.
The Beatles To-do: You can HELP!:

and adds the article to Category:FA-Class Beatles articles. Please send bottles of champagne to the usual address :) --kingboyk 19:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Er, why does the "Help" bluelink go to the album? Is this just an example of "Beatlesque humour"?LessHeard vanU 20:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes. --kingboyk 20:38, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Whitespace issues?

We seem to be getting some extra undesirable whitespace, possibly dependent on the parameters. See e.g. Talk:Paul Is Dead. Can someone fresh try to fix it? --kingboyk 16:51, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I did not see this problem before my most recent tweaking... but it looks OK to me now! I'll claim to have fixed it if I can get away with it! What ho? ++Lar: t/c 05:34, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Importance Tagging and display

I think the problem with importance tagging for empty parameter lists may be sorted. I hope. An improvement that would be nice would be to have the box itself display the importance tagging value the same way it displays the article grade. If this is of interest I can take a crack at it later this week. For extra credit maybe if the importance tag value is missing, I could have the template display a message that we'd like to see the article's importance evaluated? Or do we need a more formal process for that...? ++Lar: t/c 05:34, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that fixes it. From what I can see all you've done is remove the outer switch on param 1. That's there to ensure that articles with a param 1 saying something like "template" or "category" don't get listed in Category:Unassessed-importance Beatles articles (as, for example, Wikipedia:Template messages/Talk namespace now is; with a template usage of {{WPBeatles|article}}). What puzzles me is why that category still has only 44 pages in it. If you'd fixed it, there would be several hundred. If I'm correct that you've introduced a subtle bug why is there only one project space page listed and no category talk/template talk/etc?? Bizarre. Anyway -
You'll note that in my switch 1 statement I had an empty value, which I was expecting would catch default template usage with no params:
{{ #switch: {{{1}}} | GA | FA | A | B | Start | Stub | Merge | MergeDel | Merged || AFD = {{ #switch: {{{2}}} | Top = Category:Top-importance Beatles articles ...
I don't think we need a formal process, although we could perhaps request these things are done by "experienced editors". On the contrary, the whole point of having quality and importance editable on the talk page (and, if Oleg obliges, comments and non-standard classes too) is for exactly this reason. Let people rate on the spot and it's more likely to get done. (Although we ought to ask that people heavily involved in an article don't assess their own work). --kingboyk 09:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, I restored the switch 1 and the project space article I mentioned has now - as expected - dropped out of the category following a null edit. Now to wait for the job queue to catch up to see if the category fills up beyond it's current 43 members. --kingboyk 09:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC) Job queue is the longest I've ever seen it - 97,000. Might have been backed up since you made your edits....
99% sure it's fixed, by restoring the switch 1 and catching an empty param as before, and catching an undefined param by using a default value: {{{1|Undefined}}}. Pretty cool! :) --kingboyk 10:08, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, glad that's sorted. I tested with non article parameter invocations, validated that it did not blow up, but missed that they should NOT have importance rating categories added as a result of invocation with no second parm. Ooops! Good catch mate! So do you want me to take a crack at trying to display the importance value when it's set or defaulted and it is an article? I'm thimking either a pink stripe right below the current one on the left, or a whole other box over on the right bracketing the current text in the middle. The latter chews space but gives room to put additional links and stuff in. (Is there a "WP - Most Complex article tagging template" contest? If there is, think we have a real goer here with this one...) ++Lar: t/c 15:19, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

handling all the types of missing parms

not 100=% there on that yet. a note to whoever... look into this syntax
{{{noauthor|Author: [[Author:{{{author}}}|{{{author}}}]]}}} Not sure what it means, BookofJude was telling me about it... but that's a change to start using named parms instead of positional... ++Lar: t/c 05:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Haven't had a chance to decipher the above yet, but in general terms: named parms might be better, but it would need an AWB run. Having already done at least 2 runs over our entire stock I don't much fancy a 3rd.
Oleg has an idea for how to do comments, using a sub page. I guess it might work, {{todo}} uses a sub page quite transparently. Do we want him to run with that or shall we abandon all non-standard features and get on with what we have? Either reply directly at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index of subjects or let me know. (This is mainly addressed at Lar but anyone interested is welcome to chip in as I'm not sure Lar and myself really know how to proceed right now... :) ) --kingboyk 09:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't fancy a third AWB run either, even if I'm not the one doing it (smile), so I've been trying all sorts of things to get round the parm problem. It seems that parm 1 in these three cases has different values... {{MyTemp}} {{MyTemp|}} {{MyTemp||Parm2}} where I'd really like it to have the same value in all three cases (it's not there, in my view, in all of them but BookofJude and I when talking told me that they equate to true, false, null, in order....) As for the other bit I need to think more about what it means, but at first blush I am loathe to lose the comments we have already collected completely.. I could see just putting them in another template invocation somewhere, I dunno. ++Lar: t/c 12:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Copyediting the new template messages, and reorganising WP:TBA

I'll attend to both of these jobs later today. --kingboyk 09:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. 2 little niggly points: Why does the "not rated for quality" box appear on the template page (Template:WPBeatles) but not the "not rated for importance" box? Could we have bullet point 3 display a different message depending on if the article is assessed/unassessed/assessed for 1 not the other/doesn't need assessment because it's a category or redirect? (It's just an extension of the conditional code but I'm loath to touch it until I understand your changes). --kingboyk 11:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
First point: See the thread just above this, it's an artifact of the three different kinds of "parameters are not here" problem I think... the template page itself isn't an invocation of the template so the parm is "not there" in "a different way" than when you invoke with no parameters, if that makes any sense at all. I struggled with this for a while last nite and decided it was more important to get the behaviour right on the talk pages than on the template page itself, because when I got it to work there, it didn't work on talk pages. Gosh I hope that made sense!
Second point: Sure. That should be "relatively" easy, maybe, (or maybe not!!!). Can you state the requirements formally in pseudocode?. One more set of switches I think, but maybe somewhat gnarly. Work calls me for now.I wonder if doing all the tests ONCE will be cleaner even if it has more content text/formatting repeated though... right now we do some of the tests multiple times. Dunno. That template is starting to scare me. ++Lar: t/c 14:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... something like:

  1. if rating not applicable/not needed = empty
  2. if has importance and quality = message about what to do if disagree and why we have these tags
  3. if has one or neither = message about how to assess and why

?? --kingboyk 15:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Those are the comments for the code, or the requirements if you like. I'm looking more for the logic:

  1. Rating not applicable is true if there is something in the first parm position and it is NOT one of the keywords we recognise (A, FA, etc...) ... missing or skipped does NOT count! meaning that it's a category/template/project/portal whatever... correct?
  2. Has importance and quality is true if both the first and second parm positions contain keywords we recognise from the approved rating sets. (A, FA, etc for first... Top, Mid, etc for second) ?
  3. one or neither... everything else.

Correct??? MAN I wish you could set variables in template logic. (that persist outside the scope of a switch) PS do we have any template invocations that actually use NA in parm 1 position? Which ones? If not I think we should dump that, it makes things harder. ++Lar: t/c 17:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Mmmm... you expect me to remember that?! Was "NA" in parm 1 something I added? (in which case, quite possibly used) or did you add it?
As for the pseudocode, if I work that out I may as well just code it myself! The logic is the hard bit, after all :) Good luck! 555 --kingboyk 17:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC) (only kidding: if you don't do it, I'll get round to it; of we can forget that little addition. I can't tell you the logic without trawling through the code again, at which time I may as well just do the job. I'm terrible for remembering how my code works, sorry.)
NA is parameter 2 only, I think - especially if that's how I coded it. Param 2's of NA are certainly out there; I added that value because I needed it: a merged article where the original was a fork and which shouldn't have existed in the first place. --kingboyk 17:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Shall we just leave it as is? The template is currently spectacularly good imho, but I don't have much heart to tinker with it further. In the absence of the ability to declare variables it's getting a bit gruesome to even look at the code :) In other words: I don't fancy the job, if you want to tackle it please go ahead but if you don't that's fine too. --kingboyk 12:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I say, leave this bit as is for now, we are about to do MORE surgery on it if we go with the rating comments approach detailed here Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index_of_subjects#A_simple_to_implement_commment_scheme which will be in a different area, but will make the template more complex. I too think the template is pretty good for now. I'll see about adding the other func for the comments once we have some consensus. Meanwhile I'll have a tinker in my sandbox again... soon. May not be right away though. If I spot how to do what the pseudocode above wants, sure... why not. I want that most complex project template prize, darn it. Oh, and everyone else please chime in if you want...) ++Lar: t/c 16:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)