This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Templates and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Shortcut WT:WPT

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8Auto-archiving period: 120 days

	Templates
This page is within the scope of WikiProject Templates, a group dedicated to improving the maintenance of Wikipedia's templates. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TemplatesWikipedia:WikiProject TemplatesTemplate:WikiProject TemplatesTemplates articles

As a frequent mobile web app user, it's a massive pain to add six straight apostrophes, because the keyboard resets to the letters section every time they are added. It would actually be faster to type a template for this. Even if you really hate the idea of multiple formatting options, there are probably a few systems where the straight apostrophes can't be typed at all, and typing ((subst:bold)) would be quicker than looking up the relevant HTML code Mach61 (talk) 14:24, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yeah, I'll be opposed to that. Gonnym (talk) 15:22, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That is an issue specific to your mobile keyboard.... Izno (talk) 16:40, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I see nothing wrong with a niche template Mach61 (talk) 16:41, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Except it's not. It's an issue with multiple input devices, be they mobile keyboards that don't recognize multiple consecutive punctuation as a use case, or an IME that autocorrects to smart quotes. Having a substitution-only template could effectively and simply bypass any of several technical limitations of input devices that interfere with Wikipedia editing. VanIsaac, GHTV ^cont_WpWS 17:27, 28 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Using bold HTML tags could also solve this Vghfr (talk) 21:04, 25 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The discussion about modules made me realize that there is no Category:WikiProject Templates pages to add to the watchlist, if one wants to track what's going on with templates/modules "used in maintaining or documenting other templates". Should such a category be created? Is anyone else interested in it? —⁠andrybak (talk) 19:55, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Template: User:BillHPike/children's book
• Docpage: User:BillHPike/children's book/doc

I'm creating a ^{[children's book?]} template to tag potentially unreliable citations to children's books. This is my first time creating an inline cleanup template and I want to avoid introducing any serious issues into article space.

Could an experienced template editor review my draft templates? (feel free to directly edit the drafts in my userspace) — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 07:46, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Introducing serious issues, no. However, I do not think this is a particularly useful template; an unreliable source is an unreliable source, regardless of what type. I may be in the minority here, but I don't see this getting widespread use. Primefac (talk) 08:00, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Have to agree that there's no real reason for this. Mathglot (talk) 08:16, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

About ~180 articles cite Osprey Publishing's Essential History series. My thought was that this template would be a good way to highlight these citations. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 08:22, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Removing the sentences being cited and/or removing the citation and tagging for ((citation needed)) does the work as well. Izno (talk) 16:47, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What's the problem with those citations? The books come from a reputable publisher (isn't it? It's an imprint of Bloomsbury) so presumably they don't publish rubbish. The blurb about the "Essential History" series describes them as "an important reference resource for students, teachers, academics, history enthusiasts and hobbyists.", so why not cite them? PamD 18:43, 10 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Infobox § How can I use the English Wikipedia "infobox template" for another Wikipedia project (in the Incubator)?. Anaxicrates (talk) 15:04, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is there a way to add text on top of box scores in Template:10TeamBracket, like you can do on Template:12TeamBracket-Info? The latter lets you enter the line "RD1-text1 = Text", which will display the desired text above the corresponding box score. This is typically used to add the date and venue of individual games, which I'd like to do. Thanks in advance. Redacwiki (talk) 00:28, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Rotten Tomatoes prose § RfC: Should this and similar templates be substonly?. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I just noticed that ((WikiProject Templates)) says This template should only be transcluded in the Wikipedia talk, Help talk, or Category talk namespace(s).

Is there a reason not to tag Module talk pages with this? --Joy (talk) 11:26, 4 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Because all modules and all templates are implicitly covered by the WikiProject. —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments appreciated at Wikipedia talk:Navigation template#Problem with redlinks per WP:EXISTING. --woodensuperman 13:59, 6 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Since Footballdatabase is not considered a reliable source by the community (user-generated), I'm requesting the deletion of this template. Thank you. Frenchl (talk) 20:18, 21 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is there a templatespace version of a template like ((Intentionally blank)) for use on subtemplates that are partially coded fractions of fully coded blocks, that need to assembled together to make visible sense? If this is enclosed in an INCLUDEONLY, the page will appear blank. They would be so coded because fractional blocks of code are nonfunctional and appear like random text to the average non-wikicoder, or would be throwing errors. Such a not-empty template would indicate there is hidden material on the page. -- 65.92.247.66 (talk) 05:38, 5 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Why not actually create documentation that explains what the template does? Saying that the template is not blank isn't helpful at all. Gonnym (talk) 11:42, 5 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Agreed. Every template should (ideally) have documentation (be it a /doc subpage or just a ((documentation)) call), because going to a "blank" subpage is a pain in the arse, especially if the function of the underlying code isn't obvious. Primefac (talk) 18:46, 11 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

So, just leave a ((documentation missing)) instead of a ((not blank)) or ((not empty)) then -- 65.92.247.66 (talk) 22:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sure. I think there are a couple of gnomes who check transclusions of the doc missing template to attempt to fill them in. Primefac (talk) 07:52, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I need some help with some complex template coding that surpasses my ability — I already attempted a fix myself, which failed to actually produce the desired changes at all, so I need to call in the professionals.

The issue pertains to the ((Canadian election result)) framework, a series of nested templates for making election results templates in Canadian elections. While its primary purpose has traditionally been for federal and provincial elections, it's also being used on some municipal (city or town) elections, which has undesirable side-effects: specifically, because it's designed principally for parliamentary elections, it presumes and autogenerates "YYYY [Jurisdiction] election results by riding" categories, but "by riding" is completely unapplicable to municipal council elections. Those may be conducted by ward, by borough or just at large, but there's never any such thing as a "riding" in a municipal election at all.

As things currently stand, this is a problem only affecting Montreal; there are some other cities using the framework, but they're consistently using nocat=yes to suppress the illogical categories — and other cities also aren't always using that framework as consistently as Montreal is, and are sometimes using other frameworks like the generic ((MunElec)) instead. The problem in Montreal, specifically, is that there are a lot of templates involved, to the point where subbing them by year is warranted even if the "by riding" part is still undesirable, so just nocatting them all isn't the answer. Meanwhile, no other city has enough templates that by-year subcategories would be necessary at this time, though of course this may change in the future as formatting becomes more standardized.

So what I need is for that framework's category generation function to split municipal elections off to a separate category handler from provincial or federal elections, so that pages which are using municipal jurisdiction codes like MTL, TOR, OTT or VAN just produce "results" categories and not "results by riding" categories. Also, if possible, they should have the option of producing either "YYYY...results" or just undated "results", so that cities which have enough templates to support YYYY subcategories can have them while cities that don't need them can avoid them.

But again, when I tried to implement this myself, I completely failed to make the framework actually stop generating "by riding" categories on the municipal templates. So could somebody with actual skills help out? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 20:42, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

So, as far as I can tell, it's a pretty simple fix. What you want to do is go into ((Canadian election result/top)) and alter the instances at the bottom, replacing by riding with by (({riding_type|riding))}. That will enable you to specify something like ((Canadian election result/top|MTL|2008|Anjou|riding_type=borough)) that should populate the category of "Montreal election results by borough". If you have a better parameter name than "riding_type", please go with it, but that's what came off the top of my head. VanIsaac, GHTV ^cont_WpWS 23:37, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The thing is, Montreal has both boroughs and wards (it's a complicated system!), and the mayoral templates (which are just at-large, and neither "by borough" nor "by ward" are applicable at all) also have to be accounted for — and if the standardization project that's been underway lately ever gets all the way west to Vancouver, its city council doesn't have wards or boroughs at all, and just elects the entire council at large. So I want municipal election templates to be categorized as just plain "results" by nothing. Bearcat (talk) 14:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

((Election table))? Primefac (talk) 14:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I haven't gone digging into the matter, so apologies if I'm speaking nonsense, but there are other election templates; if there is one not-Canada-specific but still accurate enough for the municipal elections, use that instead? Otherwise VanIsaac's suggestion seems reasonable, though I would sandbox it first just to make sure nothing breaks. Primefac (talk) 12:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm not the one going around actually converting municipal elections templates to the Canadian election result framework, though — if I went around converting them all back to some other framework that isn't creating nonsensical "by riding" categories, the other editors who actually are doing this would just come along later and convert them back to Canadian election result again. Bearcat (talk) 20:54, 18 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ah, a classic case of people only looking at the name of a template and not actually considering whether it's the right template for the job. Sounds like maybe they should be informed of that fact. Also, it might be worth possibly changing the name of the Canadian election template to indicate it should only used for national/subnational elections? Primefac (talk) 11:08, 19 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Or, alternatively, given how time-consuming user education can be — and the fact that no matter how many existing users get said education, some future new user who hasn't already received said education yet can come along to repeat the same error and thus start the whole cycle over from scratch — could we just, like, do what I asked for anyway so that the problem doesn't recur regardless of what else we do about it? Bearcat (talk) 18:24, 26 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Probably. Number 57 is pretty well-versed in election templates, pinging for opinions. Primefac (talk) 18:43, 26 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Perhaps a more fundamental question – why do these templates still exist? In many areas of Wikipedia, templates of this type have been largely deprecated in favour of having the information on one agreed page, and then transcluded elsewhere. Taking ((2018 Ontario general election/Ottawa West—Nepean)) as an example, it would make sense for that table to be hardcoded on Ottawa West—Nepean (provincial electoral district) and then transcluded from there to any other page where it was wanted. This avoids having a large amount of material in template space, which has a tiny number of watchers compared to article space and so is significantly more prone to unspotted vandalism. Number 57 00:48, 27 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Kind of excited for this, as it makes one of the most difficult templates out there into something very easy to use. ((CSS image crop)) literally requires you to do math - somewhat complicated math at that - for basic things like "making the cropped image slightly smaller" or "wanting to leave the bottom of the image in the crop".

With this one?

((Easy CSS image crop
|Image                 = Theodore Roosevelt by the Pach Bros.jpg
|crop_left_perc        = 10
))

... is a perfectly viable and functional way to say I want to crop 10 percent from the left of the image, using the default 220px width for the end result. And if I want to make it bigger? I could add |desired_width = 300 ...and it will scale, keeping the same crop, whereas with ((CSS image crop)) I need to apply scaling ratios to every single numerical value, and I certainly wouldnðt be able to have only one

Now, I've not put it in articles yet. (I have tested it) so this is a good time to decide if any parameters should be renamed, if anything could be simplified further, or anything else like that. But I am right in thinking this actually makes it much more useful, right?

I've made a centralised discussion over on the Village Pump Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 11:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Template talk:User access levels#Requested move 30 January 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ❯❯❯ Raydann^(Talk) 17:34, 7 February 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]