Template talk:Intentionally blank

Formatting of Intentionally blank template

Following an unrelated discussion with @Rhododendrites: and while browsing the userpage blanking templates, I noticed that the Intentionally blank is not formatted in the standard manner consistent with the other userpage blanking templates—that is, it is not centered, in a box, with a left-aligned Wikipedia logo. Would it be a controversial move for me to potentially update this template for consistency—that is, could I have potentially updated it without this RfC and discussion—or would it be best to always discuss these sort of template changes? If the latter, let's discuss. --Doug Mehus (talk) 02:17, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Procedural Comment from RfC-initiating Editor: To non-involved editor or admin RfC closer determining consensus, while not required, it would be much appreciated if you apply whichever discussion close top/bottom template to this closed discussion. --Doug Mehus (talk) 02:19, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that you need a full-blown thirty-day formal RfC for this, personally I would say just WP:BEBOLD and alter it to {{ombox|type=notice|text=This page is intentionally left blank.}}, like this. But from the page history I see that such changes have previously been resisted by MZMcBride (talk · contribs), they should be invited to opine. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:07, 28 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The current template is pretty minimal. Is that bad? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:33, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Redrose64 and MZMcBride, apologies for my delayed reply. I didn't think RfCs had to last 30 days, no? I was thinking maybe a week, enough to establish a small consensus that we can at least justify not having our edits undone. So, I was thinking about editors being somewhat protective of their templates, but hadn't looked at the edit history showing apparent reticence to change as you did, Redrose64, so thank you. So, on the one hand, that's why I started the RfC, but also because I wondered if maybe it was considered courteous to discuss template changes potentially transcluded on a lot of pages? At any rate, I appreciate your coding up a quick sandboxed version. That looks great except I updated the logo image used at sandbox for consistency. One thing I noted is your coding was remarkably simple...is there a reason why the coding at Template:Courtesy_blanked is more complicated. --Doug Mehus (talk) 21:31, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's intended to be substituted in all uses. Such templates need to substitute "clean", they shouldn't leave parser functions or other templates in their wake. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:21, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Redrose64: Thanks...does that mean that your sandboxed version is actually better and we should, perhaps, update the other templates using your simplified approach? Doug Mehus (talk) 22:26, 29 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think you may be missing what template substitution does and how it can affect the code used by a template. In the case of {{courtesy blanked}}, it's intended to only be called with template substitution, which means putting {{subst:courtesy blanked}} in the wikitext and saving the page. "subst:" causes the template to be expanded, so that the page where that code was placed is no longer using the template, it's only using the result of the template. And more crucially, only the result of expansion one layer deep. Compare with {{intentionally blank}}, where the template is placed typically without substitution. That means the wikitext input {{intentionally blank}} stays as it was and there's no substitution or expansion of the wikitext when the page is saved. In the case of {{intentionally blank}}, if it were substituted using Redrose64's sandbox code, it would result in the wikitext, after being expanded one layer deep, to use the template {{ombox}}, which is likely not what anyone substituting the template likely intended. As a result of this one layer deep expansion behavior, {{courtesy blanked}} is coded in such a way that the resulting wikitext, when used with "subst:", will be "clean" (i.e., not using any templates). I'm... not sure if this helped clarify the situation, but maybe? If you play around with "subst:" in a test area, it might become clearer.

All this said, cleaner template substitution seems like another reason to keep this template as-is. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:18, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I support the changes bought forth by Dmehus. Having a standard 'look' of all the templates gives Wikipedia a more professional appearance, IMO. (Summoned by bot) I dream of horses If you reply here, please ping me by adding {{U|I dream of horses}} to your message (talk to me) (My edits) @ 20:56, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Support for consistency. The {{courtesy blanked}} output is also "pretty minimal" but makes it much clearer that it's a template that we use, not some drive-by comment perhaps by a vandal. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:42, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]