Template talk:Other uses/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Template needs to be rewritten or deprecated

"For other uses" without an object continues to confusing and false. Either this template needs to be changed to be "other uses of this term" or "title" or "name" or "other articles related to this title", or every instance of its usage needs to be changed to one of the more specific templates, which can be facilitated by a redirect to "{{otherusesof}}". —Centrx→talk • 01:19, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Eh, it seems clear enough. The elision of the object pretty obviously implies the subject of the article, although I can see how grammatical purists might get upset. older ≠ wiser 01:46, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Vague phrases, if not confusing to Wikipedia editors, are confusing to the millions of uninitiated readers, and the millions of non-English readers. Being incorrect and with ready alternatives, this template should be deprecated, far from standard. —Centrx→talk • 02:23, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not vague or confusing, only mildly ungrammatical. older ≠ wiser 02:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

It does not have a. The reason you do not think it's, is because you are familiar. The good English speaker, and experienced Wikipedia editor, infers, just as you can infer this comments. Anyway, even if we suppose that it is only, even something mildly incorrect should not be standard. —Centrx→talk • 03:57, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Elisions such as used in the template as commonplace and are readily grasped by most any reader. Is there any actual evidence of such widespread confusion as you expect? older ≠ wiser 11:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Anecdotally, yes. Where are these commonplace elisions you refer to, outside of spoken conversations where the context is clear? (And confusion still results!) Regardless, even if there were no evidence a soul in the world were confused, you have presented not one reason to use this elision as the premier standard on Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 21:49, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Who said anything about premier standard? You wanted to deprecate this for what seem like not particularly good reasons to which I objected. Personally, I don't actually use this one all that often. I tend to use either {{dablink}} or {{about}} (which I realize redirects to {{otheruses4}} but I can never bother with trying to remember what all the permutations are) or sometimes {{subst:redirect}}. I find the somewhat tautological extra verbiage in {{otherusesof}} to not be especially helpful. If the primary topic is obvious, then the brevity of a simple {{otheruses}} is preferable to a few extra words to please grammatical purists. If the primary topic is not especially well-known, then some brief description of the subject as afforded by {{dablink}} or {{about}} is better than a bland "for other uses of TERM, see TERM (disambiguation)." older ≠ wiser 22:42, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

• This template is by far the most common dab note template. That is the premier standard.
• If verbosity is the problem, then replacing the words with an image would be better than the current wording. Or, "See also" or "See instead" are briefer.
• There is no particularly good reason for retaining this template.

—Centrx→talk • 23:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

"There is no particularly good reason for retaining this template." That's one opinion. I don't see it that way. older ≠ wiser 00:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Deprecating this template

This template actually transcludes the Otheruses4 template, and can be rewritten to {{otheruses4|}}, which produces the same result.

Therefore, I suggest making a bot to substitute this template and mark this as deprecated. (And this template can be deleted when all the transcluding pages are substituted)

Explorer09 (talk) 14:13, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Edit this template

{{Editprotected}} I forgot to tell admins to edit the code to {{otheruses4|}}. Thanks.Explorer09 (talk) 14:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit protected}} template. PeterSymonds (talk) 17:16, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Daily News (UK)

There's a problem in this article about the template. I work in it.wiki so I don't know ho to solve it. The actual disambiguation page is Daily News. Bye. --Pequod76 (talk) 00:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Replacing otheruses4 with about

At least 2 editors requested a bot in Wikipedia:Bot requests to replace {{otheruses4}} with {{about}}. Any disagreements? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Nope. {{otheruses4}} is a redirect, so it seems like nothing but uncontroversial cleanup. Airplaneman ✈ 18:17, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Malformatting

(crossposted to template talk:For) Is there a good reason why {{otheruses}} and {{for}} tags need to be malformatted with carriage returns after each line? For example History of citizenship in the United States:

For US citizenship, see Citizenship in the United States.

For laws regarding US citizenship, see United States nationality law.

For US birthright citizenship, see Birthright citizenship in the United States of America.

For citizenship in particular U.S. states, see State citizenship.

Should be condensed to a paragraph:

For US citizenship, see Citizenship in the United States. For laws regarding US citizenship, see United States nationality law. For US birthright citizenship, see Birthright citizenship in the United States of America. For citizenship in particular U.S. states, see State citizenship.

Understanding that there appear to be no trailing whitespace, carriage returns, or div close tags after these templates, what's the technical reason for why these tags always appear newlined? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 00:44, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

First of all, please, please never use the :'' markup. If you really need a custom format, use {{dablink}}. Offering links using {{dablink}} or its cousin {{rellink}} help make our work semantically clearer. Second, I don't see what you're describing as a problem in the template—it's important to not have article text appear on the same line as the hatnote. If anything, this is a formatting problem, and prudent use of the templates can avoid this problem. For example, I've fixed the examples you mentioned, merging them into a single {{About}} template in such a way as to have them all appear on the same line. See the diff to understand best what I mean. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 02:14, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok, that's fine. The issue was simply that using {{for}} formats each line as a new paragraph, rather than allowing for concatenation. This has been a problem all along. Yes I understand that there is some probably semantic argument for using templates, but likewise there is probably also a server cost argument for not using them. Long before we used templates for these, we simply used ":''" and actually wrote out the words "For other uses, see.." along with the link. Its protozoic, I know, but it works fine, and no I never format hatnotes at the same indentation as the article body. I do seem to recall however that these templates have an issue with always creating newline/newparagraphs, such that they don't concatenate, so the question was a bit technical and maybe 'zilla-ble. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 03:54, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I am working in merging a lot of DAB links using AWB's latest features. I am using a recent database dumb and I am planning to merge dablinks in about 3,000 articles. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:39, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Deprecated templates

You might want to note in a separate subsection on the template page which templates have been deprecated and what the alternative is. The situation changes I believe so it might be a good idea to tip us new users off. Thanks.Dave (talk) 00:35, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

The manual is up-to-date. Just use the ones you see. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:38, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hm... after rethinking there are some changes I would like to propose. I 'll do it soon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:19, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Hatnote templates and carriage returns

The standard behaviour for a hatnote template such as otheruses, about, and dablink is to add a carriage return at the end. For example in the Life and death article:

For articles with similar titles, see Life and death (disambiguation).

"Two eyes" redirects here. You may also be looking for Binocular vision.

This behaviour is undesirable as there are articles with two or sometimes more such hatnotes. The preferred behaviour would something like this:

For articles with similar titles, see Life and death (disambiguation). "Two eyes" redirects here. You may also be looking for Binocular vision.

Which can be the norm if there is no carriage return at the end of these hatnotes. Can the carriage return be removed? Would such a change create problems at certain articles? -Stevertigo (t | c) 06:19, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose this suggestion: it is much clearer when the redirect hatnote is separated onto a new line. PamD 08:53, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. -DePiep (talk) 20:41, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Better I argument. Well, these hatnotes are weird sentences, and read less well (or worse) without the whitespace. -DePiep (talk) 05:21, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose "This behaviour is undesirable". They are separate notes, and all-one-line is harder to read/parse/skim, particularly at-a-glance. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

German Navy -> German Navy (disambiguation)

I inserted the other uses template at the beginning of the German Navy article; and it should point to German Navy (disambiguation) (just as the template correctly does at German Air Force). But no matter what I try the link to the disambiguation page does not show up on the German Navy article. Can someone please have a look and try to fix this? Thanks, noclador (talk) 11:05, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

The template used is {{about}}, not {{other uses}}. The template source says that only three pairs of links can be added, plus the option "other uses". It had four pairs, so "other uses" input there after was not noticed. I removed pair four (East Germany, Volksmarine), so the dab link now works. I think you can agree with me that four pairs (all of which are on the dab page too) may be a bit overdone for clarity. -DePiep (talk) 15:57, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

perfect! thanks and yes, 4 was overkill and it is anyway all listed in the disambiguation page. noclador (talk) 16:08, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

"Or" vs. "and"

When this template is used with two possibilities (aka, here), it says "see X and Y", but I feel the word "or" makes more sense here. Read that hatnote again, and tell me whether "and" makes more sense than "or".

Requested change: from

{{#if:{{{2|}}}|{{about|||{{{1}}}|and|{{{2|}}}|_nocat=1}}|{{about|||{{{1|{{PAGENAME}} (disambiguation)}}}|_nocat=1}}}}

to

{{#if:{{{2|}}}|{{about|||{{{1}}}|or|{{{2|}}}|_nocat=1}}|{{about|||{{{1|{{PAGENAME}} (disambiguation)}}}|_nocat=1}}}}

Thank you. Red Slash 19:00, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

This template is built around {{about}}, in which "and" is a special word but "or" is not. Changing {{other uses}} without making corresponding changes to {{about}} (not to mention the other templates built around that) would yield a hatnote like

For other uses, see Curb (disambiguation).

where one of the links has disappeared. Therefore, Not done: --Redrose64 (talk) 20:08, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Upgrade to Lua

I've written and tested a rewrite of this template in Lua, using the brand-new Module:Other uses. It offers the following advantages:

• Support for an indefinite number of parameters (current limit is 2)
• Module:Hatnote-based automatic formatting (automatic colon prefix, prettified section links, etc.)
• No dependence on hacking {{about}} for its functionality.
• Potential for automatic synchrony with related "other X" templates via reuse of the module

I've got the new version running in Template:Other uses/sandbox, with functionality comparisons between the two at Template:Other uses/testcases.

Given the straightforward functionality of this template and the successful testcases, I plan to implement this soon, but since this is a widely-used template, I'll wait a day or two from this message to give people a chance to review things. In particular, I'd appreciate review of my Lua code at Module:Other uses, since I am relatively new to Lua.

Questions? Comments? {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 04:11, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

No comments after most of a day, and I'm feeling really impatient, so I'll just go ahead and implement it. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 21:24, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit request

I'm a template editor, but since I know nothing about editing modules, I have to post this request. Anyways, here goes...

In Module:Other uses, could the code that causes the namespace to be removed from the PAGENAME (disambiguation) link automatically generated by transclusions {{Other uses}} with no parameter 1= ... be removed/suppressed? Long story short, I placed {{Other uses}} on Wikipedia:Reviewing, but the result didn't turn out as I had intended, so I had to perform another edit to force parameter 1. Steel1943 (talk) 22:35, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Pinging Nihiltres as the module author. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:38, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I just performed a check of transclusions to Template:Other uses, and resolved all transclusions that exist and did not have a parameter 1= and added it: Wikipedia:, File:, Help:, Portal:, and Book:. The rest of the namespaces are either talk namespaces or namespaces that should not be affected by this change. Steel1943 (talk) 23:47, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

{{Not done}} I just discovered that for some reason, other modules such as Module:Other uses of call Module:Other uses in its code. Not sure why this was done, but now I know that there is the potential to break things if this edit happens. I may have to reevaluate incoming links to other modules now and come back to this at a later time. Steel1943 (talk) 00:07, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Steel1943 and JJMC89: The module was designed with mainspace (and matching the wikitext template) in mind, but it should be simple enough to use mw.title.getCurrentTitle().prefixedText instead of mw.title.getCurrentTitle().text to get the desired result. Reusing code across the hatnote templates was a design decision on my part: it helps keep them in sync. That's important because a lingering problem with hatnote templates is inconsistency, which templates ought to avoid. It's currently late here and I'm on my phone, so the edit'll have to wait until morning, but barring a quick review for side effects I should be able to make the fix right away. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 05:30, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Steel1943 and JJMC89:  Done {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 14:51, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

What’s the point of this template?

{{For}}, with no parameters, does the same thing.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 10:38, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@PapiDimmi: It's an issue of indicating intent. If someone uses {{for}} with no parameters, they might be making a mistake or not using the template correctly. If they use {{other uses}}, then they clearly intended the behaviour it produces. We could eliminate {{for}}'s defaulting entirely, but I don't see that as a priority. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 23:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@Nihiltres: I see; thanks.
―PapíDimmi (talk | contribs) 23:24, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Sandboxed update: otherX custom-template function

As part of a pattern of double-checking most of my template work before implementation, if anyone's got feedback, this is ready for it:

I've added a function to Module:Other uses/sandbox titled otherX that will let us implement most custom "other X" templates directly from Module:Other uses—currently they use basic but separate modules like Module:Other places that themselves make use of Module:Other uses' methods. Instead of calling functions from a separate module, this function implements those templates directly, with their custom text being supplied in the invocation that defines the template. For example, {{other places}} could then be implemented with the invocation {{#invoke:other uses|otherX|places with the same name}}. It's a little odd to use parameters from multiple frames in the same module, but this cuts out "middlemen" modules that do little but hardcode the relevant strings.

If nobody comments, I'll probably implement this tomorrow or so. First I'll update this module from its sandbox, then I'll do a run of converting templates to use it. I authored most (all?) of the modules that will become redundant, so I'll probably also speedy delete those under criteria G6 (uncontroversial cleanup) & G7 (author request). {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 14:36, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Can take multiple destinations (needs documenting)

I find that in practice this template can take multiple destinations, but this is not documented, only the use with a single destination:

{{Other uses|Bra (disambiguation)|BRA (disambiguation)}} generates:

For other uses, see Bra (disambiguation) and BRA (disambiguation).

If this is intended to be supported, it should be added to Template:Other uses#Usage documentation. Perhaps someone associated with the template could do this? I'm not going to document an undocumented feature, as there's no guarantee it'll continue to be supported. Pol098 (talk) 21:50, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Module:Other uses2 merger

DannyS712 you performed this merger a while back and now it's orphaned because of that. I think it should be redirected to Module:Other uses or be deleted now that the job is done? Thanks --Trialpears (talk) 21:02, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

@Trialpears: I have no preference - given that it isn't called anywhere it may be better to delete, but since I can't do that I'll leave the decision to someone who can --DannyS712 (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Other uses of?

Would it make more sense for a user to use {{Other uses of}} instead of this template in cases where the title of the article already has an ambiguator? For example, I keep noticing Newone persistently adding this template to Vantablack (EP) and I have let them know that I am unopposed to using the alternative template instead, but I also want to see what others think of this. Jalen Folf (talk) 05:28, 23 July 2020 (UTC)