Note: During the summer part of the year I am mostly away from Wikipedia.

David's talk page

If I wrote on your user page you can answer there since I do put such pages on watch for a long time.

Put new messages at the bottom of this page or under the appropriate heading if there already is one. And don't forget to sign with your user name!

    .../David Göthberg

I'm back! Gimme more work!

Hi. I've come back to Wikipedia, and just thought that I'd let you know to feel free to pass some monotonous background stuff onto me, as you did with CAT:SHORTFIX, {{nowrap begin}} and {{documentation}}.

I thought I'd let you know about something I noticed before I went away, and that is that the list at User:Davidgothberg/Nowrap problems isn't complete. I now take a look at the templates on any page I visit and check it's okay, but there are so many that need updating! Can a hidden category be made such as the one at CAT:SHORTFIX so that it becomes easier to find templates in need of fixing?

So yeah, anything else that doesn't need an admin to do let me know, or if there is one, point me in the direction of the relevant Project or whatever otherwise I might just keep bugging you! -- Matthewedwards (talk · contribs · count · email) 00:47, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, hi Matthewedwards! I am happy to see that you have found a new place to live! I hope your new "dwelling" is to your satisfaction?

Right, User:Davidgothberg/Nowrap problems is in no way complete. That is just a list of cases which I could easily detect through correlating the "what links here" for the different nowrap templates. Those cases are likely to be the worst cases. But as you noted the nowrap templates are used in MANY navboxes and other kinds of templates, and the number of templates using them has increased a lot since I made that list. So I am not surprised that you see a lot of other templates that use them in the wrong way.

Unfortunately such cases can not be detected from within the nowrap templates themselves, so we can not do as we did with CAT:SHORTFIX. To make a more complete list we must ask for someone to run a robot or database search to find the cases. And if they anyway run a robot they might be able to configure the robot to also fix the cases. Although nowrap usage is a little tricky so I am not sure they will be able to do it properly with the bots. I haven't got around to discuss this with people running robots over at Wikipedia:Bot requests.

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

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

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

• {{main other}}, {{talk other}}, {{image other}} and {{category other}} and perhaps even {{main talk other}} and {{namespace detect}}. Some of these ones have pretty complex explanations and might only be really comprehensible for those that need to use them and thus have a feel for the usage situations. But would be interesting to hear how easy or hard they are too understand. Actually, once one have understood how they work they should be very easy to use since in a way what they do is pretty simple. So the tricky part seems to be to explain what they do.

• You're right these are a little complicated. {{main other}} seems to be transcluded on a lot of image pages, but a look at those pages doesn't reveal anything useful. I think it may be used on {{to commons}}, but I'm not sure. If you could explain in more detail how they are used, I may be able to help in some way. -- Matthewedwards (talk · contribs · count · email) 23:36, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Looking forward for your comments on this!

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

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

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

Okay, as I thought. The documentation for {{main other}} and its sister templates are too bare bones. I was hoping that the "Basic usage" examples should do the job of telling what the template does, but now I remember that most editors don't know what things like "namespaces" mean, so more explanation is needed. And you are right that {{main other}} is used in {{to commons}}, or rather the template that that name redirects too: {{Copy to Wikimedia Commons}}. And that template is in turn used on a lot of image pages.

Have you looked at {{main talk other}} ? That is the first one I made and it has more extensive documentation, but probably too messy and confusing documentation.

I have taken a look at that, and it does give a usage example, which helps, but for me there needs to be more explanation about why these templates should be used. -- Matthewedwards (talk · contribs · count · email) 06:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I will try to extend the documentation for one of them and then you can have a look at it. Instead of trying to explain it here. Or well, I need to get to bed so I'll get back to you on this.

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

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

I have copied the {{high-use}} part of this discussion to Template talk:High-use#Wording and continued there, since I think our conclusions here will be relevant for future discussions about that template.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes

There are several infoboxes which do essentialy the exact same thing, and have nearly the exact some entries. They typically only differ in the addition of 1-3 "extra" optional entries, and in colours.

In thinking about the mbox family of templates, and how they work, I'm wondering if something similar could be done for a certain type of Infobox.

To see some of what I'm talking about, check out: Category:Fictional character infobox templates.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be welcome : ) - jc37 19:02, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, for once you ask something that has a simple and short answer. Check out the new standardised {{infobox}} meta-template and its talk page.

I don't do any work with infoboxes for several reasons, among other things since I never really used them and other things are keeping me way too busy.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I hadn't realised there was a "new" version of the template.

That said, even if that is used as the "base" template", I think it could be useful to have an intermediary infobox for ease of useability.

All infoboxes look like "x". All character infoboxes then would "call" Template:Infobox, and in addition, would have at least a certain set of specific fields, with the possible individual usage additions of up to (let's say) 3-5 more.

Is such a thing doable? (And yet still be somewhat user friendly : ) - jc37 00:49, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, very doable. Check out {{Navbox Musical artist}} which is exactly such an intermediary box, but in this case a navbox based on {{navbox}} instead of an infobox based on {{infobox}}. The same people seem to have made {{Infobox Musical artist}} which at the moment do not use {{infobox}} but perhaps will be changed to that if someone suggests that to them. But as I said, infoboxes are not my cup of tea, so talk with the people over at those templates.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps not, but you would seem to be a great link/reference resource : )

And if I haven't said it yet, Thanks much : ) - jc37 01:15, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Article series#Merge proposals

Could you take a look at Wikipedia talk:Article series#Merge proposals? --Kubanczyk (talk) 10:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I will take a look. Might take a day or so since I have been a bit busy lately.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Near-native English?

Oh, I just noticed your edit to my userboxes! Thanks for "nominating" me to the "near-native" English userbox! I am very honoured.

But I have to admit, I am cheating since I use a spell checking plug-in in Firefox and occasionally a dictionary. If you heard me speak you would notice my accent, my grammatical errors and my problems to find the words I need. Come to think of it, if you are curious you can watch my p2p talk at the Berlin Congress. There I pronounced "98%" so badly that most of the audience heard "90%" which caused a lot of confusion and weird questions afterwards. I really have to work on my pronunciation.

But again, thanks!

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, it's not how good you are in meatspace, it's what level you can contribute at ;-)

And don't worry about having to use Firefox spell check – I have to too. I did look at your Berlin Congress talk and your accent is understandable, though if you went to the United States you would of course want to learn a slightly different-sounding one. Anyway, you're welcome for the well-deserved userbox promotion! —Remember the dot ^(talk) 04:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, so I changed to a hard coded en-4 box with better wording. That is: "able to contribute with a" instead of "speaks at a". Just like the other English user boxes. And yeah, when non-native speakers like me travel we tend to adapt to the local dialect after some days. You should have heard me the last day when I had spent two weeks in a family in England. It was weird to hear oneself speak upper middle class British English. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:55, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Quinzhee

Your talk contribution to Quinzhee was great. Why did you put it all on the Talk Page? May I move some of it to the article (e.g. the idea of piling the snow over something removable)? HLHJ (talk) 04:07, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh thanks. Well, I did add similar text to the Igloo article long ago before the Quinzhee / Snow house article was made. But the text was removed since some editors think that giving out advice is unencyclopaedic, even if the advice might save lives... So on the Quinzhee article I added the text to the talkpage since there it doesn't get deleted, partly in the hope that people would add it to the article (and re-add it if it gets deleted). So yes, feel very free to add it to the article! :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:25, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Unsigned

Thanks for signing my comment for me. There should be a script or bot or something to do that *joke*. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, there used to be a bot doing that. But I haven't seen that bot around lately. And feel free to change the "unsigned" note on your comment to a real signature, since it looks a bit silly. I always feel somewhat silly when I forget to sign so I usually fix it afterwards. No one has complained about that I fix my edits later like that, even if I fix them a long time later.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot request

David, I have requested a bot to create template documentation talk redirects where required - would you like to offer an opinion? Kelly ^hi! 15:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, nice idea. I have commented there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:29, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

"Disruption" warning you left

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, we remind you not to template the regulars, as you did on User talk:MZMcBride. Making a personal, specific comment will probably make for a friendlier and more productive atmosphere than using a template that treats the editor as a clueless newbie. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Rjd0060 (talk) 14:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

You gotta be kidding, right? For several months now he has been told many times by many editors (including me) in manually written friendly messages to stop his disruptive template talk page deletions. That has had no effect at all on him. So now I left a standardised warning template on his talk page since that is according to procedure AND I left a written explanation of the details several times longer than the warning template. Not using the warning template would be wrong according to the banning procedures as far as I know. So don't complain when I follow procedure.

And by the way, do you even understand the issue at hand? You only have a total of 17 edits to template talk pages in your user contributions.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you implying that I must be clueless about Templates, Portals, and MediaWiki since I have low edit counts in each of those namespaces. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:40, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No, not that it "must be" so, but that it might be so. That you get so upset that I and many others are asking MZMcBride to stop deleting template talk page redirects indicates to me that you probably don't understand what such redirects are for, thus it seems you don't understand the issue at hand. That you only have a total of 17 edits edits to template talk pages increases that suspicion.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:15, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Asistance with formating

Hello, I would like to ask you for some help. Is there a way to evenly spread the text in two columns, across their height? See here. I'm trying to reproduce the bottom of this document for Wikisource. Also, I can't understand why the signature images on the right place themselves under the text line, and not next to it. Please help me if you can. Thanks in advance! diego_pmc (talk) 06:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit busy right now so it might take some day before I get the time to help you with this. But I want to help you. Feel free to ask some other editors for help meanwhile.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: Warning 2

Are you kidding? Someone creates an intentionally broken redirect and it is my job to (magically) know that and create the target for them? Is that some sort of joke? As Carcharoth pointed out, had I not been the one to take time out of my day to do the CSD#R1s, the bot would have deleted the pages just the same. And you leave me a warning? I used to have an enormous amount of respect for you and the work that you do with this project... --MZMcBride (talk) 14:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

In the vast wall of text I awoke to this morning, I didn't notice you'd also accused me of running deletion scripts again. I have no idea where that suggestion came from, but it's entirely untrue. I've had a one-click deletion tab for months. And, believe it or not, while I've done thousands of deletions, more than half were probably through batch tab opening.

You have access to deleted contributions. You can see that I not only eventually stopped deleting pages, I started tagging them for deletion. And instead of doing history merges, I asked Keegan to do them for me. A little assumption of good faith might be nice. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it took me one click to check that it was likely and two more clicks to become certain that they were the typical "centralise discussion" template talk page redirects. You should not delete template talk page redirects since you do not seem to understand what they are for. And you had already been warned about it.

You deleting those redirects made Wikipedia worse, not better. But I didn't start a discussion to block you for it at WP:ANI since as I wrote on your talk page it was a grey zone. Instead I wrote an explanation for you on your talk page in the hope that you would learn. See, I still haven't given up the hope that you will understand what such redirects are for, or at least that you will leave them alone.

Actually, considering how smart I know you are and seeing some other things you do and say in different places now, I am almost starting to think that you might have deleted those redirects just to test the limits or to provoke. That is, to see how far you can go before you get blocked again. I really hope that is not the case.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:58, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Warning warning

I have asked you to seek dispute resolution and you do not seem to have done so. Should you act on your warnings to block MZMcBride, you will find yourself in front of ArbCom. As you seem to like warnings, I thought I would give you this one. Physchim62 (talk) 15:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

You do not have the authority to order me anything. I suggest you go read the discussions at MZMcBride's talk page (don't miss the archives) and at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive427#Massive redirect deletions again. And read up at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution since you don't seem to understand that page.

Let's see:

• There's been lots of protests against MZMcBride's deletions.
• At the time you wrote your message above two other admins had already blocked MZMcBride because of the same issue.
• I have only warned MZMcBride and not blocked him. I have clearly stated that I intend to discuss it with other admins before I block MZMcBride. That is, make it a group decision. But you know, I didn't expect it to come to that. I hoped that he would not delete redirected talk pages again and then there would be no more problem.
• As you can see I was still trying to discuss the matter with MZMcBride, so I were already doing what the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution says.
• Oh, and you know what happened when you reported another user to arbcom. Your request was quickly denied.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:53, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Non-standard image templates

David, I have found several image messages that were missed when we standardized to Imbox, where can I list them to have them standardized? MBisanz ^talk 20:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I've just been listing them at WT:IMBOX. Kelly ^hi! 20:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, ok, will do. MBisanz ^talk 20:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree, listing them at WT:IMBOX is probably the best option, since that talk page is watched by those interested in imboxes. Thanks Kelly for answering. I am mostly off-line now since it is summer.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Nowrap problems

I'm still finding templates that would fall into User:Davidgothberg/Nowrap problems. I don't know if it's still an issue though. Should I continue to edit them, or has the navbox template been updated so it doesn't matter any more? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, such broken lists still need to be fixed. {{navbox}} does not (and can not) contain any code that fixes the problem. This problem needs to be handled as long as people still use Firefox 2.0 which means for at least another 2-3 years or so.

There are also situations where we use {{nowrap begin}} and its helper templates just to get more fine tuned control of wrapping and that has nothing to do with the Firefox problem. Such cases will still need to use {{nowrap begin}} + {{·w}} + {{nowrap end}} correctly even in the future.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

OK I'll continue to edit as I find them. A couple of other questions:

1. What templates other than {{navbox}} does this usually cause a problem?
2. What is up with Firefox that makes a problem, and why is IE okay with it?
3. Will Firefox 3 (out June 17) address the problem?
4. I noticed that your subpage hadn't been updated in a while, so I started my own at User:Matthewedwards/Nowrap problems. I copied the text you'd done (thanks to the GFDL ) How did you compile the list originally? I'm finding it a real pain in the ass! Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 04:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

3: I have heard that Firefox 3 does not have the bug. But since there is no Firefox 3 beta available for my OS I have not been able to test it myself so I am not entirely sure they have fixed it.

2: Well it is a bug in Firefox, and Internet Explorer does not have this specific bug. (Yeah, usually it is IE that has the bugs, but this time it is the other way around.) I have written a detailed description of the bug here: Wikipedia talk:Line break handling#Firefox bug. But note that Internet Explorer has a related "bug" (actually a bad feature) that causes line wrapping at special characters thus the same kind of fix is partially needed to handle Internet Explorer too, see Wikipedia:Line break handling#Nowraplinks shortcomings for more on that.

1: Well, its not really the fault of {{navbox}}. This bug can occur any time people use nowrapping in the "wrong" way. And they especially do that mistake when they do nowrapping on link lists. And link lists here at Wikipedia are mostly used inside navboxes. So I am not aware of any other template or usage cases here at Wikipedia where this bug occurs frequently.

4: I'll get back to you later about how I made the list. It takes a rather long explanation. I need to get some sleep and have a very busy schedule this weekend. (Going dancing with my female friends. That is, I will be busy with the babes. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Haha! Enjoy yourself! Or should I say, "Enjoy the babes!"? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 07:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hiya. If you're not busy, would you mind explaining how you created the list. I'm in a major writer's block at the moment, and so while I'm not working on any articles, this would be a good time to do some "behind-the-scenes" work. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:51, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I used commands such as "sort" from the command prompt. So before I try to explain this:

If you use Windows: Do you know how to open a command prompt or DOS window? And do you know how to use commands such as "cd" and "dir"?

If you use some Unix (even the new MacOS is Unix based): Do you know how how to open a shell or text window? And do you know how to use commands such as "cd" and "ls -al"?

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:29, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I use Windows, and I do know how to use DOS a little bit -- my general understanding of it is pretty limited though! Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 19:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, if you are crazy enough to give it a try, here's how to create a list like the one at User:Davidgothberg/Nowrap problems:

1: First create a new empty directory on your disk. Then create three text files named "begin01.txt", "end01.txt" and "wrap01.txt" in that directory.

2: Then go to {{nowrap begin}} -> "What links here" and set "Namespace" to "Template", click [Go], then click "View (500)". Then copy and paste all those "Template:... (transclusion)" links into "begin.txt". (That's one operation, just take all those lines in one big copy and paste operation.) Then "View (next 500)" + copy and paste, and so on until all those links are in "begin01.txt".

3: Then do the same for {{nowrap end}} placing those links in "end01.txt".

4: Then do the same for all the {{wrap}}, {{!wrap}} etc templates. But only for the actual templates, not for their shorter names that redirect to them. And put all those links into the same file, the "wrap01.txt". Note that some links might now occur more than once in "wrap01.txt", but we'll fix that later.

5: Then open a DOS window, "cd" (change directory) to the directory where you have the "begin01.txt" etc files. There type the command "sort begin01.txt > begin02.txt". Which means we get a version with all lines sorted in "begin02.txt".

6: Then do "sort end01.txt > end02.txt" and "sort wrap01.txt > wrap02.txt". (Don't close the DOS window afterwards, since you will need it later.)

7: Then open "begin02.txt" in a text editor and remove the junk lines you get before and after the link lines. Do the same for "end02.txt" and "wrap02.txt".

8: Now comes one of the trickier parts, you might want to re-save the files as "begin03.txt" etc. before you do this since it is easy to mess up. You need a decent text editor with good search and replace functionality for this, the Windows Notepad is not good enough. Your word processor might be good enough. Use the "search and replace" feature in the editor to change this:

* Template:Something (transclusion) (links)

To this:

Template:Something

That is, mark the first part of the first line and choose "replace" in the editor menu and choose to replace with nothing and to "replace all". And then mark the end of the first line and replace all with nothing. Now all lines should be clean from junk before and after the actual template link.

9: Next step is to fix duplicate lines in "wrap03.txt". Unfortunately there are no tools in Windows and in most editors for this. But since the list is now sorted the human eye can pretty easily spot any duplicates. So go through "wrap03.txt" manually and turn any duplicates into a single line. There might be triplicates or more in there too, make them single lines too.

10: Now you should have three clean lists: "begin03.txt", "end03.txt" and "wrap03.txt". Now we can compare them to find templates that don't have all three of "nowrap begin" + "some kind of wrap" + "nowrap end".

11: Create a file named "beginend01.txt" and paste all the lines from "begin03.txt" and "end03.txt" into it.

12: Open the DOS window again if you don't already have it open and see to that you are in the right directory. Then sort "beginend01.txt" by running this command at the DOS prompt: "sort beginend01.txt > beginend02.txt"

13: Open "beginend02.txt" in your editor and take a look. Most lines should now be duplicates. The ones that are not duplicates are the ones who doesn't have both "nowrap begin" and "nowrap end". So the non-duplicates are the ones we want. Before you do the next step you might want to re-save as "beginend03.txt".

14: Now comes the hardest work: Go through "beginend03.txt" manually and remove both lines of all duplicate lines, so you only retain those lines that were not duplicates.

14: Now lets compare "nowrap begin" and "wrap": Create a file named "beginwrap01.txt" and paste all the lines from "begin03.txt" and "wrap03.txt" into it.

15: Then sort "beginwrap01.txt" by running this command at the DOS prompt: "sort beginwrap01.txt > beginwrap02.txt"

16: Before you do the next step you might want to re-save "beginwrap02.txt" as "beginwrap03.txt".

17: Now comes the hardest work again: Go through "beginwrap03.txt" manually and remove both lines of all duplicate lines, so you only retain those lines that were not duplicates.

18: A good thing is that we don't need to compare "end03.txt" and "wrap03.txt". That probably seems contrary to intuition. (Explanation: Any template that doesn't have a "nowrap begin" is listed in either "beginend03.txt" or "beginwrap03.txt". Any template that doesn't have a "nowrap end" is listed in "beginend03.txt". Any template that doesn't have a "wrap" (or similar) is listed in "beginwrap03.txt".)

19: Now we need to merge "beginend03.txt" and "beginwrap03.txt". So create a file named "total01.txt" and paste all the lines from "beginend03.txt" and "beginwrap03.txt" into it.

20: Then sort "total01.txt" by running this command at the DOS prompt: "sort total01.txt > total02.txt"

21: Open "total02.txt" in your editor and take a look. There might be some duplicate lines there. That is templates that have a "nowrap begin" but no "wrap" and no "nowrap end", or templates that have no "nowrap begin" but both "wrap" and "nowrap end".

22: Go through "total02.txt" and manually turn any duplicates into single lines. Now you have the full clean list of "templates with obvious nowrap problems".

23: Re-save "total02.txt" as "total03.txt".

24: Now you need to add some wikimarkup before and after the template names so you can use the list on a wiki page. So for each line turn this:

Template:Something

Into something like this:

</s>[[Template:Something]]</s><br>

There's several ways to do that efficiently, one is to use the search and replace feature of your text editor and search for the newlines and replace them with all that including a newline. That is to replace say "^P" with "</s><br>^P</s>". And do "replace all" once it worked for one line. The trick to find what newline symbol your editor uses is to mark a newline before you choose "search and replace", then many editors automatically fill in the "search" field.

25: And you're done! Good luck with all this!

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Navbox edit links

Hi, I've asked at question at Template talk:Navbox#Why is View Discuss Edit on the left, instead of the right? that you might have some insight on. (it's received 2 unhelpful replies so far). If you have a chance to take a look, I'd appreciate it :) -- Quiddity (talk) 03:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I have responded there. And as you can see I did disagree with you, sorry. Although to me the placement of those items doesn't matter much.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I just wanted an intelligent reply (which you gave) instead of the statements-of-the-obvious which the other editors had given. If I'd just wanted just a confirmation, I would have gone to WP:USE ;) Thanks anyway. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Template/CSS questions

Hi there! I figure you would be a knowledgeable person to ask about a couple things.

First, when should templates use html tags instead of wiki-markup? For example, why doesn't {{shortcut}} use the {|...|} notation? Is it for performance?

Everyone seems to have different idea regarding CSS. Like when it should be added to the common.css or monobook.css and when to keep in inline in templates. I mainly work on Commons (where I admin) and our templates seriously lack community input as far style goes. I would love to have some kind of standardization there but that's too much for one person, I'm already categorizing nearly every one myself (got it down to less than 200!). Being the only one who apparently cares about this neglected namespace, I have taken it upon myself to try to improve them as much as I can. We don't make nearly as much use of our global CSS files as here. I was thinking of adding some classes for heavily used styles. For example: {{GNU-Layout}}, {{PD-Layout}}, and {{Copyrighted-Layout}}. It seems like the best choice to me, but my CSS skills are nothing to brag about. It's largely trial and error and that doesn't mix too well with the MediaWiki namespace, so...

I know you're not a Commons person, but you seem like nice guy who *hopefully* maybe has a little bit of time to spare and can help me out. (I don't mean editing over there, just some advice—unless you want to of course. :) Thanks for your time. Rocket000 (talk) 05:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, here goes:

Well, there are several good reasons to use "HTML table tags" instead of "wikimarkup tables". But first notice that the HTML we use here really is "HTML wikimarkup" since it gets processed and converted by MediaWiki just like the other wikimarkup.

• When we use wikitables with the {|...|} notation then we can not use pipes "|" and braces "{ }" in the code inside them. Then we have to resort to using for instance the template {{!}} which has several drawbacks:
  • It means that lots of instances of {{!}} has to be transcluded which adds load to the servers.
  • Many of us think that using the {{!}} makes the code very confusing, since it becomes all pipes and braces and very hard to see what is what. Consider when you also use a bunch of {{#if:||}} statements and {{template calls}} inside the table...
• Even when we don't have content that needs pipes and braces then wikitable markup is pretty unclear when you do advanced tables. It is hard to see which pipe is which, so it is hard to see where to insert classes and styles and where to insert cell data. And in wikitables newlines do have meaning, which is very confusing!

So basically, HTML tables cost less server load, and most of us think it makes much more readable code thus saving programmer time and reducing human errors. Pretty much every advanced wikitable I have seen have had errors in them because people have counted the pipes and braces wrongly...

And yes, people seem to be confused about when to add a CSS code to MediaWiki:Common.css and when to add it to MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Basically, since templates are visible in all skins then CSS code for them should first be added to Common.css so the template works in all the skins. Only if you then want a special style for the template in for instance the monobook skin should you then also add special CSS in Monobook.css. Really, Monobook.css should mostly be used for things that are outside the article area, for things like the left side page menu and buttons at the page top.

The next question is when to use CSS classes in Common.css and when to use in-line styles in the template code. In most cases it doesn't matter much from a performance point off view. Or rather, the more we move to the .css files the more a new user has to load on the first page load, but then the page codes become shorter thus later page loads are faster. Thus from a performance point of view it only pays off to move styles to the .css files for templates that are widely used and that will be loaded many times for each user. Note that the average visitor to at least the English Wikipedia only loads 5 pages on one visit, and only visits Wikipedia perhaps once or some times in a month. There are also a definitive drawback of moving styles to the .css files: The .css files are set to be cached for 30 days in the web browsers, thus any updates or fixes to the styles there take 30 days before all users see them.

So, the real reason to move styles to the .css files are to make templates skinnable. That is, so they can look different in the different skins and so that logged in users can add their own styles in their own Special:Mypage/monobook.css.

So since the .css files are cached for 30 days, nowadays I first hard code the styles in a new template so all can see and test how they look immediately without confusion. It also saves me as a template programmer the extra clicks and the 1-2 minute wait time to force the reload of the .css files each time I have changed the styles, and it makes all the code that the template uses visible in the same edit window. This also means we can deploy the new template without having to wait 30 days! Then if people say they want to skin the template or I think it is likely people will want to skin it, then I copy the styles to Common.css and 30 days later I update the template to use the classes instead of the hard coded styles.

For instance, you might have noticed that I took over the care of {{shortcut}} some time ago. When I reworked it I did organise the in-line styles in such a way that it will be easy to move them to Common.css. But I have not yet moved the styles to Common.css since no one has mentioned that they want to skin them. After all it is just a small white box so it works pretty well in all skins.

There is of course one more case when we move template styles to Common.css: When the same style is going to be used in many templates. Then it is neat to have the CSS code in one central place. I see that they instead have used a template for that in the {{GNU-Layout}}, that probably works about as well. That causes a little more server load, but works around the 30 days CSS caching problem. And will cause a faster first page load for new visitors. But it means the templates can not be skinned.

And regarding on which sites I edit: I am Swedish so my native tongue is Swedish. But back when I started editing Wikipedia I decided to edit the English Wikipedia, since that reaches the most users and the other language Wikipedias and the other projects tend to copy the stuff we make here. Thus that is more efficient use of my time. And as you can see people are for instance now copying the ambox/imbox templates and styles to many of the other projects. (Many of my templates are being widely copied to other projects! :))

But I know User:Kelly has done image and image/license template standardisation work at Commons and she probably knows who else to talk with. So I recommend you talk to her.

And yeah, CSS is tricky stuff. It took me a long time to grasp it and I still learn new things about it every week. I recommend you download the official CSS 2.1 specification and read/use it. It is messy to read but contains most of what you need to know. Here are links to the specification: HTML pages in a zip file or HTML on-line (slower to use). And good luck with your CSS studies!

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very very much for your helpful and thorough response! No one explained the monobook/common thing before but it all makes sense now. I'm not sure Commons has the same 30 day cache issue because I added a class the other day and it worked right after I refreshed. (I applied it to a fairly heavily used template and got complaints so far.) I don't know how it works exactly, but since Commons license templates show up on every project I figured it would be better to include those layout templates in the css (I don't know if users on, say, here can skin those but I doubt it since it doesn't use the local css (there should be a way to override this i.e. each project can customize the, um, transcluded (?) Commons image page templates).

Anyway, I got some studying to do. ;) thanks again for all your help! Cheers, Rocket000 (talk) 08:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I just checked. Unfortunately commons:MediaWiki:Common.css and commons:MediaWiki:Monobook.css also are set to 30 days caching time.

I also took a look at an image that is stored at Commons and has templates added there. That is, I looked at it from here (English Wikipedia). I "viewed the source" of the page in my web browser, but all the templates on that image had hardcoded styles so I could not see what happens if classes from Commons are used. I think I will code up an example to test it later and report the result to you. I think the very reason that Commons uses meta-templates to include the styles into templates instead of using CSS files is so that the styles will work when shown on for instance the English Wikipedia, since as far as I see my web browser does not load any CSS files from Commons when I view such images.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, look at the new class I added on June 17, and then check out the template that uses it. The style is in effect yet that was only a few days ago (it worked instantly, btw). The whole thing with displaying Commons pages on other projects is very interesting. I'm pretty sure styles work even if they are not defined locally because some maintenance templates use some en.wp doesn't have and it works fine (I think). I'll have to do some tests. Maybe there's a really good reason not to use CSS on Commons (unless it's main.css or something). Rocket000 (talk) 02:26, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, some expert users like you and me have bothered to turn on privacy settings in our web browsers like: "[x] Always clear my private data when I close Firefox". That means we reload the CSS files each session. But the majority of non-geeky users out there use the default settings and thus only reload the CSS pages once every 30 days. Also, if your allocated disk space for the web browser cache gets full then it drops older pages, so you might have a small setting for that space and thus reload the pages pretty often. And so on.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:45, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Notice template

I posted somewhere, but I'll post here again, {{Notice}} needs conversion to the Ambox style. Cheers MBisanz ^talk 06:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes. I assume you mean it needs conversion to the ambox/tmbox/imbox/cmbox/ombox styles, that is to use the {{mbox}} that has namespace detection and changes to the proper style for each namespace. Currently {{notice}} only uses some of them so it only looks right in some namespaces.

Problem is that we still do not have consensus for tmbox and ombox so we are not yet officially deploying them. Well, so far all seems to agree with the new ombox style but I think we need some more users to say "okay" before we deploy it. But people do not agree on the tmbox styles yet so that one needs more discussion. This means it is not appropriate to start using the mbox since it uses those. Actually, {{notice}} was one of the reasons I made the tmbox and ombox, to get a complete set so we could make the mbox. So just hang in there, this will take some more weeks.

I am planning a watchlist-notice about tmbox and ombox when the current watchlist messages are done. Then we will get more discussion and can hopefully achieve a consensus even for the tmbox.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Reply to protection offer

Hi, David - I just noticed your offer at User:Kelly/sandbox (for some extremely strange reason, I did not have my own sandbox watchlisted, and only noticed your message when I went back to it to write a new article). I really appreciate your offer - I think I'll take you up on it. I sometimes deal with anons on my talkpage but I can't think of any need for an anon to edit my userpage. Thanks! Kelly ^hi! 18:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Kelly: Yeah, since you did not answer in some days I thought you might have a too long watchlist or something so you did not notice. But I thought that sooner or later you would see the message and you did. I see that minutes after you responded here on my talk page MBisanz correctly made the protection of your pages. MBisanz probably watches my talk page since we are working together on some things. Kelly, ideally you should have responded in your sandbox since when responding here many vandals could have seen it and gotten inspired. But hey, them vandalising a page like yours just makes it easier for us to catch them. But I thought it probably is getting a bit too annoying for you by now and might be disturbing your productive work.

MBisanz: Thanks for doing the protection immediately! :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Tmbox background

David, is there a way to use a css option to force the background of tmbox to be white? MBisanz ^talk 04:56, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I just tested it at User:MBisanz/BAG1 and it works. MBisanz ^talk 05:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes there is a simple way. And I checked your test and you did it almost right. But you should not use quotation marks since they are added inside the tmbox code. In your example the quotation marks destroyed the styles, thus MediaWiki used the default which is white background and no border for tables. Here's a correct example:

{{tmbox
| type = notice
| style = background: white;
| text = White background and default tmbox notice border.
}}

White background and default tmbox notice border.

Doesn't look that nice.

Looking at your example I think this might be what you want:

{{tmbox
| type = notice
| style = margin: 0; border: none; background: transparent;
| text = No margin which means width is 100%. No border and transparent background.
}}

No margin which means width is 100%. No border and transparent background.

Kind of a weird use.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:19, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I like the second one a lot, see I have a bunch of templates that must maintain the same appearance they had before, as they are legacy templates used by people who don't want the appearance changed, so I can now convert them to tmbox, without changing the background color. MBisanz ^talk 05:28, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I know what kind of messages you mean. But the only thing you gain from doing like this is consistent handling of the left and right side images. So I don't really see much gain in converting them to tmbox. Or am I missing something?

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:37, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

More or less my urge to standardize everything, no performance gains. MBisanz ^talk 05:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Cryptography and Computing

Dear frnd , thanks for bringing your concern to your attention....Please understand these are done in in good faith . We do understand All cryptography is not computer /computing . Only Category:Cryptographic protocols are tagged which falls under the scope of this project. With primary objective of wikiprojects is to improve articles in their scope , why is this serious objections? It is understandable if articles are wrongly tagged that doesnt fall under the scope of the project. We have taken note of your concern ..... Please understand that with this tagging effort , we have tagged around 8000 newer articles that didn't even have a talk page , let alone the other wikiproject tagging. This reveals the potential of this project. Please read the section on the discussion on the scope and goals of this project -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 15:42, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I understand this bot run was done in good faith. And I guess you were not aware of older discussions where among other WikiProject Cryptography didn't want the maths WikiProject to mass tag for instance all crypto articles.

I only blocked your bot so we could discuss this, just so we don't have to revert that many pages. You really should have first contacted the WikiProjects involved.

This was just a quick answer before I go read the discussion about this on the other pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

OMG... You blocked the bot without even checking the Bot is running now ? The last edit of the bot was hours ago before u blocked. Please unblock the bot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 16:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Kindly unblock the bot ... The bot had stopped running much hours before you had blocked. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 16:25, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey, take it easy. I am not a native English speaker so it takes some time for me to write up a response. I was reading what you wrote on the other pages and wrote a full response over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing#descendant tagging. See what I wrote there for why I blocked your bot and what you need to do for me to unblock it.

And remember, bot blocks are nothing dramatic, not at all like user blocks. Oh, I checked, seems you are a new bot owner. You will soon get used to that your bot gets blocked every now and then, that is normal. Actually, as far as I know that is one reason why we use special bot accounts, so we can block the bots even for minor things, without blocking the user. And to not pollute the user's block log with the bot blocks.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Replied at the project talk page. The bot is not going to run for the project without consensus. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 17:06, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Replied at the project talk page. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 01:14, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi frnd, I do respect your view points and concerns. If you see my statements at the project talk page , how many times have I iterated the fact that there will be no tagging until further consenus or agreement. I request you to go back and read the discussions by me... Being an admin yourself , I appeal to you to be a bit more sympathethic and courteous to the actions done in good faith. To call me or the bot as monsters and dangerous is something very unfair....I too work for wikipedia with the same good intentions as you are also. Just my 2 cents... Btw thank you for unblocking the bot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 04:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Ouch, you have misunderstood the "monster" comment. First of all, your bot is not you, it is considered a separate entity. And bots can be very dangerous. That is, when they malfunction they can in very short time damage thousands of pages, before an admin reacts and blocks it. That happens every now and then so it is not a hypothetical danger but a very real one. And it can cost lots of work to repair the damage done and respond to all the questions from concerned users. It can cost 10-40 editors full time work for a week or more! And all the concerned users also loose valuable editing time when they investigate, revert and/or ask questions.

So bots are dangerous monsters in the manner of a cute furry lion. Normally when you handle it right it nicely jumps through hoops for you. But there is always the danger that it goes berserk and starts biting everything in sight.

So as I said, at the slightest sign of danger we tie the monster up. That is we block the bot first and investigate after that.

I hope you now see what I mean?

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:02, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Friend , Let us leave this in good spirits and understanding. I have made some suggestions here. Do you mind looking into this and let know your opinions ?? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 05:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I took a look. What you suggest there is outside my area of expertise and I am anyway way too busy in other areas so I barely have time to keep up in those areas. Among other things I am managing the huge message box standardisation project (ambox/tmbox/imbox/cmbox/ombox/mbox) and reworking some other templates. Sorry.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I see that... I just wanted your suggestions whether I could go ahead with those proposals or not ... One is creation of cats and additions of banners to articles that falls under it for an already existing task force project and other is merge a wikiproject similarly with WP:COMP as per the consensus ....I dont want my bot to blocked again  ;) -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 06:35, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I know close to nothing about assessments and WikiProject banner parameters and WikiProject task forces. So for suggestion 1 on that page I have no comment what so ever.

For suggestion 2 on that page I have these personal reflections to say, and this is not based on any policies but on my personal opinions and experiences: Only 4 users agreeing and only discussing/announcing it for 2 days on the talk page of a WikiProject and not announcing it at the main page of the WikiProject is not even close enough to declare a consensus and kill a WikiProject. I think that you should put a big box at the top of the main page of that WikiProject telling about it. And any important discussion like that should be announced a minimum of one week, since some editors only log in at specific weekdays. But preferably you should announce it for more than one week. You should probably also leave a notice on the user talk pages of the users listed as participants in the WikiProject. But apart from that I think it probably is a good idea to merge inactive WikiProjects with a parent WikiProject.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:22, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments...Btw I had already left msges to ALL participants of the concerned projects . Please understand the idea is to NOT to kill projects . Those projects were already marked as inactive and nobody even cared to remove the Inactivity banner.My idea was to revive them only to the best of my efforts. Btw I now left a notice of the WP:COMPUTING main page also for better attention. I will wait for your opinions on the project talk page also -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 04:52, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Templates, etc.

Hi! I'm going on a 6 week WikiBreak more or less now for real life reasons. In my absence, I'm sure you'll manage to conduct the tmbox style poll. I've already added my comments; if in doubt, get some more opinions. Take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Article_message_boxes#Move_arrows; I've completed the set. Other than that, thanks for your help and patience over the last few days, and good luck without me.--HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 02:09, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for all your help! Your set-up of the styles discussion seems very efficient.

I like your new arrows, although now that I see them all I think the blue is too light blue, I would like them darker, and perhaps also the red slightly darker. (I'll say that on that page too, now or perhaps tomorrow since I am very tired, been a long dance night out! :)

What patience? It has been a pleasure working with you. So, have a lovely vacation (or whatever it is your are going to do) and see you in 1.5 months.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Template:PD-Russia

Thx, I don't know about this feature. Alex Spade (talk) 07:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't like the "show/hide" feature, I rather scroll a little more. I think this case is a good example when it hides important information and it isn't clear that any important information is hidden. But unfortunately the other editors that worked with the license templates wanted to use the "show/hide" function...

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

TinucherianBot

Oh come on, Dont block the bot for a bot request given to me... Please see this for the discussion ... I have been asked by the WP:FOOD WikiProject Food and drink members for the tagging of articles for the project . I gave them the entire category tree and I got it 'cleaned' by them (See this ). I have also tried my level best to remove any unwanted categories. What should I do further ??? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 08:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Glass production was tagged because it was wrongly categorized under Category:Wine packaging and storage and Potassium bisulfite was categorized under Category:Food additives . This is no fault of the bot... I request you to kindly unblock the bot ? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 09:03, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I see that you have pasted this message onto several talk pages. And I already had left a message for you at your talk page. So see my response at your talk page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:51, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

See my talk page for comments -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 12:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Issue with TinucherianBot in Project Banner Tagging for WP:FOOD

Thank you for expressing your concerns on the recent issue Issue with TinucherianBot in Project Banner Tagging for WP:FOOD . I have make some comments at Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Requests_for_approval#TinucherianBot and I am leaving this note just for your information -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 08:34, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Whow ! Why was the bot blocked again now by you :( ??. The bot was not even running since yesterday when it was blocked( I had stopped it more than 24 hours ago) . See Special:Contributions/TinucherianBot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 10:10, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Sir, with all respect , may I ask why do you hate me like this... ? :( I am throughly demoralized ...The bot was stopped some 24 hours ago.. We discussed it all over...And decided how the bot should be running in future and hence was unblocked. Still , you now went again to block the bot which ran some a day ago for the 'past crime' and never ran later. This is totally unfair... -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 10:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't hate you. Actually, I just think you are overenthusiastic. Enthusiasm is usually a good thing, but too much of it causes problems. That is, you need to learn to let things take their time. Like announce things, then wait a week so people can check them, before you go ahead with big things.

And yes, I mistook the dates so my block comment was wrong. Sorry about that. So I re-blocked your bot with a correct block comment and stated that the previous block comment was wrong.

See my answer about this at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Section break.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:23, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Regarding your re-block

Please see Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Re-Block by Davidgothberg. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

For future reference: That discussion has been moved to Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Re-Block by Davidgothberg.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I have replied at Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Reply_by_Tinucherian: This is just FYI -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 06:55, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Davidgothberg. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. ---- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 07:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

A discussion

An important discussion on " Should WikiProjects get prior approval of other WikiProjects (Descendant or Related or any ) to tag articles that overlaps their scope ? " is open here . We welcome you to participate and give your valuable opinions. You are receiving this note since I thought you may be interested in this disussion. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - , member of WikiProject Council. 13:06, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Cspam

Hi. No reason at all -- complete accident! For some reason, the latest version of Firefox on KDE doesn't show check boxes as being checked when they are the subject of focus, so I must have checked it and not noticed. The protection is removed. Sorry about that! Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thought so. But that cascade protection didn't hurt at all. Since all those warning and protection templates used on that page anyway should be protected. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Template cite web sandbox problem

Hi, could you help me out with a sandbox for a template. Discussion has been had at {{cite web}} about the format of dates. In essence WP:MOS changed so that dates nolonger need wikilinking which was only done to show in a registered user's preference style. The concern was that most users not specified a date preference and all anon editors of course also have no preference set. Hence the wish is to be able to force a date style (American "January 1, 2000" vs European "1 January 2000") in some articles if no user date preference has been set.

The original coding of the templates sandbox for this was by Gary King at [1]. Other date parameters in the sandbox also though needed this coding for consistancy (Gary King had used a lk parameter for this, although renamed by myself), and multiple options with ifeq ends up with multiple nesting.

So I have tried to use #switch coding instead, and as this was going to be needed several times, I thought use of a metatemplate might be a good idea. Hence, I have created {{Date style}} which is used in latest version of Template:Cite web/sandbox.

As you will see from the sandbox's own examples, no problem where the renamed datestyle parameter set to options of dmy/mdy/ymd, but only getting a redlink date if datestyle is empty or blank (assuming you have not set your own user date preference). I just can't see where I am going wrong - could you have a look for me please :-) Yours David Ruben ^Talk 01:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I took a look at {{date style}} and I don't see the problem you describe there. (Or I am misunderstanding you.) Could it be that you have not purged the page after you did your last code change? I added a "purge this page" link in the documentation of that template for your convenience. I also added indentation and spaces to the code to make it more readable. That usually helps to find bugs. But I see no obvious bugs. But I see the red date links in your examples at {{cite web/sandbox}} even after I purged those pages, so yes, there is some kind of problem. I will look into it more in some days since I am pretty busy in other places right now.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell for my playing about, the problem originates with the wikilinking [[{{{2|}}}]]] in the #switch list of {{date style}}: in essence this works if I wikilink not in the metatemplate but in the calling {{Cite web/sandbox}} (i.e. I remove the [[ ]] from {{date style}}, as this, and apply them around the call of [[{{date style | {{{datestyle|}}} | {{date}}} }}]], as this). This sorts out the current red links but is not an overall solution as then all possible outputs are wikified and this does not work where {{date style}} returns a formated date (ie not in the default YYYY-MM-DD).

The brainteaser of course is that the Template:Date style/doc documentation subpage currently manages to show all situations working correctly with no red links, yet the same metatemplate called from cite_web/sandbox is having problems. Is the problem that one template can not accept a winklinked date output from a called metatemplate, or is this really just a problem of my buggy coding skills ?David Ruben ^Talk 18:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok I think I worked this one out for myself (unfortuately, as I will explain). In essence I was encountering 2 problems that are insolvable (I believe) in current Mediawiki:

1. Not possible it seems to test for a user's date preference. The test that I had been looking at was as suggested by another of seeing if a forced date style (using #time:) of the ISO YYYY-MM-DD matched how a wikilinked date appeared (if no user preference set then this is the case, else the wikified date will be in some other style). Hence the coding was {{#if: {{#time y-m-d | {{{date|}}} | [[{{{date|}}}]] | match=no user preferences set | no-match=user has set a preference}} - but this fails to work. According to meta:Help:Date_formatting_and_linking#Accessibility of date preference for branching "The date format cannot be detected with #ifeq, because the date format is converted after expansion of parser functions."
2. It seems it is not possible to pass a wikified date from a metatemplate into another template. As {{Date style}} and its documentation show, it is possible of course to use any template to return, say [[1975-05-21]] and this gets shown on a page as of course 1975-05-21. But if this result comes back into another template, then result gets shown as a single item red-link 1975-05-21 (PS I cheated in getting this to show here by using a leading space). To test this out, try editing {{Date style}} to be just [[1975-05-21]] - then purging ones browser reveals the documentation showing beautifully wikified dates, but the outcome at {{cite web/sandbox}} is then a series of the redlinks.

My work-around solution is to trap in {{cite web/sandbox}} when the datestyle parameter is blank and the output should be a wikified date, doing the wikifying directly in the main template. Otherwise if datestyle parameter is defined, then to call the metatemplate {{Date style}} to provide the various formated options.

Hence the partial solution for simplifying the coding using a metatemplate is as per this which is hardly ellegant coding, but a lot better than just duplicating all the coding in the template itself without recourse to a metatemplate as per this improvement !

David Ruben ^Talk 00:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, good that you solved it. I've been too busy lately, so I have not had time to look into your stuff. (Summer with lots of activities, new girlfriend, and a lot of other Wikipedia stuff to do.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:44, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

A minor comment about {{mbox}}

This discussion was moved to Template talk:Mbox since it might interest more editors. --David Göthberg (talk) 12:36, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Templates

Thanks for the instructions! NawlinWiki (talk) 14:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

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