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David Göthberg is on a much needed wikivacation. I will be back, but I aim at greatly decreasing my Wikipedia work.

[edit] David's talk page

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Archive 1 (2005-2006) Archive 2 (2007) Archive 3 (2008 Jan-May) Archive 4 (2008 June-)

I dislike seeing only one side of a discussion on a page. If I put a message on your talk page, I will be watching that page for a reply. If you leave a message here, I will reply here. If you want me to leave you a short notice on your talk page when I have responded here, then just tell me.

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

Contents 1 David's talk page 2 Background colours 3 Warning templates 4 Block template 5 CSS question 6 Thank you very much... 7 mbox classes 8 CSS again 9 Need Help 10 Ambox error message 11 Disambig editintro notice 12 mbox appearance 13 Your proposal 14 Mountainindex 15 Scheme copied by Commons? 16 Thank you 17 The Anomebot2 18 Wikiprojectbannershell and Safari. 19 CAT: 20 Broadbot 21 Is mbox type=delete officially a misnomer? 22 image license 23 Recycling WP templates 24 RE:Bot 25 Replied 26 Re: selfrefs 27 Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#mbox type names 28 Legobot 29 {{High-use}} wording 30 Template stuff 31 Merging "tmbox-small" and "ombox-small" 32 Protection categorization discussion

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[edit] Background colours

Hi David,

On WP:VPT you wrote:

[...]so already many years ago I set my computer to show all "white" areas as a slight off-white.

How did you do this? Thanks!

--M.C. 21:33, 22 September 2008

(Since I think this answer will interest many I will copy this discussion to a subsection of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Background colour in articles.)

I use an old Swedish Windows ME, but I know these settings can be done in a similar way on all Windows versions. (And I hope you can do that in most other operating systems too.) Here is my rough translation to English of the things you need to click to do that setting:

On the Windows desktop: Right-click to get a small floating menu, at the bottom of that menu choose "Settings" or "Properties". That gets you to the "Properties for the screen" window. There choose the tab "Looks". That gives you a tab with a picture with examples of windows and other screen objects. Left-click in the middle of the example picture, in the white "Window text" area. Below the example picture there is the "Window part" drop down box, that one should now show an option named "Window". To the right of that you see the little drop down box named "Color" which now should contain a white little box. Click that white little box. You get a simple palette. At the bottom of that palette click the "Choose my own" button. That gives you an advanced palette window. There you can compose your own colour. I use RGB = 255, 251, 240 for the "Window text" area. Type in that colour and save it by clicking "Ok" in the two windows you now have open. Now try to open the Windows Notepad, or a Wikipedia edit window in your web browser. Now you should get that "255,251,240" off-white background there! Even the page background in MS Word gets that background colour. That saves a lot of eye-strain. (Even small fields like most browser's address bar gets that off-white colour.)

Oh, and prepare yourself to get comments from your friends like: "Hey, your screen is getting old, its colours are slightly off". :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Warning templates

		The Template Barnstar
		For spending all that time coding those warning templates. MBisanz talk 00:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Block template

This discussion has been moved to Template talk:Tmbox#User warning and block templates. --David Göthberg (talk) 15:00, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello. The tmbox changes you made to {{uw-block1}} look good ... with one exception. Instead of being centered, the template should be left-justified to match the rest of the warnings/messages/block notices in the harmonized uw-scheme. Thanks, Kralizec! (talk) 01:28, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I just fixed some bugs. MBisanz asked me since he had trouble getting it right.

But left-floating? I think not. How talk page message boxes should look was standardised and made into a Wikipedia guideline in spring 2005. See Wikipedia:Talk page templates. We amended that standard with some coloured borders some month ago so the warning templates should be able to follow the guideline too. (It was a long process, see {{tmbox}}, its talk page and the examples at Template:Tmbox/styles and so on.) So I think it is the other way around. That is, it is time the warning templates catch up with the talk page message box standard.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. I wonder how the centering will look with the numbered layout as specified at WP:UW and WP:UTM. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, I just noticed [1] that the admin .sig is no longer included inside the block template message box. Is this an oversight or another "feature"? --Kralizec! (talk) 03:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, that is awkward, I do like the signature in the box. With my own tmbox implementations,I've always been able to move it inside, see User:MBisanz/MESSAGES. MBisanz ^talk 03:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess I would use the phrase "looks terrible" but "awkward" works just as well. While I would really like to support the {{tmbox}}, forcing newer (working) templates like the uw-series into the change without first addressing all the issues gives me great pause. It would be a different story if someone had said back in January 2007 "hey, make sure these new uw templates follow Template:Tmbox/styles" but 627 days later? --Kralizec! (talk) 12:22, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

He he, I bet Tmbox didn't even exist in 2007. I did fix the sig part of the Uw-block1 template. MBisanz ^talk 12:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Since this discussion is about talk page message box standardisation I have moved it to Template talk:Tmbox#User warning and block templates. See my response there and please continue there. --David Göthberg (talk) 15:00, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CSS question

Moved to Template talk:Tmbox#Nested strikes back (section break 3) Happy‑melon 10:47, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you very much...

This discussion has been moved to MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Table of contents margin.

...for the note about the ToC margin change, I had no idea it was in the works. I very much appreciate it, and I will take steps now to remove the additional spacing I had added into some articles. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 01:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, sometimes we work a bit slow. I hope people will like it and not protest, since not many people were involved in the decision so it is a weak consensus. (But none of the people involved were against it, and that is a good sign.) However I doubt people will even notice, since it is a rather small change. I hope you think the new margin is enough? Since I wouldn't want it larger, and I usually like to have more margins and space on pages than most... The others didn't have much of a point of view on how large to make the margin.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:25, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I've actually seen it, yet. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 04:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm pretty sure I've seen it now, and I don't want to seem ungrateful, but, boy, I wouldn't mind a little more space -- it still seems a little bit constricting as it is. Do you think anyone would object to a bit more? If yes, so be it, but you did ask.... Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 17:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: Right, the next step is to test what margin people prefer. See my long answer at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Table of contents margin. --David Göthberg (talk) 03:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This discussion has been moved to MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Table of contents margin, see my response there and continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 03:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] mbox classes

Now that you've converted all the mbox series to use the mbox-text and mbox-image classes, will you be removing the old 'tmbox-image', 'imbox-text', etc, declarations from Common.css? Just wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten... :D Happy‑melon 11:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

As I wrote over at Template talk:Mbox#Simpler to use class names: "What remains now is to search for and fix any remaining hard-coded use of the old class names. And then to remove the old class names from MediaWiki:Common.css. That is to remove any usage of "ambox-text", "ambox-image" and "ambox-imageright" and the same for the other mboxes."

Unfortunately, that is the bigger part of the work so that will take some time.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, of course that makes sense. Neither google nor wikisearch has any (more :D) results for tmbox-image and tmbox-text, which is a start. I'll have a look at the other classes - I don't have high hopes for ambox-text and ambox-image!! Happy‑melon 14:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CSS again

Ok, I'm trying to lay the groundwork for the deployment of the new header system, and I've already dug myself into a hole :D. Can you possibly take a look at Template:WPBannerMeta/testcases and explain why the banners in the bottom shell get 100% width in FF but not IE? It's using Template:WPBannerMeta/sandbox - I expect the top five lines will be all you'd need to dig into - I recommend a non-wrapping text editor! Many thanks in advance, Happy‑melon 16:38, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I have removed all the clutter and put a simple version at User:Happy-melon/sandbox6. The issue is resolved by setting the colspan to 2 instead of 3, but I'm not sure why. Happy‑melon 17:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the simple version. Well, this was a ridicules bug that I was not aware of before. I did some testing and changed parts of the code at a time until I found out what works. In my IE 5.5 the colspan may not be more than 2 in this case. So I set it to 2 and removed one of the {{td}} from the second row to balance it. I guess this might be a problem in your more complex versions since you probably want to use more columns there. One workaround will be to use no colspan in the header and then instead put a table inside a big cell in the second row, so you can do whatever you want in there. (Note that the second row also must have a mini td cell to the right so the box gets 100% wide when no header is shown.)

While I was at it I removed the 'align="center"' since that one is not needed for the mbox classes. It is only needed for the old "messagebox" classes.

Now it works in all my browsers: Firefox 2, IE 5.5 and Opera 9.02.

Oh, and I don't know if I have mentioned it before: I checked your new code in {{WPBS}} some day ago and today too, and that code is correct. (I know you know it works, just wanted to mention I have double checked it.)

But I don't understand why you went back to using a wikitable instead of a HTML table. HTML tables are much better since you don't need to escape with {{!}}, which means more readable code and less server load. And in wikitables whitespace has meaning which makes it easy to do mistakes.

Oh, and why does "wpbs-inner" use "padding:2px 4px 4px 4px;"? I think it should be for instance "padding: 4px;". I think it looks strange with 2px padding on top but 4px padding on all other sides.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:01, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmn, thanks for confirming. I think I'll have to do what you suggest and put the content in subtables. As you can see in User:Happy-melon/sandbox5 I've been minded to put the header content inside a subtable anyway, to line up the breaks in WPBS (and now WPB too!). Looks much nicer than the original (can't remember where I got it from now!). So I guess putting the content inside subtables won't be too arduous. I just wish there was a simpler solution.

Don't understand why I used wikitables where?

Vis the padding, I'm not sure why I went back to it. If you check the history of WPBS you can see I did once set it to 4px all round, but changed my mind. I can't actually remember why I did that! But I assume I knew what I was talking about... :-S. Happy‑melon 07:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't like how you line up the headers in the User:Happy-melon/sandbox5 example. It looks squeezed.

And regarding wikitables vs HTML tables: I mean I don't understand why you use a wikitable in {{WPBS}}. Especially since I noticed that while you were developing that new version you used a HTML table. But then in the last few edits you changed it back to a wikitable. HTML tables have several advantages over wikitables. Especially when doing complex table coding. As you can see in {{WPBS}} you even had to mix in HTML code in the lower /Comments part. (Otherwise you would have to use {{!}} to escape the code down there if you wanted to make it 100% wikitable code. And having to use {{!}} is one of the drawbacks with wikitables.)

And regarding the padding for the "wpbs-inner": Note that at the time you changed that padding you had that tmbox margin code in your personal /monobook.css and that can have effected how you were seeing things. Anyway, I think you should use the same padding all around for the "wpbs-inner", and I think it should be 3 or 4 px. While the tmboxes inside should keep 2px margin all around so they get 2px between them, since I know from before that you prefer that.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:09, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "squeezed"?? I know they don't centre properly, which is something that needs fixing (probably with a 6em left-floating div like the fix that's applied to {{WPBS}} itself), but I think otherwise it's the same or very similar to the existing padding, margins, etc. That was the effect I was trying to create, anyway. It's probably been skewed around a bit by the various changes that we've made in the meantime elsewhere. Do you like the concept of aligning the headers?

I can't remember where I sandboxed that update, but I am aware of the relative advantages and disadvantages of HTML vs wikitable; I have been doing this for a while now :D. Both have their strengths and weaknesses - a significant advantage of wikicode is the ability to pass both attributes and contents to a table cell in a single string; I had to add |class= and |style= parameters to all the {{-Class}} templates to enable me to use HTML table code there, which is a suboptimal solution. When it's not necessary to escape pipes, as in this case, wikitable code is clearer and a more efficient syntax. I don't consider mixing HTML and wikicode to be a problem; the effect could alternatively have been achieved with or even without {{!}}, but in this case the clearest method was to use HTML. So I don't agree that HTML is necessarily preferable to wikicode here, or even that it's possible to objectively declare that one is better than the other in the majority of situations.

And 'gah' would be a good way to describe that - of course it would have affected the display, silly me. But not in a way to change the relative padding - looking at the boxes now, I'd be tempted to try 3px to see what it looks like. I'll have a play. Happy‑melon 11:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I checked in all three in my browsers (FF 2, IE 5.5 and Opera 9.02):

• In all of them the midpoint between the project name and rating is aligned compared to the other banners. So far so good.
• In Opera that midpoint is exactly in the middle of the banner, which to me indicates that you are even compensating for the [show] button width. That is, it looks perfect in Opera.
• But in Firefox and IE that midpoint is far from in the middle of the banners. Instead it is much more to the left. Much more than can be explained by the [show] button alone. In fact, in higher screen resolutions in Firefox the end of the rating is to the left of the banner centre! Thus leaving the right half of the banner empty, apart from the [show] button.
• Since the text is squeezed to the left in Firefox and IE it means in lower screen resolutions the project names are line wrapped in spite there being plenty of free space in the right half of the banners.

Based on what I see in Opera where it looks like I think you intend: Yes, I think I like the concept of aligning the headers.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for checking so thoroughly, as always. It's nice to hear what it looks like in Opera, since I don't have that browser myself (too lazy to download and update it :D). Also good to hear about lower resolutions, since the lowest resolution my main screen will support is 1024x768! Linewrapping is certainly a Bad Thing that I'll have to deal with... maybe I should be working on that in the time before October 31, so I can lump it into my planned grand update of wikiproject banners, with tmbox classes, auto-nesting and now header centering. Presuming, of course, I can get the damn thing to actually align... every time I work with CSS and HTML, I think I come to like it a little less... Happy‑melon 21:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need Help

Dear David Gothberg,
I came across you through the template. I am Asiri, from Sinhala Language Wikipedia [2]. So I am looking for develop template for Sinhala Wikipedia. I have tried various way to create on their using HTML, in spite of i couldn't make rich out put like this.After following various templates i found, it is necessary to Ambox TemplatesTemplate:Ambox. So if you have leisure time, can you kindly help me to develop Ambox templates on Sinhala Wikipedia. You can use my User SandBox [3] for do experiments.
Thank you! Best regards Asiri wiki (talk) 03:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am sorry but I don't speak a single word Sinhala, so I can't really do any work on the Sinhala Wikipedia. However what you need to do are these three fairly easy steps:

• Copy the "ambox" CSS classes from MediaWiki:Common.css to si:MediaWiki:Common.css. (Since si:MediaWiki:Common.css is protected you need to ask an admin at your wiki to do it.)
• Copy the code from Template:Ambox to for instance si:Template:Ambox. (I see someone already did that some time ago, but you might want to update to our latest version of the code. You probably should check the history of si:Template:Ambox and contact the user who have been working with it.)
• Copy the ambox documentation from Template:Ambox/doc to si:සැකිල්ල:ලිපිපණිවුඩපෙට්ටිය/ලේඛය and translate it to Sinhala.

That's really all there is to it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much David Göthberg ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Asiri wiki (talk • contribs) 04:29, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ambox error message

Any reason not to add class="error" to the error message? —Ms2ger (talk) 16:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: I didn't know about that one. Now I tried it out, hehe, VERY visible. But I want to wait some day before I use it. See why in my longer answer over at Template talk:Tmbox#Deprecated ambox parameters, section break 1.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig editintro notice

Hi. There's a question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Disambig editintro - working from Bellhalla that we need technical help with.

[I would guess that many of the SetIndex users will want similar exclusion. Possibly changing something to do with the categories would fix them, but I don't know what else relies upon the Category:All disambiguation pages? Our categories generally terrify me...]

(If you don't know the answers, could you prod someone who might?) Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

No worries. I took a look. I know several easy ways to fix that. I just have to think and test a little which way to fix it is the best. I'll get right to it since this seems urgent. You can tell people at the other talk pages about my answer.

Could you point me and everyone else to one single talk page where we can discuss this and where I can publish the solution I recommend (once I have figured out which one is best)? Oh, and I think we can have this fully fixed within some hours. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] mbox appearance

I could be wrong, but I would guess that you really don't care what the various colours/images are, except that usage of the boxes, per type, should be standard, correct? - jc37 04:41, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You are both right and wrong. In some areas I care much less than people think, and in some I care a lot. Here's what I think:

• Right, one of my primary concerns is that each type should be recognisable across the namespaces. So that when we see a yellow box we know it means a "minor warning". This also means that it is important to not have too many different colour types, since then people will not learn what they mean. And having a unified look looks far better than having the chaos we used to have.

• I REALLY dislike that the warning message boxes are used in articles. Since they are a self reference and should be placed on the talk pages. They are confusing to our readers and make us look unprofessional. Oh, and I think they scare away editors. Since it's very discouraging when you have put in a lot of work to make a nice article and then get smacked with some big clean-up tags that make your article look terrible. It's sad that the people who spend their time complaining instead of writing articles have hijacked the top position in the articles. A compromise could be to place most of the boxes at the bottom of the pages.

• But it could probably be useful to have a small box in say the upper right corner of an article that informs that there are issues currently discussed at the talk page. And perhaps using the colour scheme to show the severity level, but without going into details what it is about.

• But the deletion notices probably should still be big and visible. And the purple move boxes are informative to the readers since they tell there is another article on the same subject, so I don't mind them that much. And some of the blue notice boxes might be useful for the readers too.

• I do find message boxes on other types of pages very useful.

• I got involved last year when they were standardising the article message boxes. And since I realised we probably never will get rid of the boxes we might just as well make them look good instead. So I helped out. They had already come up with the design, I mostly just did the programming and mediating between all the people involved.

• And then we standardised the boxes for the other namespaces too, so boxes can look good everywhere. But I think we failed with the category boxes, they are fairly ugly. But people demanded to have coloured background for at least one of the namespaces.

• I would prefer to group it as three kinds of pages: Articles, talk pages and other pages. I find it silly to have special designs for category and image pages. But the majority of users wanted it that way.

• I do like the colour scale we use. That is an internationally well known scale. Some neutral colour for notices = blue or grey or brown border. Then yellow for minor warnings. Orange for major warnings. Red for deletion and red+pink for speedy deletion. Well, I voted for just red for both deletion and speedy, but some people demanded something more visible for the speedy deletion. (As far as I remember it was a small minority but they were very vocal and most of us didn't care enough, so we gave them the pink to get them off our backs.) I think we probably can use red for the higher level user block warning boxes too.

• And I think we have good colours for the license and featured boxes for the {{imbox}}. And purple is the best move colour since we happen to use red-blue icons for that. (And the existing transwiki boxes used a kind of pink.) And since we need some colour for that and purple was free, why not? I think those purple boxes look kind of cool. :))

• I do have pretty strong feelings about the icons. We did put a lot of work into them. But already from the beginning most of us agreed that a specific message should of course use a more specific image if there is one. Making the message clear is much more important than having a good looking icon. Thankfully we can often find or make icons that are both clear and good looking. :))

• Also, I think that we should use icons in most boxes. Since only using colours makes it less clear what a message means. And we have gotten comments from colour-blind users that the icons of course are good for them.

So basically, most of the ideas were not mine. But I have suggested a lot of tweaks, and I have argued hard for what I think, so sometimes people have agreed with me so some of the designs are "mine". But when the majority of users have disagreed with me and I have not managed to change their mind, then I have used their styles. Well, there have been very varying points of views so the designs we have now are mostly a result of compromise.

And then I have defended those styles when we deployed. Since as you say, having a working standard that people accept so the boxes can be easy to recognise and understand is after all the most important part. I refuse that two vocal users should come along and change a standard that 50-100 users have worked out in lengthy discussions for over a year. That would just be wrong. So that means I sometimes actually "enforce" styles that I don't like myself.

Oops, sorry for the rant. Now, what is it you have on your mind?

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

lol.

(Sorry, your last few comments snuck up on me : )

Anyway, my main reason for posting was a note at WP:AN, and thinking that a mountain may be being made out of a molehill, when really all that probably needs happen is a new discussion started.

Though now after reading your comments I think we should probably clarify a couple things...

One in particular (and if you don't wish my word for it, I suppose I can go dredging the archives) is that the cosmetic look of the deletion templates was opposed by more than "one or two" (even in the original discussion - I know because I started one of the several threads), and that doesn't even include the speedy debate.

That aside, there's a lot of what you say above that I do agree with.

In particular, that there should be fewer types of mboxes. (article, talk, and "other" sounds fine with me, though I think imbox has more than a few idiosyncracies, worth being separate.) But then, I also think all the mboxes should probably be shaded. (With maybe the exception of article space.)

With only a couple exceptions (that you know about), the icons seem fine to me. It was funny to me at the time how much more of the debate was over the icons than anything else. Now in hindsight, perhaps I should have been more interested in that part of the discussion...

All of the above aside, I sincerely hope that you aren't feeling hard feelings due to something I've said or done. If so, I hope that we can resolve whatever it is.

For me, my recollection is that you've only really brought me to annoyance once in the whole time I've known you, and in that case I decided at that point to leave the conversation. (Though I'll admit that I still am somewhat stunned in hindsight.)

Anyway (somewhat back on topic), if I were to start a "broader" discussion concerning XfD templates (and possibly the caution/warning templates), is this something you see yourself strongly opposing? - jc37 07:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Right, I remember we were arguing hard about something some days ago. But I suck at remembering with whom I argued about what, so I actually right now didn't remember what it was about. (I have unfortunately been in more than one heavy discussion lately.) I had to look around to find out that you were one of the two users over at Template talk:Mfd to argue against me.

By the way, I wonder when I did stun you? Was it in the discussion over at Template talk:Mfd?

Anyway. Right, almost every style in the mboxes have been heavily discussed by lots of users, and often heavily contested by some users. So I didn't mean to say that everyone agreed about the deletion style. On the contrary, I think that was one of the more heavily discussed styles. But the current styles are the compromises we achieved after all those discussions. And to clarify: The colour scale and some other basic things were heavily debated for the ambox and most thought that the same colour scale should then be reused for the other namespaces. For most of the other mboxes the discussions were then lighter since we had the old ambox consensus/compromise. Ombox was probably the least discussed. But for the tmbox we did get heavy discussion again, but that ended up with confirming the ambox colour scale. So as I see it the mbox colour scale has been repeatedly confirmed in very large discussions.

And that is what I mean with that it is far from enough that two or so users now try to overturn that compromise. Especially since the same number of users had the opposing view on the very same talk page.

If they/you want to overturn the styles then they/you better bring it up for full discussion again, announcing it on the Village pumps and code up comparative examples and so on again. I think you seem to understand that, at least to some extent. While Ned Scott thinks he can just demand and get his will through.

So no, I am not "opposed" to you guys bringing up the discussion again. That is everyone's right to do here at Wikipedia. (Well, until it becomes deemed a "perennial proposal".) Although already the thought of all that discussion again makes me very tired.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

First, my apologies, I didn't mean to bring up the past. I was just trying to be accurate while making a semibroad statement. And was (perhaps not very well) trying to be accurate concerning past discussions. (And no - in fact, I seem to recall supporting you in the mfd discussion - AFAIR it was a while back when we were "discussing" possibilities in coding. Not sure which mbox talk page anymore.)

I'm not saying that the colour scale is "wrong", btw. As I said, in general I agree. I just think that there are a few situations (caution/warning and XfD) which need a broader discussion, due to specific uses/applications. During those other discussions there were such concerns that the "bigger issues" be dealt with (like the icons and the basic scale, etc.), and worry about the rest later. So XfD templates, though brought up by several, were pretty much steamrollered (ignored/pushed away from the main discussions) by those who were more interested in the convention/standard to succeed. It's part of why I backed off of it back then. As I said, I agree with most of it. I just think its unfortunate that those who let other concerns wait until the "big" debate was done are now being "steamrollered" with the suggestion that these things were discussed in the "bigger debate", when indeed, most concerns along these lines were ignored or arbitrarily dismissed by those implementing this scheme. (When is "later", if not now?)

And please, while no offense to anyone is intended, please don't group my thoughts and comments with others' ("you guys"). While I may respect others' right to an opinion, I may not necessarily agree with that opinion, and likely won't agree with the presentation or "tone" of the opinion.

And I so understand the feeling of "tired". There are quite a few things that I just look at and say: "maybe tomorrow". There are days I avoid opening my "back burner" list. It's grown so large already. - jc37 20:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Forgive my intrusion, but I feel I must agree with Mr Göthberg's points concerning the discussion that has taken place to bring the current message-box systems and their associated styles to being. Lots of functions must be factored into such decisions, which ensures long discussion periods for any potential change. All proper procedures have been followed, and I cannot see grounds for another, tiring, and almost certainly mostly repetitive discussion so soon after the event.

Personally, I have absolutely no problem with said systems and styles; I believe, for instance, that imbox and cmbox should be retained because their respective namespaces are highly visible to readers, in contrast to the back-room machinery of community-related pages tagged with ombox. I am also quite a fan of the category boxes—I especially like the notice and move types, and I find examples like Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup quite elegant. My favourite box is {{category redirect}}, and it will be the only thing I'll be sad about when we'll finally have proper category redirects.

What I am not so sure about is this: descriptions inside the template. I much prefer having the descriptions below the template, as in most category pages (including my previous example). I think discussing this feature—page-description integration—would be a better use of our time... Waltham, The Duke of 17:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

No offense to you whatsoever, but I have a feeling that you have no idea what my concerns are.

I dropped this note here because I've (fairly often) discussed (rather congenially) with dg, and thought that attempting to find out his opinion here was better than in the midst of what the typical "big debate".

You (and others) are of course welcome to join in (this is Wikipedia after all), but please realise that my concerns are focused on only a couple types of templates, and not with dismantling a scheme which I strongly think that Wikipedia needed.

Anyway, thanks for your comments, and I hope this clarifies. - jc37 20:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It's too late not to offend me, Jc37... I challenge you to a duel!

All right, actually not. It is true that I had no idea what your specific concerns were. I only wanted to note that the boxes were dealt with as a group. Opening the debate for a component of the system is close to (re)opening the debate for the entire system, as changes to small parts can have a much greater impact. I have never thought that you intended to dismantle the scheme (although the clarification is appreciated). But I do believe that piecemeal additions and/or modifications should be made with great care or not at all, or else the system can be corrupted and its utility undermined.

All that said, I should like to be educated on your concerns, so that I may assist in addressing them properly. There is no need to repeat yourself if a link can do, of course. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 02:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Waltham's previous message: Haha, thanks Waltham. That's a prime example of what I mean: Waltham likes the category message boxes, while I dislike them. That is, the styles now are a compromise. They are not my personal taste or design, but the logical middle way between all the disparate wills. The "logical" middle way as in not necessarily exactly the middle way but instead something that works together with the other styles in a logical way.

And yes, I very much agree that category descriptions should not go inside the category notice boxes. That's like putting a Wikipedia how-to guide inside the {{how-to}} box or similar. Notices should of course just be "notices", not entire pages. I have it on my to-do list to bring that up for discussion somewhere and fix some of the category notice usage. (But I have been too busy with more fun work, like programming templates.)

Regarding Waltham's latest message: As usual Waltham says what I am thinking but in a more clear way than I could.

jc37: Aahhww, and I who were just going to suggest we move this discussion to Template talk:Mbox. But sure, we can keep the discussion here a little longer. I hope it is okay that we move it to Template talk:Mbox later when we feel a bit more "finished"?

jc37: Now I am curios (just like Waltham), it seems your concerns perhaps differs form what I thought they were. You mention XfD message boxes like they are a subgroup of the deletion boxes. Are there other deletion boxes than XfD templates and speedy delete templates? I mean, for the speedy delete templates we have the red border and the pink background, so they have their own style. So as far as I get it the style with red border and the normal background is reserved for XfD templates. So, is XfD boxes a subgroup and you thus mean to add a new type of messages (with a new style), or do you want to change the style for the existing delete type?

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; I meant to show this difference of opinions. Although I have been rather lucky, as I only really had to compromise in the tmbox discussion, and not as much as others had to, either.

Note: I'm still watching all the -mbox templates, even though there has been nothing non-technical for me to comment on for ages. I think this is my opportunity to take my watchlist below 110 pages for the first time in months. Could you let me know if something style-related does come up? Waltham, The Duke of 06:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Waltham: I'll try to remember to let you know. But it is not that likely I will remember. Do not trust that I will remember anything. I don't even trust my own memory myself. (And that is why I write important things down. I wouldn't survive without my little old-school paper-based pocket calendar. I don't leave home without it.)

And hang on! 110 pages? Isn't there a zero wrong there? My watchlist is about 1600 pages long, in spite that I constantly remove items from it...

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I fully understand what it's like to have a weak (or simply highly selective) memory. No need to be anxious; if something is big enough, I'll probably hear about it in the Pub Pump or on this page, which I do not intend to un-watch.

Speaking of un-watching, the number was correct. The greatest-ever extent of my watchlist was around 140 pages, a month or two ago. I simply remove whatever I don't need, and being a humble third-rate copy-editor, there are few mainspace pages and templates to watch. I stalk a few talk pages, WikiProjects, discussion venues, and guidelines, and that's about it. I do check on the watchlist quite often; it even has its own button below my browser's address bar (although it's permanently open in its own tab anyway—I always have at least ten of them open). I have three more buttons, which I click several times a day: SBS watch, Check protection expiry, and Main Page errors. My self-imposed chores, see. Waltham, The Duke of 08:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

(Ok, I've lost all hope of trying to thread responses.)

I have two main concerns: visibility, and making sure the currently intended template usage reflects actual past intended usage.

The first concern is mostly about the discussion notiification templates. (Which is mostly XfD, but prod/move/merge/split/transwiki/etc. all fall under this grouping.)

The second concern is mostly about Template:Caution and Template:Warning.

Taking the latter first: Giving a template a makeover shouldn't dramatically change its intent or usage. And if irregularity in usage is discovered, it would seem to make more sense finding a solution to the irregularity, than to force an arbitrary standard without repairing the usage of the past. It would be similar to dramatically changing where a redirect pointed, without changing WhatLinksHere. (Imagine if WP:V was suddenly pointed to WP:VANDAL, for example.)

So I'm not thrilled with what happened to the two templates post-mbox. They were mostly intended for warnings to users about actions, but in reality have been used for anything which an editor thought it would be cool to have a the triangle ! or a stopsign.

But now, Template Warning has been made the "content" type, with a different icon, and a different colour scheme. A rather dramatic change from it's original design. Especially for such a widely used template.

My suggestion was that we should add two more "types" to mbox called "caution" and "warning". As an option, the "content" type could be renamed "caution". (Calling one "content" really is confusing, since most templates are about "content", and because often the "content" style is used for templates that have nothing to do with "content", simply due to the progressive nature of the colour scheme.)

By implementing my suggestion, the entire standard still would remain. The colour scheme would remain stable and intact.

And by doing this, we wouldn't have to go back" and check over the previous edits of the editors.

And even better, just like the "notice" type essentially deprecated the "notice" template. (I presume.) These two types would deprecate the "caution" and "warning" templates in the same way.

And further, we wouldn't have to go back and look over the previous edits, since: the previous "style" would essentially be in place, just as the original editors had intended when choosing to transclude them in the first place.

We get all the benefits, without any negatives that I see. (Unless there's someone out there that doesn't like the stopsign, or red, I suppose. But then, both of those were in wide usage prior to the standardisation, so I really don't see that as an issue either.)

Anyway, that's about as succinct as I think I can explain.

As for the page notice concerns, I'm working on a proposal. (Since at this point, I think people need to visually see the problems, in order to understand.)

Does that clarify somewhat? - jc37 11:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Your proposal

I started to comment there, but decided that here was better.

• "Good luck with that, my experience is that much of that won't ever find consensus. (Then again, perhaps people may at least understand your proposal : )

The main one is that you just suggested that a "cabal" of admins decide who can get a user-right.

Another is that (from what I understand) "protection" is hardwired into the user-right system and would need to be re-written. Something that would presumably be more work than just moving around some of the other "less-integrated" user-rights. (I suggested protect to be given separately awhile back, thinking that it would be nice for certain bots and experienced coders. Needless to say, nothing came of it.)

And a third is that the-powers-that-be have said that they don't want an "interim admin" package. (A half-step between user and admin.)

Hence my suggestion. This should meet most of the concerns, and yet be rather simple to implement, and there should be little to not "changeover chaos" in implementation, as the existing processes absorb it effortlessly. But I guess we'll see. - jc37 14:15, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't really have much to answer about this. I just wanted to share my idea about the user levels over at that discussion (wherever it was, I don't have the link handy and you didn't link to it). Anyway, I just wanted to note that I have read your message.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mountainindex

Hi, David! Could you, please, explain, what was wrong with tying {{Mountainindex}} to {{SIA}}? The way I see it, the former is in no way different than any other set index that can be produced by the SIA template with the type parameter. Am I not seeing something obvious? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Never mind; I've just spotted your response on the talk page. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:10, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded to Ezhiki over at Template talk:SIA#Parameters.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Scheme copied by Commons?

I've noticed the Commons message boxes on this page and find their colours quite interesting. What do you think? Waltham, The Duke of 04:22, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean their "featured picture" boxes, or their "retouched picture" box? Or both?

Their box design pre-dates our {{imbox}} design. And our imbox design is partly based on what people already were using for image message boxes. When we designed the featured image box for the English Wikipedia (the one you see at the top) we on purpose made so it would look good together with the featured image boxes from Commons, since as you can see they end up on the same page. But we still kept the Wikipedia style for it, so it is visible that it is a Wikipedia box. That is 80% width and light grey background, like the other imboxes. (The box at the top is an {{imbox}} with "type=featured".)

And I think their boxes look fairly good. Although 100% wide is a bit much on higher screen resolutions. I like the brown boxes, but I think their grey box has slightly too dark background and too light border.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Please forgive the delay in replying; I've been down with a nasty cold.

Thank you for explaining the situation; I agree that the boxes look good, and like the overall harmony of the page. The grey box's background may be a little dark, but I don't mind it and find that it matches well with the background of the brown box (though its border could be a little bit darker).

I am pleased with how our boxes have turned out; ours and the Commons ones are alike yet different. I hadn't paid much attention to the Commons boxes before, so I have only recently seen the similarity. As I was not involved in the format designing for imbox, I could not know which set was the original. There is so much interchange between projects nowadays, after all; I've found amboxes used in crazy ways in some foreign Wikipedias... Waltham, The Duke of 03:39, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a lot of interchange. Some of the mbox styles have actually been inspired by ideas from the other projects and languages.

And yeah, I think I saw that on one project they used the ambox styles (not the tmbox styles) for talk pages only, but had no standard for article pages. And I think they even called it "ambox". So the styles are not coordinated between the different language Wikipedias.

I think it would be very hard or at least way too much work to coordinate the designs with all the other projects. (I don't have time to do more than I already do.) Thus so far I have just continued my work here to make good and clear code and styles here, with good documentation. And that job isn't even finished yet. I hope that makes it reasonably simple for the other projects to copy our mboxes if they like them.

And that's exactly the reason why I and many other non-native English speakers do our work here at the English Wikipedia, instead of on our native language Wikipedias. That is, this is the biggest language Wikipedia and editors from many languages and cultures help out here, so the work we do here is more likely to be reused (and be reusable) on the other projects than if we do it "locally" at the other projects.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. On one hand, it is more likely that, due to the English Wikipedia's size and stature, trends will trickle down from here to the other projects rather than bubble up our way. On the other hand, this place gathers more contributors, and therefore talents and ideas, and has more potential for fruitful exchange of opinions.

We really are at the centre of innovation (although this would probably also include the other big Wikipedias, especially the German). And it is a good thing to consider the needs of other projects—which we do. But it is certainly not our job to baby-sit other projects and their use of templates developed here. After all, everything is available for free use. Waltham, The Duke of 04:27, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

		The Special Barnstar
		Thanks for spending a lot of time helping me to fix Image:Preah Vihear Temple.png last night. n:Thai-Cambodian generals in talks after border clash kills two finally has the map! Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, how did you get that instruction template to show up that people see when they edit your talk page? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. But that image fix was really just routine.

And the instruction template you see when you edit my talk page is an editnotice. You can read up on them at Wikipedia:Editnotice. And you don't need to be an admin to add one to your user page or talk page.

The one you see on this page is a bit special since it uses my own editnotice loader, which has special features such as the "view" link in its upper right corner and some other things that makes it easier to use. It also makes it possible for users to add editnotices to subpages in their user space. I have so far not been able to get consensus to install that one for all users.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:31, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks David. That seems terrible complicated, but it might be because I'm doing it at 2am! I have the notice I'd like to use at User talk:Matthewedwards/Sandbox/Editnotice. Would it be possible for you to actually set it up correctly for me, please? Regards, Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 09:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Anomebot2

Hi, just letting you know that I have unblocked User:The Anomebot2 on the condition that it performs its other approved tasks, ie. not adding {{coord missing}} to articles. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 13:59, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Ameliorate: Thanks for informing me. But I looked around and I can't find any place where Anome has accepted and understood under what condition the block has been raised. Has there been such a discussion somewhere, or do you just assume that he will not continue to add the {{coord missing}} to articles?

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:45, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have given you the link before. It was discussed on ANI (archive link) and clarified on my talkpage. If it starts to add {{coord missing}} again (whether there is any visible content in the template or not) it should be reblocked, but as far as I know it performed its other, approved, tasks without objection. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 10:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to intrude in , David , but here is the link  :) -- Tinu Cherian - 10:13, 20 October 2008 (UTC) I am late -- Tinu Cherian - 10:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Ameliorate: Ah, thanks for the links. And yes, the other task of the bot (to add existing coordinates found in other databases) is very valuable.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:54, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiprojectbannershell and Safari.

This section has been copied to Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell#Wikiprojectbannershell and Safari. --David Göthberg (talk) 17:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi David, i've been away a bit, and it seems you are still working on all this templatebanner mess, so i figured you would know best where to look. As of recently, i'm seeing this problem with the wikiprojectbannershell on Safari 3.1. Can you help pinpoint the problem ? non tmboxed banners do not have this problem. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:58, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you point to the page here at Wikipedia which you took that example from?

And it really is User:Happy-melon who is working with those templates, not me. He has been doing a lot of code changes lately and I am not up to date with his changes. And he has Safari, while I can't run Safari on my operating system.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:24, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have Safari, actually, which explains why I haven't seen this issue before. I echo DG: I need to know what the code looks like that produced that output for you. Happy‑melon 16:47, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I looked around a little since TheDJ has not yet responded. I see the problem when I use my slightly old Opera 9.02 and look at Talk:International Space Station. I don't see the problem with my Firefox 2 and not with my Internet Explorer 5.5. The cases I have found that has the problems use {{WPBannerMeta}} inside {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. I have not had time to look closer at the code, and I might not have any spare time for a week now or so.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:34, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem is almost certainly (read probably definitely!) with the tmbox classes rather than WPBannerMeta per se, but I'll consider all options, naturally! Can you (TheDJ and DG) take a look at this sandbox and tell me what you see? Happy‑melon 15:54, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

First a note: I will be moving this discussion to Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell later.

Happy-melon: In the sandbox you linked to, when I use my Opera 9.02 I see the following banners being only as wide as their text content: Discworld, Aerosmith and Foo. The others (including the "trivial" one) have 100% width.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmmmm... I've just downloaded and installed Opera 9.02 from the opera.com archives, and it renders both pages entirely correctly! How bizzarre! I might try Safari just to be certain. Good idea to move this to TT:WPBM btw, go ahead with that. Happy‑melon 17:01, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

This section has been copied to Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell#Wikiprojectbannershell and Safari. Continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 17:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CAT:

1. Probably the best thing to do with these is move CAT:, WP: into a subcategory, membership to be transcluded by {{R from shortcut}}. This can be done automatically or manually.
2. I turned off sentence casing yesterday - putting REDIRECT instead , but found that most of the items were "redirect" - as you say it does not matter greatly, but I prefer as much WP-ease (template names, style on talk pages/documentation etc.) to be sentence case and full words as it creates a conducive environment for reducing the amount of work fixing article MoS problems. I may tweak this to only change lower-case to sentence case.

Thanks for your note. Rich Farmbrough, 12:01 23 October 2008 (UTC).

Note to self: I have responded over at Rich's talk page, where I started this discussion.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:30, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

WP: YEs I remembered that after I posted.. "template cannot.. detect" I can't keep up with which parser functions are implemented, but that sounds like a challenge! (To our template gurus - I hasten to add.) Rich Farmbrough, 12:34 23 October 2008 (UTC).

[edit] Broadbot

Hi David

You blocked my bot earlier today beacause a stupid edit in the doc-template. As stated before (in May) my bot very rarely edits templates (last time was in May) and only deals with new articles. The template edits was part of a cleanup on the danish Wikipedia which included a few template edits, of which the doc edit was the only faulty one. Therefore i would like to have my bot unblocked again as soon as possibly. Thanks in advance. --Broadbeer (talk) 14:38, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I have responded over at User talk:Broadbot#Same problem again.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is mbox type=delete officially a misnomer?

Regarding this edit, my reasoning in not using type=delete originally was that "delete" is stated as being for "Deletion templates" in the documentation; there isn't a type for "This is serious, read it before you do anything", so I made up a "custom" type and styled it to look just like delete. If anything needs to be done about it, just a change to say "Deletion templates and other serious notices" is sufficient as far as I'm concerned. Anomie⚔ 23:55, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The official mbox style for "major warnings" such as for "This is serious, read it before you do anything" is the orange "type=content". The red "type=delete" is for deletion templates, and perhaps for the highest level block warnings and similar. (What colours to use for user block boxes is still being discussed.) But, in your own user space you do pretty much as you like, so I may not force the orange major warning "content" type on your message there. Besides, that message box is about blocking, so red is probably the right colour there. And I had to do something to stop that {{ombox}} from reporting itself to our error category. So since you had given it a red border I changed its type to the red "delete" type, since that was the one with the same look as your hard-coded style. And as you saw I did the same on some other pages in your user space.

For the box on User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/SandboxCleaner.pm the "delete" type was not a perfect match, since you had hard-coded a 1px border. But I chose the delete type anyway since that was the closest. But I also left your hard-coded style, thus the box kept your 1px border. Another option would have been to simply remove the "type" parameter, since then the {{ombox}} falls back to the default "notice" type. And then your hard-coded border would still see to that your box looked like you wanted.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:21, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] image license

Sorry, I'm usually pretty good at licenses and attribution, so I missed that one. Thanks for informing me, I'll be more careful in the future. -- penubag  (talk) 06:16, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recycling WP templates

Hi, David I note from the template talk pages, that your a template expert. I wonder if you could assist me or point me to the relevant info as I'm attempting to recycle (copy) Wikipedia templates to a Wikia project I started. The Msg box, Ambox and {{ombox}} templates display the Icon and characters outside the box border My version Here. I got a working Navbox look alike but it has faults (i.e. edit buttons centre and don't function correctly and if 2 added to apage they have a space of about 5 lines between them) Example here on my Caterpillar inc. page. Another problem i have is that after {{template}} in text the text jumps to a new line indented like this Example. Is some code missing from other files Like CSS & JS (I Dont fully understand how these work) but have seen these mentioned and an editor on the Wikia site did help a bit to fix Navbox for me?

I want to create a simpler version of Infobox companies, as thats non functioning (it displays loads of markup characters) and is over complex for my needs. Can you point me to a helpful guide to writing Wiki template code and understanding how to follow parameters used. (is there an online editor to help write them ?)

Thanks in anticipation BulldozerD11 (talk) 17:07, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I have copied this discussion to Template talk:Mbox#Recycling WP templates and responded there, since this discussion is relevant to anyone else that wants to move these templates to other wikis.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:54, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks David, Have replied on the new page listed above. (replied here to acknowledge move) - BulldozerD11 (talk) 03:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] RE:Bot

Perhaps it would've been easier to just ask me to stop the bot instead of block it. :P Whatever though, I can appreciate the usage of force I guess. Anyway, I did read this. While discussion was split down the middle, I noticed that everyone against was saying "there's no reason to, so why should we", and the "it ain't broken so don't fix it" argument is lame. Besides, I still think that this drains a lot of power given how often it is transcluded (I don't care what WP:PERF says because that only applies to the small cases, I'm pretty sure). If we're substituting unsigneds now old ones should also be substituted because of the poor, poor job queue. For what it's worth, here's my reasoning against some examples from that talk page;

1. "Needs to be transcluded so that we can fix it easily if it breaks"; if that was how we ran Wikipedia we wouldn't even have subst: as a function. Besides, everyone substitutes it currently (SineBot as well).
2. "The developers said don't do it"; this seems to throw WP:BOLD out of the window. And besides, Brion himself said that they deny the server load claim only because nobody has tested against it. This is like storing corpses in the drinking water but not removing them despite all the deaths until somebody proves that it isn't healthy.

Reasons not to substitute from WP:SUBST, explained:

• Once a template is substituted, the result is no longer linked to the template, making it hard to find all pages displaying that text (though categories can sometimes relieve this). This problem can easily be worked around by including a link to the template in the template's code. Why do we need to find where the unsigned template has been used? You could always just pagesearch for "Preceding comments..." anyway.
• A substituted template will not be updated when the master template is updated. Unsigned is a stable template, so this doesn't really matter.
• If the template is used to standardize the appearance of something, you probably do not want to do a substitution. An example of this is a table of contents or navigation box. Doesn't apply.
• Substituting en masse — editing thousands of articles with bots — slows down the site and wastes server resources unnecessarily. Not really any more than day-to-day usage. What happened to WP:PERF? Besides, better to take them down then have them continually drain resources.
• Substitution increases the size of articles in the database and database dumps. By a couple of bytes; don't think we need to worry.
• A substituted template can add a lot of wiki-code or HTML to the article, harming accessibility for the less technically inclined. Unsigned isn't complicated at all.
• Substituting templates prevents newcomers from learning to use templates, and prevents users from finding their documentation. It leaves "Template:unsigned" in comments.
  • When a user tries to copy, for example, the warnings for vandaloids created by the templates described at Template:Test, from an existing page to another page where it is needed, that user receives no clue that the content on the existing page was created by a template! If the template has changed recently, then the user might find several undated versions of each warning. The user is left wondering what to do. It looks like each editor copies or makes their own warnings. Which version to use? Write my own? This whole 'subst' feature is weird. Null due to previous statement.
• If the template is just being used temporarily, it is usually better not to substitute. Substituted templates are much harder to remove or modify. Long-term template is long-term.
• When a vandalised template is substituted, it is more difficult to repair than regular vandalism because of the lack of links between the template and its incarnations and the lack of updatability. It won't be vandalised, so no worries.
• Unsubstituted deletion tags for trivial pages (such as categories and redirects) offer the deleting administrator a convenient, meaningful deletion summary. Example: "content was: '{{rfd}} #REDIRECT Wikipedia' (and the only contributor was 'Jimbo Wales')". A precise deletion comment gives onlookers (especially non-administrators unable to view the deleted edits) better insight as to why a specific item may have been deleted. If templates such as {{rfd}}, {{cfr}}, etc. are substituted, the "reason for deletion" field defaults to a blank line. However, pages deleted via {{afd}} and {{mfd}} should be deleted with a link to the subpage where the deletion was discussed. This also doesn't apply.

See what I mean? Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 07:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and as for the block link, it broke the imagemap template when I used it. I'll find a way around it eventually. Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 07:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Note to self: I have copied this response back to the talk page of Master of Puppets, where this discussion started, and I have responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Fixed the block link. Also, starting a topic at the pump to get widespread consensus on this quickly; maybe I'll even snag Brion in for a bit. So consider this canvassing. Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 23:57, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

No problem, I just wanted to make sure we resolve this issue. I've removed unsigned and nowrap, though the bot will substitute unsigned if it is already doing something else on the page (doing multiple things at once now). It won't be making one edit per replacement anymore, but many replacements per edit to maximize usefulness. Oh, and sorry if unblocking my bot was irregular, but I didn't see any need to block it when I wasn't going to use it until we figured this out. Anyway, I hope all is well, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :D} 04:22, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Replied

[edit] Re: selfrefs

Hi. While patrolling Merkle–Damgård construction, I noticed in your edit summary:

“

And Dcoetzee: "Wikipedia" wasn't a self reference here, it was just a word with the right properties. Would have worked in print too.

”

Note that the example fixed by User:Dcoetzee was indeed a (mildly) inappropriate self-reference. As per Wikipedia:Avoid self-references — which was linked to in the previous edit summary — (emphasis added below):

“

The following is a list of self-references in Wikipedia's main namespace that are not encyclopedia-neutral. They should at least be acknowledged or marked as self-references but not necessarily be deleted as they serve their purpose here on Wikipedia. Referring to "Wikipedia" The word "Wikipedia" anywhere in an article, unless used where Wikipedia is actually the immediate subject of discussion in the prose.

”

Just a friendly note. ~ Jafet•work•play•watch 12:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#mbox type names

Title says it all :D. I expect you'll want to get involved. Happy‑melon 18:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I have responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:29, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Legobot

(x-posted) Do you mind unblocking the bot right now? It will not be substituting {{unsigned}} (or similar) until resolved, but it needs to do some other ones. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 04:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I have now unblocked the bot since you stated it will only do its other tasks. I have been away for some days so I haven't checked my watchlist lately so I didn't notice your message on your talk page until you left a message here on my talk page. (Next time leave a message at the admins talk page immediately, so you don't need to wait as long.) And since I have been away I don't know what the result is of the discussions whether to let bots substitute {{unsigned}} or not.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:18, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] {{High-use}} wording

Hi David,

You reverted my wording changes here, pointing to the talk page, but the last comment there is my rationale for the rewording from back when I revamped it. Am I missing something? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I had written an explanation for that talk page, but had not saved it yet since I had fallen asleep in between. I have now saved that response.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:39, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template stuff

How come? Think making it a percentage value would help? And your edit didn't really solve any problems... the templates are still taking up more space than necessary. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :D} 08:32, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

No, a percentage value does not help. It would still look terrible in lower screen resolutions, such as 800x600 and even worse in hand held units. And your edit caused the infobox to overlap the message boxes even in some modern browsers.

We have tinkered with the box flow problems for years, and discussed it for years. I changed back to what is the current best practice. And we even have guidelines specifying that that is the way to do it. I am not a fan of the "accessibility guidelines" since they are mostly handled by a group of syntax theory fanatics with little respect for what actually works in the browsers out there, but since I am lazy, here is one of the guidelines that describe the current best practice: Wikipedia:Accessibility#Lead section.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:45, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Well, thanks for letting me know. I just didn't see the point of having two silly boxes eating up some article real estate. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :D} 08:54, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't like such boxes either. I would prefer that they would go on the talk pages, or at least at the bottom of the articles. Unfortunately it has been decided, and heavily enforced by some users, that most message boxes should be put at the top of articles. :(

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merging "tmbox-small" and "ombox-small"

I notice that these two declarations in MediaWiki:Common.css are in fact identical. Should we perhaps unify them? The background is that I am considering how to update templates like {{commons}}, which currently use a rather awkward set of nested divs. I was tempted to use the ombox-small classes as the appearance is very similar but I would prefer to avoid using styles in the mainspace that are really intended for use outside. However, the "ombox-small" class declaration actually only contains positioning information, so if we renamed this to "mbox-small" it becomes namespace-independent and hence acceptable to use in any namespace for a clean right-floating small box, to be manually styled as necessary. I don't think we need feel obliged to implement the complicated |small=yes functionality in other mbox templates as a result. Thoughts? Happy‑melon 11:38, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Also, although I do have reservations, do you think a symmetrical "mbox-small-left" style would be a good idea? Happy‑melon 11:40, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I have copied this discussion to Template talk:Fmbox#Merging "tmbox-small" and "ombox-small" and responded there, since this was a continuation of the discussion there. And this discussion belongs on a more visible mbox related talk page. (Well, "Template talk:Mbox" would have been best, but since the discussion is already at "Template talk:Fmbox", let's continue there.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:15, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Protection categorization discussion

Hi, there's a discussion going about changing the way the protection templates categorize the pages as protected. Since this would affect {{pp-meta}} and the other templates and you've been involved there in the past, I thought you might appreciate a heads-up as part of our (you, me, Happy-melo