Category talk:Templates that should have been local

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Contents 1 Characteristics of a "local" template? 1.1 Education 2 Should the majority of the templates in this category be moved to local subpages? 2.1 Yes, they should be moved 2.2 No, they stay in the "Template:" namespace 2.3 Comments 3 I still don't get it 4 Fixed

Characteristics of a "local" template?

Mikk, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on what characteristics a template should have for it to not be "local". I'm also wondering why you chose the term local of all things. * [[CCCC ZoneIDs]] is listed here, but for what reason? It's not even in the template namespace, and isn't called as a template on the one page that links to it. * [[template:cloths]] and [[template:gems]] are legitimate, called by each of the cloths and gems * [[template:battlegrounds]] for a similar reason * [[template:bfd]] and such. Now, '''bfd''' and such aren't called more than one time, and on my page, so it's fine if that's in this category, but it could be useful (although I don't know what plan would be best to use it). If it remains unused, it could go "local" as far as I care.

I'm not familiar with all the others, so I have no opinion right now. Schmidt 14:49, 30 May 2006 (EDT)

Ooo, input! Thanks :-)

• Why "Local"? Erhm. Lack of imagination I suppose. Something in "Template:" is "Global". Something somewhere else would then be "local". If you can think of a better name....?
• On cloths/gems/battlegrounds/bfd.... My thinking is that a template that is used only used a very few times, and in a very narrow context, makes more sense to move somewhere other than "Template:". Like "Template:Cloths" would make sense to move to "Cloth/Cloths". It'd still be listed as a template (via these categories!).
• "CCCC ZoneIDs"? Err. I meant to categorize Template:CCCC, not that one. Thanks for catching my snafu.

And yeah the page text could have been a lot better. I already had it up for edit but had to go get some sleep. I've expanded LOTS on it now so give it a read. It explains the concept a lot better than I cba to do here right now :-)

--Mikk 00:24, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

(As with everything else I'm doing, if you think this is a horrible idea, please say so and I'll back the changes straight out. Well, ok, I might argue a little bit first ;) --Mikk 00:47, 31 May 2006 (EDT))

Let me direct you to the illustrious Wikipedia, and their Allpages list (Template namespace). Right at the beginning you see all kinds of templates, such as 100th Senate, 1984, 1984 Atlantic hurricane season buttons (only up to L!, only 4 legit hurricanes); on the second page, Admirable class minesweeper (a real ship class, I reckon, with tons of red links – we should do likewise, for standardization of names), Aircraft by nationality, and see all the Buffy templates.

So I'm going to have to firmly say that at least the ones as I mentioned them above should not be "localized", or at least in this manner. I haven't gone through the list of templates that might be good candidates or bad candidates for this, so I'm afraid I can't give you a whole lot more to go with. I'm guessing, though, that there are better candidates for the list.

As I see it, in this case, if there is a potential that a template can be used in more areas, given more information (bfd, for one), it should be used wherever it is relevant, and should be given whatever information others think is relevant to where it will be inserted. Stuff like instancing guide – stuff like that.

As for a better term than local, marginalized would fit better somewhat, but even that isn't really good. Basically, the best use for a project like that is just to say that if someone has a template that is specifically to be used by them, having a message specific to them and in that case will probably be substed (not including the welcome template that Fandyllic uses although he might already be doing this), they should just put templates like that in their own space, like user:D._F._Schmidt/signature. I'm not sure what term you would use in this case. All told, I don't think it's a good idea to take something that anyone globally could feasibly use and marginalize (for lack of better term) it.

In any case, it does seem like an idea I would come up with. That doesn't necessarily make it a good idea, but I also have a mind to prune things down a bit here. What you're doing helps. Thanks. If you come up with any other thoughts to retool this idea, definitely state them. Schmidt 06:47, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

Sure, I have no problem with looking at things that way. It's the same basic idea but with a narrower scope. I'll go through the list and move things off to suitable categories. Examples of things that should be local would then still include e.g. the subpages of the Community Portal and WoWWiki:Policy/Deletion_categories. (But those are already "local", so they obviously won't end up on the list :-)) There'll probably just be a handful left in the end.

My motivation was to make the Template namespace a bit more navigable while still telling people to go ahead and use (local) templates to their hearts' content. And also make them somewhat easier to find - you'd find ingredient templates next to the ingredients, instance templates next to the instances, etc, and reserve the Template namespace for things that are useful outside of a single category. But then again, the template categorization system itself does make it more navigable. Assuming people actually keep using it, that is.

(On a sidenote though, I think "wikipedia does it" has no merit in and of itself. L2argue plx :-))

--Mikk 08:33, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

I get you there, that just because Wikipedia does it doesn't make it so we should. But see, if templates will be called frequently, they should be easy to call, and therefore should be easy to spell and to remember. Whatever method is best should be used. Keep in mind that some of them have been used for quite a while, but unlike old dogs, old people can learn new tricks. And then there's the template categories that you've made, which are good.

There is one template I just came across that I want deprecated, and didn't know what category to use: [[template:money]].

L2argue? I assume that means "love to argue." I'm the same way, to an extent, and I appreciate it when someone will give some resistance when they feel as strongly as I do. Schmidt 08:51, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

Aye, but if a template is used often, it's 99.9% likely to be because it's globally useful, and hence a "Template:" namespace candidate according to my way of seeing it. Heck, that's what judgement calls are for :-) Anyway, I'm cleaning up this category in a little.

Re: "money". Hmm.. "Deprecated Templates" sounds good to me. Makes them easy to skim through once in a while and see if they can be deleted.

And, yeah, I've also done way too much arguing on various newgroups, mailing lists and IRC channels over the years; if I know that the guy I'm arguing with will take it the right way, I'm likely to keep going just for the joy of wringing the last scraps of debatability out of a good argument ;) --Mikk 11:50, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

Damnit, now you made me go fix all pages that used money, money1, money2 and money3. Now you owe me a new brain. I think I've mine's got RSI now. --Mikk 15:16, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

Arf, ok, I've moved out the templates Schmidt mentioned and some similar in intent. But even in a more lenient view, the (fairly numerous) templates that remain do deserve to be made local, according to my reasoning.

One other thing about the template namespace, and having "local" templates on another namespace such as the main namespace: If you click Random page in the navbar, I'm pretty sure it uses only those articles in the main namespace. This means that it might pull up one of these "local" templates. I don't like the sound of that. Personally, I think the fact that they're named as they are, a great many on this list, I mean like creaturetype-dragonkin and so on, and the fact that they group together on an alpha-sorted list makes it so you can pretty well imagine what they are and what they're for. To be more clear, I don't know why those exist. But if they stick around, due to the naming of them, I'd say keep them in the template namespace. Do you have anything else for me to refute? lol Schmidt 16:46, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

Ok, you and I aren't gonna solve this unless you simply trump me with the Admin Card. I'll just start a vote on it and see what people seem to think. I meant to do this right off, but then I got annoyed by the voting templates and had to fix them first ;) Oh, and the "random page" argument doesn't work on me. There's just too many other "crap" pages that people could land on for this to have any real impact. Random is random, and I think people know that :-) --Mikk 15:23, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

I won't pull that card on this case yet, and probably not at all. Whatever results from voting is fair. Schmidt 16:19, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

Education

This vote seems to have stalled. Myself, I am in favor of using 'local pages' for things that would ordinarily be made a template solely to clean another (single, or very few) page(s) up. However, as inclusions are not as common as templates, we should make an effort to point out the methods involved:

to invoke a template at "Template:Tables:ReputationMobs:Timbermaw Furbolgs	{{Tables:ReputationMobs:Timbermaw Furbolgs}}
to include a page (not in the template namespace) at Timbermaw_Furbolg_reputation_guide/ReputationMobs	{{:Timbermaw_Furbolg_reputation_guide/ReputationMobs}}

--Eirik Ratcatcher 14:27, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

Should the majority of the templates in this category be moved to local subpages?

• Voting "Yes", means that you mostly agree with Mikk in the discussion above, and that templates that really only have a local use should be moved off to local sub pages. (You can disagree with the classification of a few of them, obviously... this is just a general poll)

• Voting "No", means that you mostly agree with Schmidt in the discussion above.

I'm not going to require that the vote follow the voting policy and "win" by a certain number of votes before any action is taken, because I have a feeling it'd mean we'd sit here locked for two months. I'll just let this run for a couple of days and see what happens.

Just use #~~~~ - your notes in the Yes/No subsections below:

Not sure. See Category talk:Tables.   --Mikk (T) 08:39, 30 October 2006 (EST)

Ok, we ended up making Category:WoW table templates the place to put listings of stuff, and Category:WoW table helper templates the place to put snippety things (table headings, rows, etc... without actual content)

I still don't get it

Have you people even looked at the list? I was asking for the opinion of "most" templates in the category.

Something like 80-90% of them are pulled in in one single place:

• Template:Tables:ReputationMobs:Argent Dawn and all the other reputation templates
• Template:Tables:Talents:WarriorProtection and all the other talent templates
• ... and many like them

I'm not even sure that these should be templates to begin with. Looks like regular page content to me? o.O

  --Mikk (T) 03:40, 31 October 2006 (EST)

Split off content Keeps the original page smaller and easier to edit, reputationmobs page needs to be split off to pages accordingn to each faction however, or moved to their faction page (the page is too big to edit normally). Makes sense to have the tables on a seperate page which can be called locally, less scrolling, faster loading, smaller history page. CJ 04:41, 31 October 2006 (EST)

Yeah, but there's lots of pages that are split up that way. And the vast majority just use subpages, not stuff in the template namespace. Examples include WoWWiki:Community portal, Help:Contents, Help:Editing...   --Mikk (T) 06:27, 31 October 2006 (EST)

Hmm. got a point though. Enchantment , just made Enchantment/Tables/Armor/Head, as it's full page content, only used on that page. probably fits best locally there, but with a special "local templates" category ( Category:Misc local templates ) attached to the "noinclude". some things such as those reputation mobs, would likely only be used on that page.. could perhaps be moved to act locally. CJ 03:10, 3 November 2006 (EST)

Fixed

I fixed most of them; I really don't think the Cosmos templates should be local, however. --Pcj (T•C) 15:13, 11 July 2007 (UTC)