Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 April 2

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April 2

Template:Season boilerplate

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was delete. JPG-GR (talk) 00:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Season boilerplate (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

This template seems to have been created for the purpose of transclusion in Charmed season articles. It was created in late February 2009 but has been tagged as {{underconstruction}} ever since. The creator has been mostly wiki-inactive for three weeks now. This template was removed from all season articles by another editor yesterday because it messed up many things. Either way, I believe this template's purpose to be ill-advised in the first place since all information that is true for the whole series should be mentioned in the main TV show article and doesn't require repetition in such excessive detail in subarticles. – sgeureka ^t•c 09:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

• Delete, very pointless and only encourages very bad practices of just having a bunch of copy/paste content in articles that should be crafted specifically for each season. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 13:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
• Move to Talk:List of Charmed episodes/Episode introduction draft and delete the resulting redirect. -- This was transcluded in a series of season pages before I removed it. Some if should probably go into the main article. In the meantime, it can be saved stored somewhere. -- User:Docu
• Delete per Wikipedia:Template namespace: "templates should not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace". Looking at this version, I agree with Collectonian that it is an inappropriate use of boilerplate text. Userfy to creator's userspace if requested. –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:21, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Template:Botanist-inline2

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was Closed by nominator as duplicated discussion; see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 March 31#Template:Botanist-inline2 Hesperian 02:11, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Botanist-inline2 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

This template provides a shorthand way of generating half a sentence of article prose. Specifically, it produces

 is denoted by the author abbreviation {{{1}}} when citing a botanical name.

That is, you write

'''John Lindley''' (8 February 1799 – 1 November 1865) was an [[England|English]] botanist
and{{botanist-inline2|Lindl.|John Lindley}}.

and you get

John Lindley (8 February 1799 – 1 November 1865) was an English botanist
and is denoted by the author abbreviation Lindl. when citing a botanical name..

There has been consensus since way back in 2005[1][2][3] that using transclusion to generate article prose is an absolutely terrible idea. I can't find this consensus ensconced in our policy or guidelines anywhere, but I suspect that is because the idea is so awful that it never occurred to us that we would need to discourage it. Here are some reasons why templates like this one are a very bad idea:

1. It encourages formulaic repetition across articles;
2. It prevents editors from adjusting wording to fit the context, on many levels:
   • You can't make grammatical adjustments, leading inevitably to poorly constructed sentences like the one above;
   • You can't make wikicode adjustments, like re-using a reference, or choosing not to link to a page you've already linked to elsewhere;
   • You can't contextualise the transcluded material. In this case, for example, I might have already discussed the use of standardised author abbreviations for citing botanical authors, in which case I would only need to write "his standard author abbrevation is Lindl.".
3. It makes the edit text difficult to read, navigate and edit. This is especially true for newbs, for whom transclusion may be a difficult concept to grasp. But even for experienced editors this kind of transclusion leads to errors: for example I note that the creator of this template has managed to finish the above example, taken from the current version of John Lindley, with two full stops instead of one.

In summary, this is a dirty hack that encourages boring, formulaic, error-riddled, poor quality prose. Delete. Hesperian 01:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree (and also for {{botanist-inline}}) and have already weighed in here: Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 March 31#Template:Botanist-inline2. --Rkitko ^(talk) 01:39, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Some dufus removed the notice from the template, so I didn't know it was up for discussion. Unlucky chance. Hesperian 02:11, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.