User talk:PEJL/Template:Proreview

Professional review dates

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#Professional review dates by linca^linca 06:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC).

What if we do something like an expansion template where the editor notes things like this:

Rolling Stone review by David Fricke Publication date: August 2007 external link

Which would be yeilded (once we write the script to do this) by this:

{{proreview
| publisher= Rolling Stone
| stars    = 4
| outof    = 5
| author   = [[David Fricke]]
| date     = [[August 2007]]
| url      = http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/15567484/review/15825602/young_modern
}}

I know this will take up a lot of space in the editing region, but in the viewer's article space, it'd seem much more streamlined than now. What do you think? I haven't fixed the initial script for the "show" template. It works, but only barely, but if we do this, I can make sure I get it right. --linca^linca 15:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Would an expanding table be better than footnotes? I think either one might work well. I often prefer to replace the review link in the infobox with a link to a footnote that appears in the "references" or "notes and sources" section. Since some of the reviews are also sources of information for the article this avoids duplicating links to the same article. It also allows one to treat paper sources in the same way as the online ones. (here is an example]) I think it is good to offer as much infromation as possible on our sources. What is free and easy to link to on the internet today may or may not be there tomorrow. Listing reviews as references may also address some of the complaints that our album articles frquently have no sources. -MrFizyx 16:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It would only be more streamlined for readers if we hide the rating, which I don't think we should. A reader that wishes to see all the ratings should not have to un-hide a dozen sections to do so. So:

Rolling Stone by David Fricke Publication date: August 2007 external link

In practice many reviews wouldn't include the author name or publication date, which would make the collapsing quite redundant in those cases. --PEJL 16:49, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the author's name is available more often than not--perhaps you're saying people just won't bother adding them. One should also (at least be able to) include the issue and page number of the magazine and possibly the title of the article as well. -MrFizyx 18:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm saying many editors wouldn't bother adding anything but the source name, rating and the external link (like they currently don't bother including dates). Agree to everything else. --PEJL 09:59, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, having the star rating by the side is fine for me. All of the parametres could be per requiem, so if a person doesn't have a rating, an external link, an author, etc etc, one could still add the template to indicate the review. Perhaps have an option to take a quote? Maybe we'd make it essential to provide a web-reference when providing a quote, for verifiability, but do you guys think this would work? As an after/further thought, maybe we should work it like the {{singles}} template, in that you'd have:

{{proreview
| 1publisher= Rolling Stone
| 1stars    = 4
| 1outof    = 5
| 1author   = [[David Fricke]]
| 1date     = [[August 2007]]
| 1url      = http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/15567484/review/15825602/young_modern
| 1accessed = [[July 12]], [[2007]]
| 2publisher= Xdafied
| 2stars    = 5
| 2outof    = 5
| 2author   =
| 2date     = [[6 April]], [[2007]]
| 2url      = http://www.xdafied.com.au/music/reviews/11.html
| 1accessed = [[9 May]], [[2007]]
}}

So you'd merge all of the usage into the one. This has the issue of having to be limited, so we'd need to create it either very big with allowing up to, say, 50 articles, or start to enforce a maximum cap on how many professional reviews can be listed in the infobox (I think 15 is more than enough, in 99% of cases). Can we get a bot to check the # of professional reviews in each page? I not aware of any article with more than about 20 or so, but if there are some with tons, then we'd have to consider that.

What do you guys think, though? I agree in a way about the referencing, btw, but the regular viweer is not coming to wikipedia to "check their sources", but with this sort of thing, they're going to want to read some of the reviews. If we hide the reviews in a reference, it means the viewer/reader may not understand taht there's an external link at the bottom of the page in a footnote. In this case only, I believe it's appropriate to have all the external links directly accessible.

Actually, in saying that, this template could be written to use the information as a reference as well as provide the information in the way that it's directly accessible. How about that? We could add the variable "1refname" and "2 refname" etc and use that to allow multiple uses of the same reference, also. It would also mean needing to add the "1accessed" variable also, (to note the retrieved date), but that's not a tough one either (modified above to reflect this). Rethinking it, it may not be essential to name the ref, because the name could simply be the name of the publisher of the ref (i.e. "Rolling Stone" from above). --linca^linca 00:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Another option is to always make the link text "link" (not a date) and always include references which contain the date, author, and other info, possibly including the external link again, when any such additional info (other than the external link) is available. That makes it just as easy for readers to get to the external review as it is now (one click, as opposed to two), uses the standard reference format (for consistency with other references), is very compact, and allows for a more gradual implementation (still using bulleted lists, as opposed to collapsible tables). If we feel that the symbol to the right of the external links interferes with the reference we can wrap the entire professional reviews section in class="plainlinks" to hide those symbols, as illustrated in the second example below:

• Rolling Stone link
• Rolling Stone link

[...]

==References==

--PEJL 03:46, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Using the plainlinks option is alright, though not necessary essential. All it saves is the icon space (though admittedly, when you have that many external linst in a small space, it can look a little cluttered), but widthwise, it's only about 13px, whereas proposing to include dates means taking up more space, being why an expanding box, to me, seems more preferable. Another alternative is to do something like this: (play sample), which plays a sample via orbis, but does so in an embedded pop up window, meaning the viewer doesn't leave Wikipedia and just would view the external review embedded within. The trouble with that is it doesn't quite work properly with all browsers (such as mine, being Opera, just opens a new window or loads it under the _parent function) but most browsers support the pop-up function. It's just a thought, but I would think that giving a bit more attribution to the external link, as well as providing the opportunity for references to be drawn from the same page all in the one function seems the best option to me. The page {{proreview}} is free, and I think that's the best name for the template. --linca^linca 05:40, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Note that my latest alternative was to not include dates in the infobox, but to have the link always be called "link" and to include references (which contain dates). Plainlinks seems particularily useful to me with this alternative, because the reference would be included just after the link, and the symbol and reference together look cluttered. In practice that would mean we'd be replacing the symbol with the reference. 13px definitely counts, as many reviews are on the verge of wrapping to a second line. (As such we may want to consider using plainlinks even if we don't make any other changes.) Using popup windows, opening new windows or otherwise opening the external link in a non-standard way is problematic for numerous reasons, and something I think we should definitely avoid. Speaking of which, besides the reasons listed above, another reason this link-ref format would probably be better than an expanding box are the accessibility problems associated with expanding sections. {{proreview}} is a reasonable name for a template, if it turns out we need one. I made a quick mock-up of such a template at User:PEJL/Template:Proreview, see example:

• Rolling Stone link

For some reason it appears to not generate the reference properly. We'll have to investigate that if we want to go down this road. --PEJL 07:25, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I have investigated, and it won't work because of this bug. I'm substing the example above while I try another approach... --PEJL 09:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Turns out a template doesn't really make it any easier to generate the link-ref format, because of that bug. See User:PEJL/Template:Proreview. I still think this format is the best alternative so far. If we want, we could make a custom citation template, to make the references consistent (see mock-up example at User:PEJL/Template:Cite proreview). --PEJL 09:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've just implemented the idea of the expanding box in Time on Earth and I think it looks pretty good. Have a glance. If you disagree, then that's fine, but I think it holds together pretty well like that. Either way, I'm going to leave that page as is (ironically, i was skimming over most of the articles as I was doing it, so i could get the authors and the dates, and one article (this one) said "According to this album’s oddly thorough Wikipedia page...", which I find ironic, because he's effective praising me, since I mostly wrote the thing). I think it looks good and definitely expands the capacity for references, and makes it easier for most inline references, especially for the critical reception section. But if you think this looks good, let's get to work making it work as a template. --linca^linca 06:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks pretty good. There are various aspects of the layout that I'd change, but I understand that this is just a prototype using {{show}} as opposed to a dedicated template. (Specifically, I think having them left-aligned and using an unordered list like we currently do would be preferable. But let's skip the specifics for now. The main problem with this format is that it requires duplicating much more of the content for each review. As I mention above, it's not possible to have a template generate both the normal content and the ref using a single template invocation. Consider this comparison for the first review on Time on Earth:

Unexpanding (no duplication)

*[[All Music Guide]] {{rating|4|5}} [http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte link]

Unexpanding with ref (duplicate source, URL)

*[[All Music Guide]] {{rating|4|5}} [http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte link]<ref>Stephen Thomas Erlewine, [http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte allmusic ((( Time on Earth > Overview )))], published [[June 2007]], retrieved [[19 August]], [[2007]].</ref>

Expanding with ref (duplicate source, URL, reviewer, publication date, possibly issue number and page number)

{{show|1=[[All Music Guide]] {{rating|4|5}}|2=Review by [[Stephen Thomas Erlewine]]<br />Publication date: [[June 2007]]<br />[http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte External link]<ref>Stephen Thomas Erlewine, [http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte allmusic ((( Time on Earth > Overview )))], published [[June 2007]], retrieved [[19 August]], [[2007]].</ref>}}

Another problem is that the references don't work backwards unless the corresponding section has already been expanded. Try clicking on the "^" next to Stephen Thomas Erlewine.

--PEJL 07:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I know this might make the view little bit more dense again, but what if the reference is embedded into the unexpanded view, to avoid the "^" placeholder link issue you mentioned.

So instead of this:

All Music Guide Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Publication date: June 2007 External link

...You'd have this:

All Music Guide Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Publication date: June 2007 External link

How about that? Again, I know we're trying to avoid clutter, but this amends this issue we have. (If we go for this, I'll have to go through the trouble of re-formatting Time on Earth, but that's to be expected). So are we going to go for this, then? Oh, and we'd need to fix the lineheight with this way, too, but that's able to be attended later. linca^linca 09:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

21 August

If it weren't for the template-ref bug we could generate the entire review using a single template. Now we either have to use an outer template like {{show}} but generate the content for reviews manually (like in your examples using {{show}} above (but possibly using a second template for the contents of <ref>...</ref>), or use three templates, like this:

| Reviews     =
{{Proreview start
  | Source    = [[All Music Guide]]
  | Rating    = {{Rating|4|5}}
}}<ref>{{Proreview ref
  | Source    = [[All Music Guide]]
  | Author    = Stephen Thomas Erlewine
  | URL       = http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte
  | Published = [[June 2007]]
  | Accessed  = [[August 21]], [[2007]]
}}</ref>{{Proreview end
  | Author    = Stephen Thomas Erlewine
  | Published = [[June 2007]]
  | URL       = http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte
}}

It's either too much code or too much complexity (too many ways to screw up, too difficult to learn). Now if we were to drop the references, this would be much more straightforward... --PEJL 10:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

What about if we used a subst option? Like, we substitute a re-using of the info and place ref tags around it when adding to the page? By this, I mean an embedded subst. Something like this:

<div class="NavFrame collapsed" style="border-style: none; padding: 0px;">
<div class="NavHead" style="background: #f4f4ff; text-align: left; padding: 0px;">[[All Music Guide]] {{rating|4|5}} {{subst:proreviewref|1={{{1author}}}|2={{{1url}}}|3={{{1name}}}|4={{{1date}}}|5={{{1accessed}}}}}</div>
<div class="NavContent" style="text-align: left; padding: 0px;">
<div style="background-color: white; text-align:left; border: 1px solid #f4f4ff; padding: 5px; margin-top: 5px;">
Review by {{{1author}}}<br />Publication date: {{{1date}}}<br />[{{{1url}}} External link]</div>
</div></div>

yeilding this:

All Music Guide {{{Source}}} {{{Rating}}} [{{{URL}}} link] Review by {{{1author}}} Publication date: {{{1date}}} [{{{1url}}} External link]

Meanwhile, we'd have to write the one for {{proreviewref}}

<ref>{{{1}}}, [{{{2}}} {{{3}}}], published {{{4}}}, retrieved {{{5}}}.</ref>

In the first one there, I've included the whole script that I wrote for the "show" template originally, except that I've pre-aligned it to the left. I'm going to try and see if this works, but I thought I'd throw the code in here and see if you think it's going to work. --linca^linca 11:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Got it

So, after trying my hardest, I figure what's going to be best is if we substitute the template. I've done it and it works, but I don't know how to use the switch and if variables in the templates (not my bag, baby) but this only presents an issue with future users, but on the plus side, it works. We could even embed the three templates as you suggested, because substitution compensates for that. It's not perfect, but it gets us past this. Look here: User:Lincalinca/test region. I've substitued the info in.

What do you think? Think this is the path to take, or try and work around with something a bit simpler?--linca^linca 11:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, substing is a good idea. However, we need to make it understandable how to edit reviews after they've been added, and we don't want to expose the raw code like <div class="NavFrame collapsed">...</div>, partly because we don't want to paint ourselves into a corner by hardcoding such raw code into articles (in case the class names are no longer supported in the future, for example). So even with substing I think we'll want the final result to be templates. So if we want an expanding box, the best we can expect to end up with is something like:

| Reviews     =
{{subst:Proreview
  | Source    = [[All Music Guide]]
  | Rating    = {{Rating|4|5}}
  | Author    = Stephen Thomas Erlewine
  | URL       = http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte
  | Published = [[June 2007]]
  | Accessed  = [[August 21]], [[2007]]
  }}

which would be substituted into:

| Reviews     =
{{Proreview start
  | Source    = [[All Music Guide]]
  | Rating    = {{Rating|4|5}}
  }}<ref>{{Proreview ref
  | Source    = [[All Music Guide]]
  | Author    = Stephen Thomas Erlewine
  | URL       = http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte
  | Published = [[June 2007]]
  | Accessed  = [[August 21]], [[2007]]
  }}</ref>{{Proreview end
  | Author    = Stephen Thomas Erlewine
  | Published = [[June 2007]]
  | URL       = http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte
  }}

That's the best I think we can end up with, if we are to use an expanding box with a ref in the middle. I'm not sure this is good enough. The existing format with an added ref is just so much simpler, and completely backwards-compatible:

| Reviews     =
*[[All Music Guide]] {{Rating|4|5}} [http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte link]<ref>{{Proreview ref
  | Source    = [[All Music Guide]]
  | Author    = Stephen Thomas Erlewine
  | URL       = http://wm06.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:jbfixz95ldte
  | Published = [[June 2007]]
  | Accessed  = [[August 21]], [[2007]]
  }}</ref>

--PEJL 15:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

What if...

I just thought of something, which kind of turns the final outcome on its head, but what if we put the references first? I don't know if the {{show}} template/formatting allows this, but it may. I'm suggesting this before sandboxing, so I'm going to try here and see if it works. I'll try and jig somethig now. linca^linca 04:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Take 2:

<ref>{{subst:proreviewref|1={{{1author}}}|2={{{1url}}}|3={{{1name}}}|4={{{1date}}}|5={{{1accessed}}}}}<ref><div class="NavFrame collapsed" style="border-style: none; padding: 0px;">
<div class="NavHead" style="background: #f4f4ff; text-align: left; padding: 0px;">[[All Music Guide]] {{rating|4|5}}</div>
<div class="NavContent" style="text-align: left; padding: 0px;">
<div style="background-color: white; text-align:left; border: 1px solid #f4f4ff; padding: 5px; margin-top: 5px;">
Review by {{{1author}}}<br />Publication date: {{{1date}}}<br />[{{{1url}}} External link]</div>
</div></div>

Something like this maybe? I'll try and put it into action and see if it works/is buggy etc. linca^linca 04:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand the code, but that may be possible. We could possibly use CSS absolute positioning to move the ref, even if is first or last in the code (either would work, and last would probably be better, for non-CSS browsers). --PEJL 05:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Breaking Template:Review-Christgau

Another thing that just occurred to me is that if we go down this road, we'd break {{Review-Christgau}}, if we want such reviews to be able to use refs.

BTW, I'm inserting this into a new section, but for some reason MediaWiki makes unrelated changes to the navHead section above. That is unintentional on my part. --PEJL 13:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)