Wikipedia talk:Substitution/Archive 6

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Edit needed

Both templates need {{Commonstmp}} added inside a nesting noinclude block. Thanks. // FrankB 08:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

{{deletedpage}}

Should it be subst:ed, or not? – Gurch 20:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC) Never mind, this seems to have been discussed already (though people don't seem to be sticking to the decision) – Gurch 20:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

{{oldafdfull}}

Subst? - CrazyRussian talk/email 15:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Why? I don't think so; doing this will just add a bunch of wikicode semi-permanently to thousands upon thousands of talk pages for no obvious benefit. (Apart from giving a bored bot something to do, naturally :) )-Splash - tk 15:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, what of {{test}} then? - CrazyRussian talk/email 15:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

At least in how it is mostly used now, {{oldafdfull}} is a header that remains separate from any talk page discussion and is not archived. If, at the end of an AfD, {{oldafdfull}} were inserted in a new section at the bottom of the Talk page, then it would be part of the contents of the discussion page and would warrant subst'ing for preservation. As it stands, it remains at the top so that anyone wondering why it remains or whether it should be deleted can easily find the discussions about it. The vandalism warnings for users are part of the moving comments that are the contents. If there were to be a vandalism header, like the block notices, that remained on a user page as a warning to all, then that would not necessarily warrant subst'ing. —Centrx→talk • 07:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see the benefit in substing those, either. The spread of substing is largely a consequence of everyone wanting a bot, and not wanting said bots to be idle (what good is code that can't be run?). Substing uses up server storage resources in terms of thousands of new revisions and the devs have told us often enough not to worry about server-side load issues since they will either a)stop us doing bad things or b)make them less bad. </opinion> -Splash - tk 21:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

That is irrelevant to when a template is newly added. If most people subst, for example, the unsigned templates, and a few bots change the leftovers, I don't see a problem with that. Anyway, the reason is not dependent on server load issues. —Centrx→talk • 07:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

No subst: / always subst:

I have noticed that often templates are subst'ed that really should not be (mainly maintainance ones like stubs and cleanup tags), I therefore think it would be nice if it was possible to put a keyword (e.g. _NOSUBST_) on a template that would mean that it could not be subst'ed, and if someone did try to subst it nothing would happen.

The reverse of this is the (more annoying) situation where some templates should - apparently - always be subst'd (e.g. all the user test templates), so I suggest there should be another keyword (e.g. _FORCESUBST_) that could be put on a template that would mean that the template is always subst'd (when used in certain namespaces, e.g. {{test}} in the user talk namespace). The positive effect of this would be no need for any more bots to go around wasting lots of bandwidth and inflating the database and giving users false new messages (and of course whatever the other benefits are of substing templates).

This would of course need changes to the software, but I don't see it being anything more than fairly trivial. What do you think? Martin 15:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea. It would put my bot out of a job, but would really cut down on a lot of the issues surrounding subst'ing templates and user misunderstanding (there must be hundreds of editors who have never heard of subst, yet use templates. Alphachimp ^talk 15:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Then we should say that bots aren't allowed to handle substing. Maybe one bot for the few exceptions, with a lot of attention paid to it, but that's it. Otherwise it's just a waste of server resources. — Omegatron 15:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there would be a need for bots to subst if this change was in effect. Even if bots tried, there would be nothing to do. That's the whole point of it. Alphachimp ^talk 16:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a lovely idea, but I wonder if it would be susceptible to edit warring as people disagreed over certain templates. This is not even to mention the potential disruption if someone fiddled with a template in common use… HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think actually rather than using keywords, it could be implemented in a similar way to page protections, this would mean only adins could set the option, which would stop any edit wars and malicious users, though this may make its implementation a bit harder, I suppose the best thing is to ask the devs. Martin 11:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Good idea in principle (the BIG RED WARNINGS to not forget substituting things like {{prod}} amuse me, but they're genuinely helpful. I wonder if it's even possible to prevent subst: from working, though. And you have to consider the occasional situation where it might be helpful to substitute a template (for example, to customize a particular instance more than is possible with parameters). But for a narrowly defined set of templates that were blacklisted? Probably helpful. -- nae'blis _(talk) 16:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

See Mediazilla:2003. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Alternative idea

Since we're talking about software upgrades anyway, what if, instead of substituting the entire content of a template into the article, you could just specify the version of that template to substitute? So if you typed {{subst:Unsigned| it would result in

• {{subst:Unsigned|

But if you typed {{20050714|unsigned}} or something like that, it would substitute the version of the template from that date:

• (preceding unsigned comment by  [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] {{{2}}})

You could also type some shortcut like {{now|unsigned}}, and it would convert to the current date and time on save. This would be helpful in the situations where you want the output to reflect the state of the template when it was inserted, but avoids cluttering up the articles with complex code, increasing the size of articles, not being able to find instances of the template, etc. Just an idea. — Omegatron 13:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

subst in monobook.js

Does any one know why subst command doesn't work with monobook.js? Some people who have developed tools to be used inside monobook.js say you should subst their tool's js page for once. When I do, it remains as {{subst..... and doesn't change to the code. Is it I'm doind something wrong? huji—TALK 08:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I came to this answer: It happens when people put the subst inside a PRE they have used for their monobook.js page.

Auto-subst in sig

It automatically turns my {{User:Death_motor/signature}} into {{SUBST:Death_motor/signature}}. This is very annoying when the source for your signature is quite long, like mine, and instead of showing {{User:Death_motor/signature}} in the source, it now shows the whole source. I think that this should be changed, so you have the option of substing your signature or not.--❊Đâěţĥ ɱøťőŕ↔☎ 20:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

For one, I believe your signature is just too long. The signature guide says you should not use such long signatures, nor transclude them. Have you considered shortening it a bit? :-) -- ReyBrujo 20:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Transcluding your signature makes it a vandalism target, increases server load on loading pages, and is generally not advisable, as ReyBrujo mentioned. Please consider using a more compact signature, perhaps without (as much) color. Also, whatever the first character is (before Daeth) does not show up correctly in my browser. -- nae'blis 22:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm I'll work on it some more.--❊Đâěţĥ ɱøťőŕ↔☎ 19:06, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Signature templates, unlike other potentially high-use templates, cannot currently be protected effectively for most users, so they're auto-substed to prevent them from becoming vandalism targets. Plus, Rob and Brion dislike fancy signatures, I think. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't subst warning?

Templates already have the ability to display very angry messages when you forget to use Subst inside their template (Hence the red text after a new AFD that you made or PROD that you left behind).

So, there are, obviously, some templates that should not be subst'ed. Is it possible to code those templates to leave behind angry text when they are subst'ed? I'm not sure what bit of Wiki goes to doing that, but it might be something someone could look at/ Inform me on? Logical2u 19:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Try {{#ifeq: <includeonly>{{subst:empty template}</includeonly>} | {{empty template}} | This is substed! | This is not substed!}}. Actually, that's a better way to do it than it's currently done for templates that should always be substed, if I do say so myself . . . —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Just beware of Wikipedia:template limits. Adding fancy checks adds to these limits. So such a check would certainly be unacceptable in a template like {{cite web}}. --Ligulem 23:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

An extra hundred fifty bytes doesn't make much of a difference. Even a hundred inclusions would bring the page only 0.7% closer to the limit, and a hundred inclusions is pretty dramatic. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:14, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I recommend you take a closer look at pages like AIDS. And wishes for features on templates like cite web keep piling on. But I'm more than happy if you tell me I'm too paranoid ;-). The good side of your code snippet I see is that its size is independent of parameter lengths. Which is good. --Ligulem 21:57, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Substituting move templates

I suggest that move templates, like {{move}}, not be substituted. There are not that many articles on requested moves at one time, so there is little benefit, and it is easier for the admin to remove afterwards if the template has not been substituted, especially when there is other stuff near the template, especially other substituted templates. -- Kjkolb 03:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I've moved it to under debate, as you may have a point there.--Andeh 13:36, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I do a lot of Requested moves and none of them subst. I don't see any reason for subst'ing the move template. In line with the rest of the templates that aren't subst'ed, it is a header and will not be archived. —Centrx→talk • 03:31, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The {{moved}} templates, with a d, don't even seem to be used. —Centrx→talk • 20:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I also do moves and I see it substituted on some of them. -- Kjkolb 02:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting guidance

The page says that {{lifetime}} should be subst:, but also that templates with parser functions should not be subst:. Here is the code for the lifetime template (notice the ifndef). I propose that it be removed from the list of "shoulds" (and a review of the others on that list is probably in order). Neier 04:52, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

{{{1{{{1|}}}|[[Category:{{{1}}} births|{{{3}}}]]}}}
{{Ifndef|{{{1}}}|[[Category:Year of birth unknown|{{{3}}}]]}}
{{{2{{{2|}}}|[[Category:{{{2}}} deaths|{{{3}}}]]}}}
{{Ifndef|{{{2}}}|[[Category:Living people|{{{3}}}]]}}

I removed {{lifetime}} and {{lifespan}} from the list because edits like this yield nonsense like this.

{{{11736|[[Category:1736 births|Watt, James]]}}}
{{Ifndef|1736|[[Category:Year of birth unknown|Watt, James]]}}
{{{21819|[[Category:1819 deaths|Watt, James]]}}}
{{Ifndef|1819|[[Category:Living people|Watt, James]]}>

I'm all for replacing overused templates, but, the page should be left readable. Neier 13:04, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

You are correct, but it is a pain because these templates are pointless and confusing beyond belief, and only used by one editor as far as I can tell. We should definately discourage the use of them. Martin 13:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Would anyone complain if I put the {{tdeprecated}} on this template? Martin 13:18, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Redirect templates need to be substituted

Not sure if this is a "must" or "should" case, but according to Wikipedia_talk:Redirect, redirects may now contain multiple lines (by design) and categories, but an unforseen side-effect is that the developers did not know redirects contained templates such as {{R from misspelling}} and the other contents of Category:Redirect templates (and they may break this functionality in the future). This entire class of templates should be substituted in the future (I have just submitted a bot request to deal with the ~15,000 current instances). -- nae'blis 19:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Could we please hold off on setting the bot loose? Let's give a bit of time for some discussion and consideration of alternatives before we go making massive changes. –RHolton≡– 16:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Template substitution in page histories

It's really annoying to look at page histories (such as [1]) and see the templates demanding substitution and blanking everything in the rest of the article. Is there anything that can be done about that? Nardman1 16:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I've requested a change to the {{afd}} template here. --Trödel 22:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

One more reason not to subst: Templates provide structure

In what is now section 4.1 (Templates that should NOT be substituted; List), "various citation/reference templates" and "various infoboxes" are listed on the grounds that they "contain very complex conditional code" and "should look consistent on various pages". These are indeed good arguments for avoiding template substitution, but there is one more reason: Even if these templates didn't encapsulate complex code and even if they didn't need to preserve appearance, the template calls provide a semantic markup that adds structure to the included information. The wiki source text {{cite book|title=George Orwell|author=Gordon Bowker}} says which name is the title and which is the author of a book. If the text was substituted as Gordon Bowker, ''George Orwell'' this would not be half as obvious. This distinction is not available to those who only read the rendered web page, but Wikipedia also has an audience in those who parse the downloadable dumps. For the task of locating book references to see which are missing information about publisher, publishing year, ISBN, etc., this is nearly impossible if the text is substituted, because this structure is lost in substitution. --LA2 12:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

An alternative interpretation is this: Template complexity is indeed the only guarantee to keep your templated information from being substituted into flat text. If you create a template for the purpose of providing structure (and persondata would be the most extreme example) somebody might come around and substitute it (which in persondata's case results in nothing), unless you make the template complicated enough. Therefore, make every template complicated enough, so it doesn't get removed and substituted into flat text. --LA2 17:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Please provide a summary of your extremely long comment if you want anything to be done about it. —Centrx→talk • 21:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Concise: Quit subst'ing things for the hell of it. You lose information. There is no offsetting benefit. Derex 20:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

No quite sure the benifit of replace "Nobr" template

There's bot running around converting this nice simple syntax to some clunky html-ish syntax. If the native syntax was simple I'd say translate it but its not. The reason wiki has been successful is the simpler than html syntax. I sure i am going to get a response saying "ohhh its so much faster inlining the template" but I thought I was protest it anyway. --MarsRover 03:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that {{nobr}} should not be on the list of templates that should be substituted. There is no technical reason it needs to be substituted and, as you say, the syntax is cleaner than the clunky HTML. Mike Dillon 18:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Using templates such as Template:· within templates (unsubst:ed)

Per here, I'd appreciate any information/consensus over whether using unsubst:ed templates such as {{·}} within (navigation) templates poses any technical worries. Thanks!  David Kernow (talk) 22:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Evaluate on a Subst

Looked around, maybe this is answered somewhere. If I subst a template like {{subst:test|Example}} what I get in the text (in the edit window after submitting the edit) is:

Thank you for experimenting with {{#if:Example|the page [[:Example]] on}} Wikipedia. Your test worked, and it has been [[Help:Reverting|reverted]] or removed. Please use [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|the sandbox]] for any other tests you may want to do. Take a look at the [[Wikipedia:Introduction|welcome page]] to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

is there a way to get it to evaluate the conditional statement and instead put this in the page?:

Thank you for experimenting with the page [[Example]] on Wikipedia. Your test worked, and it has been [[Help:Reverting|reverted]] or removed. Please use [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|the sandbox]] for any other tests you may want to do. Take a look at the [[Wikipedia:Introduction|welcome page]] to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

I'm not interested in the test template particularly, it's just an easy example. Thanks. *Spark* 03:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

There is apparently a bug that prevents a work-around to prevent this—or something. See [2]. If you can figure out a way to fix it, that would be great. —Centrx→talk • 00:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Welcome/test1 etc

These are all "supposed" to be substed. But if we believe there's a playoff between server load and dartabase size, these are god candidates not to subst. They are generally only seen a few dozen times at most, so server load is ephemeral, database space is permenant. Rich Farmbrough, 21:43 1 December 2006 (GMT).

Comments in a talk page should be substituted. If the developers are concerned about disk space, they can perma-delete the thousands of deleted images and other pages we have. I think actually that server load is the greater concern at least currently; there is no end in sight to the cheap supply of hard disk space, but they have to keep buying new servers because of the real-time load. —Centrx→talk • 00:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

User signature templates

I've just removed

• all user signature templates, often named user:name/sig or something similar

This is something that should not be substed without the user's permission, especially by a bot. People tend to take exception to editing of their signatures, and without the user's cooperation, substing the signatures is futile: they'll just keep adding them. Instead, these users should be contacted on their talk page and encouraged to list their individual signature templates here themselves (as well as adding the subst to their signature in preferences, or just putting the code there). —Cryptic (talk) 03:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

• I would, however, favor a policy requireign people to use subst in thier sigs, if they use signature tempaltes, and banning the use of templates if not listed here for auto-replacement. DES ^(talk) 18:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

• It seems like the policy on signature templates, really should be that they must always be substed; in particular, pages from user space should not regularly be transcluded into other namespaces or other users' pages. Otherwise, one user updating their signature places an undue load on the system, AND their signature is a potential target for vandalism, since an active editor's signature would appear on potentially hundreds or thousands of talk pages.

In other words, by no means should user templates be listed as something that shouldn't be substed.... it's just going to encourage users to use plain transclusion; actually subst'ing their signature instead, seemed to be more sensible. --Mysidia (talk) 02:19, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I've moved the user signature templates from do-not-subst to subst as per the reasoning above. Particularly with the severe strain Wikipedia servers are under lately, propagating a user signature—nothing more than a stylised name and links—across perhaps hundreds of talk pages seems entirely unjustifiable to me. They should preferably be subst'd by the users themselves, but the same goes for every other template listed. // Pathoschild 02:25, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

This is also important in archived discussions. If people are talking about someone's signature, and it hasn't been substed, how are we ever going to know what it looked like when we browse the archives? ~MDD4696 05:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

The argument about hte strain on servers keeps coming up, but nobody has ever provided any information how big this alleged strain is. In particular, I find it ludicrous that we now have a bot go through every page in every userspace to replace them. That is not creating absolutely unnecessary traffic on a big scale! — Sebastian 22:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. Transclusions cost very little provided the templates aren't changed much (widely-substituted sig templates should probably be semi-protected as high use). They almost certainly cost a lot less than bot edits to substitute the sigs. But in general, don't bother guessing what will affect the servers without reference to profiling data. Let people like Tim deal with performance issues. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The server strain is not important, but elements of talk page comments should not change. The contents of a talk page archive should appear exactly as it did when the discussion happened. —Centrx→talk • 05:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Update

AzaToth added {{update}} on top [3]. I assume AzaToth refers to the list of templates, right? If that's the problem, we might just remove the lists of templates and keep the general parts. Templates that should be substed should mention that in the description of the template anyway. I agree that maintaining a list of templates here is a bit optimistic. Who is looking here if a specific template should be substed or not? --Ligulem 18:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I reverted the {{update}} tagging of this page, since it is intended for articlespace as shown by Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating. BigNate37_(T) 19:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

As for the general "historic" or old-ness of the page, I think AzaToth is referring to the fact that there is little change to this talk page or the guideline itself, and it doesn't get edited often. However, I do not agree with the marking of this guideline as historical since it is still in effect (at least to my knowledge). It would need to fall out of use, not just experience few edits to be tagged as {{historical}}, since that tag ought to be a replacement to the {{guideline}} tag. BigNate37_(T) 19:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Deprecated templates

The article lists under ==Templates that should be substituted==, ===Article namespace===, several templates named {{prettytable}} and similar. I clicked to see what they were, and found that some of them are deprecated. Should they therefore be removed from this article? (I'm not confident enough that I understand this yet to do it myself.) Fayenatic london 20:12, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• If/when the deprecated "Templates that must/should be substituted" have all been substituted, I guess these templates can be deleted and therefore removed from the list. Ideally, I reckon pages that still use deprecated "Templates that should not be substituted" should have these templates updated/replaced, otherwise they'll need to be kept (and listed). Anyone else...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 11:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Categories rather than lists...?

While looking through Category:Wikipedia utility templates, I was thinking that the Category:Wikipedia templates to substitute automatically might be useful (e.g. for bots to scan), then remembered the lists here. Does anybody else think they might be more useful as categories...?  Thanks for any input, David Kernow (talk) 11:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

what does this mean?

What on Earth does the following piece of textual chop suey mean?

This page lists templates that should always be substituted except in the Wikipedia namespace. Automated tools (bots) which do such replacements will never be used on the original template pages.

If you are going to use a bot to substitute templates, please read through the talk page first, as many are under dispute or change status over time, and substitution is permanent.

For one thing, does anybody in this vast organization know the difference between "substitute" and "replace with"? I'm surprised that most of the really bad writing, and techno-geekery is found, not in the ordinary articles, but right here on the internal pages. I really can't make head or tail of any of this. If I could, I'd fix it up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Myles325a (talk • contribs) 01:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC).

Ok, I'll sign it, and add a few notes. Do you rem that "Who" song that begins "I'm a SUBSTITUTE for anther guy, I look pretty tall but my heels are high..."? Well, that guy may not have been all that well educated, but he did know the right way of using substitute.

IF one's budget does not allow it, then one may REPLACE T=bone steak with mince. The other way of saying this is that one SUBSTITUTES mince for T=bone. In other words, in the case of the word SUBSTITUTE, it is the subject not the object of the operation. Now is that a little cleaer? Myles325a 09:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

A category for pages which have templates which should be substituted

I think that every template which should be substituted should have the following line in the wikicode:

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>empty template|[[Category:Pages which transclude templates which should be substituted]]}}

This way, any page which has a substituted template with that, the {{Empty template}} will prevent the category from showing up; but if it's transcluded, then the category will show up - so such pages will be in Category:Pages which transclude templates which should be substituted. Od Mishehu 07:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Convenience templates for internal links in articles

Convenience templates for external links make sense, especially for those sites where we have vast quantities of links (e.g. IMDB), but I propose that convenience templates for internal links (examples: {{wc}}, {{fc}}, {{stnlnk}}) are, as a general class, added to the "should-be-subst'd" list, especially where the extra typing is not a great impact compared to what it is including. I suggest this not only for being "templates masquerading as article content" but also for being generally unfriendly. Templates which have some important additional functions, such as the elements, are not included in this description, as are those used outside the article space (e.g. {{tl}}, which is also useful for other reasons). 81.104.175.145 11:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I've always thought those templates were rather silly, but I don't see them as masquerading as article content (since their primary purpose is just to ensure consistent linking). Substing them does seem meritorious, but not enormously so; there may be some benefits in ensuring consistency this way. -- Visviva 13:01, 29 June 2007 (UTC)