Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 September 2

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September 2[edit]

Template:United States Cabinet external links[edit]

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).

The result of the discussion was delete. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:21, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This template is used on Cabinet of Donald Trump and on a sequence of articles from Timeline of the Donald Trump presidency (2017 Q1) to Timeline of the Donald Trump presidency (2019 Q3), no doubt with more to follow. It should be Subst: on the former, and removed from the rest; then deleted. There is already a link to Cabinet of Donald Trump on each of the other articles.

Timeline of the Barack Obama presidency (2016), for example, manages without such a huge list of external links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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).

Template:2007 UNCAF Interclub Cup[edit]

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).

The result of the discussion was delete. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:23, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

only used on one page, over navboxing Frietjes (talk) 16:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. GiantSnowman 10:48, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - not needed, we do not need navboxes for every individual cup competition, if we did it would be too much clutter. GiantSnowman 10:49, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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).

Template:Left- hand traffic countries[edit]

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).

The result of the discussion was delete. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:24, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not such an overwhelmingly important feature of a country to be worth having a navbox for, especially given the inevitable navbox clutter at the bottom of articles about sovereign states. Not surprisingly, only two articles transclude this template. – Uanfala (talk) 16:01, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • delete, the parent article has a nice sortable table to provide this information. Frietjes (talk) 14:49, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Not a good topic for a navbox. --Trialpears (talk) 22:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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).

Template:Infobox actor awards[edit]

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).

The result of the discussion was merge to Template:Infobox awards list. (non-admin closure) --Trialpears (talk) 22:13, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Propose merging Template:Infobox actor awards with Template:Infobox awards list.
Templates are nearly identical; named awards can easily be copied over in a merge. Primefac (talk) 14:09, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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).

MUNI s-line templates[edit]

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).

The result of the discussion was delete. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

s-line data modules

{{s-line}} templates for the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Superseded by Module:Adjacent stations/MUNI. All transclusions replaced. There are 14 dependent s-line data modules which should also be deleted. Mackensen (talk) 14:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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).

Template:OnlyOffline[edit]

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).

The result of the discussion was keep. I don't think anyone in this discussion is arguing that the original purpose of this template is the only valid use of this template. That being said, there is a majority of participants who feel that this template has the potential to be used for a wide range of purposes. The only significant opposition to this template is the possibility of back-door spam/link farms that would only be viewable off-wiki, and care should be taken that this does not happen. No prejudice against renomination provided a different rationale (i.e. not "used to add contentious...videos") is provided. Primefac (talk) 15:40, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

TLDR: This template was intended to be used to add the contentious Osmosis article-summary videos to the WP:MED/App and Internet-in-a-Box which re-use Wikipedia content, but keep these videos hidden from Wikipedia readers. The Wikipedia community rejected the videos and they were removed from 300 articles 18 months ago. These third-party applications should control the inclusion of additional commercially-generated third-party video material using some off-wiki mechanism, not by editing articles.

Early 2018 some users at the WP:MED project (specifically User:Doc James) formed a collaboration with Osmosis, who develop training videos for medical students and offer subscriptions to such. Osmosis would develop cut-down versions of these as article-summaries, offer them with a free licence, and James would insert them into the lead sections of major medical article topics. 300 such videos were created and added to Wikipedia. The videos were discussed by the community and various concerns with this collaboration were raised. Some objected to the Wikipedia being as freemium content leading readers towards the commercial subscriptions. Others complained that the videos had errors or other weaknesses, but that users could not edit them to correct these faults. It became clear that fixing issues with the videos was not a commercial priority for the company. The videos didn't fit with the "Encyclopaedia that anyone can edit" model for user-generated content that can be added, modified and deleted easily online. In March 2018 all 300 videos were removed from articles by Doc James, though they remain on Commons.

The WP:MED/App and Internet-in-a-Box are Wikipedia content reusers. The former concentrates on medical articles, whereas the latter contains all Wikipedia. Both store the content offline (a single download) which avoids the need for online (mobile) data when looking up information. From the Google Play store comments, it appears that the WP:MED/App is largely used by medical students in the developing nations. A previous snapshot of Wikipedia content was taken when these Osmosis videos were included in articles. From a recent post at WT:MED, James has indicated that they wish to take another snapshot of Wikipedia content but today this would not include any of the videos.

To solve this, the OnlyOffline template was created. The intention is that anything included within the template is invisible to Wikipedia online readers, but will be visible to these two offline applications. James added the template to 22 medical articles with links to the contentious Osmosis videos (e.g. Epilepsy). Those edits have all been reverted.

While the name of this template implies a general-purpose "this content is for offline use only" purpose, it doesn't actually achieve that nor is intended to be used as such. If I save a Wikipedia page for reading offline, the content does not appear. It is instead a direct collaboration between the developers of WP:MED/App and IIAB to interpret the style/tag appropriately. The purpose of the template therefore is clearly to identify material that is displayed only on those third-party applications. Presumably James and others would police its usage to ensure it serves only their purpose.

It is not clear why a general "offline" use of Wikipedia would want many GB of commercially created medical-training videos. Videos is by far a more expensive way of delivering information than text. I suggest two reasons. The first is that the WP:MED/App appeals to medical students so they are likely to appreciate these training videos more than Wikipedia's general reader would. The second is Doc James, who hasn't really accepted their rejection by the Wikipedia community. He would like the videos created by his collaboration to be incorporated into off-wiki projects he is involved with: WP:MED/App and IIAB.

There are parallels between (WP:MED/App and IIAB) and other third-party reusers of Wikipedia content. Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and Bixby all make use of Wikipedia articles and images when answering queries from their users. Often, though, these days Google prefers to get its medical information from trusted commercial partners like WebMD or Mayo Clinic, and falls back to Wikipedia when they lack the topic. These smart assistants reuse Wikipedia content without themselves needing to tag Wikipedia articles with metadata. We wouldn't accept {{Alexa start}} ... {{Alexa end}} markup within our articles wikitext. What's worse, is that the Osmosis videos are intended to replace the need to read the article at all. Rather than reading our up-to-date community-generated and maintained articles, the viewer is encouraged to get a 5 minute summary of the topic created by a commercial third party who sell subscriptions to training videos. So the insertion of this template into articles, is a bit like Google inserting {{Google assistant|IgnoreWikipedia=true|AlternativeURL=https://www.webmd.com/epilepsy}} tags into our articles that link to the WebMD article text they would prefer to present to readers instead of Wikipedia.

Third party applications (WP:MED/App and IIAB) should find an independent, off-wiki method for offering articles-as-videos to their users. A simple text file mapping article name to video URL would suffice and could be hosted on a third-party server such as where the app source is maintained. There is no reason to involve Wikipedia. This is a bad on-wiki solution to a simple off-wiki problem. -- Colin°Talk 13:37, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. This is little different from linkfarming in the WP:EL section. JFW | T@lk 13:58, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as this could have future uses that have nothing to do with the content in the nomination above. If the "content" referenced in an instance of the template's use is a problem, BRD. — xaosflux Talk
    There might be such uses, but they have not been identified, and we shouldn't have templates for hypothetical uses. --Izno (talk) 14:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    That's the worst possible advice you could give to any software engineer. The ability to foresee technical need and anticipate future demands is probably the most important skill any systems analyst could have. Having solutions ready to roll-out when the end-user needs them is cost-free on Wikipedia, and should be encouraged. It's obvious that Wikipedia needs to broaden its delivery models if it wants to meet the 2030 goals, and richer offline content is one means. In this instance, YAGNI actually stands for "You Are Going To Need It". --RexxS (talk) 14:38, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I can think of much worse advice. Maybe "If you get an error message, then turn on all your privs and run it again" or "Don't bother documenting your code as you go. We don't have time for that right now, and we'll go back and add some notes after it ships". ;-D WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Nah, those are easy to fix in comparison with a failure to
    PLAN AHEAD
       --RexxS (talk) 16:21, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Having solutions ready to roll-out when the end-user needs them is cost-free on Wikipedia, and should be encouraged. So is having them later, when obvious semantic uses are available in context. We don't have that right now. --Izno (talk) 16:26, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have had issues with this template, much like the above concerns. I agree almost entirely with Colin. Delete. --Izno (talk) 14:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll add a second argument: If this is valuable content for Wikipedia to provide, it should be made accessible to anyone accessing the article and above that requires consensus to do so. This content does not meet that criteria. --Izno (talk) 16:26, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Izno, I agree with you that whatever is added for these offline users should be subject to the normal process of consensus. I've been trying to think of another use, something that editors would likely agree could be valuable content for offline users, but which isn't appropriate for online users. So far, my best idea is sister project content. We provide a link in some articles to related images on Commons, which is fine for online users (just click it to see more images) but it is not functional for offline users. So it might be possible to use this to curate a moderate number of relevant images (e.g., what skin cancers look like) that are currently provided via a link to a page or category on Commons, when Commons is inaccessible. WP:GALLERY is written with the assumption that Commons is just a click away, but when it's not, perhaps the images could be presented to offline users in the article. Something similar could be done for some Wikisource contents, in articles about those sources, e.g., a copy of one of the translations of the Magna Carta in the Magna Carta article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    @WhatamIdoing: Of course whatever is added for these offline users should be subject to the normal process of consensus, and it is - in the article where the content is added. If consensus exists to keep that particular content for offline use, then it stays; if not then it is removed. But it's the content you're now discussing, not this template. The template has no effect on the process of determining consensus for its content. --RexxS (talk) 22:47, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to be clear, RexxS, the Wikipedia consensus for the commercially-created Osmosis medical-student-training videos was to reject them all in principle. This isn't subject to article-consensus or wikiproject consensus to override that. They don't fit what Wikipedia is, per explanation at Wikipedia is not YouTube. James would need another community-wide RFC to overturn that decision, and that would be even less likely to succeed now that Open Osmosis is dead. -- Colin°Talk 08:24, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Which bit of "this is a discussion about the template, not the videos" didn't you get your head around? This template can be used with far more content than those videos that you're so obsessed with. --RexxS (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The nominator states "While the name of this template implies a general-purpose "this content is for offline use only" purpose, it doesn't actually achieve that nor is intended to be used as such." This is blatantly untrue. This template was created by me as a general purpose template to allow extra content to be made available offline, and I have a track record of producing tools that have general applicability - see Module:Wikidata, Module:WikidataIB, Module:String2 and their many associated templates, for examples. He has been told what my intentions were when I created the template, yet insists on fabricating falsehoods. I resent Colon's attack on my integrity.
    It is perfectly clear that this is a general-purpose template because it cooperates with MediaWiki:Offline.css to provide the styling used offline for any third-party re-users. That project-wide stylesheet, in conjunction with simple additions of classes to the TemplateStyles stylesheet at Template:OnlyOffline/styles.css, can be used to add whatever styles are wanted to extra offline content.
    Whatever problem Colin has with one set of videos – and note that this template is not being used with them – he needs to take his issues to the videos on Commons. I assume he knows how requests for deletion work there. This nomination is a misguided attempt to remove perfectly good functionality from the project – the ability add extra content and style it as desired for offline use without disturbing what is served by Wikipedia online – without any good reason beyond an antipathy to some CC-BY-SA videos, which were commercially produced. Those videos are not this template, and the above rant has no bearing on whether this template should be kept or not. --RexxS (talk) 14:21, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ignoring the ad-hominems, examine the earlier statement by RexxS: "a need arose to embed content that was only visible when the content was being viewed offline, via Kiwix. .... it is useful to be able to insert content especially for those readers. I produced a simple template, Template:OnlyOffline, which uses Template:OnlyOffline/styles.css to hide content marked up with the class "onlyoffline". The idea was that Kiwix will also read from MediaWiki:Offline.css which will now display the content when being viewed offline.... My colleague Kelson, who does all the Kiwix work, has suggested that we move the code in Template:OnlyOffline/styles.css to MediaWiki:Common.css" While claims have been made as to its general purpose, the facts are that this was created by RexxS solely for the (WP:MED/App and IIAB) Kiwix implementation. James also admits "We were looking at using this template OnlyOffline to have certain videos only appear within these specific ZIMs [he's referring to WP:MED/App and IIAB] for offline use." The "certain videos" James referred to are the Osmosis medical training vidoes, which are not ones I alone have a "problem with" but that in an RFC started by James were thoroughly rejected by the community.
Wrt Commons, the videos cannot be removed from Commons. They have a free licence and Commons does not care if they are medically correct, encyclopaedic, editable, entertaining, comprehensive or any other consideration that Wikiedian's might have.
WhatamIdoing has already demonstrated that this template does not in fact achieve the goal of having zero impact on any Wikipedia reader. The thumbnail for the video is downloaded by every reader, potentially briefly displayed, and then hidden by stylesheet code, which isn't necessarily run depending on browser settings.
As noted above, the name of this template implies more potential use than its actual implementation permits. It is hard to make a general case for some content being available/displayed only-offline. I would appreciate some suggestions. If one saves Wikipedia pages for offline viewing, this template has no effect - so it doesn't even work. Clearly this template was only ever intended to work by arbitrary convention between Wikipedians and one piece of software.
The only purpose this template has ever been used for and that anyone has concrete use-case for, is to display commercially produced medical training videos in an app that is often used by medical students. The WP:MED folk are sad that the next refresh of their app will lose 300 videos, and have found a really really bad way to get them back. As with all free content open projects, if James and RexxS are upset with the community consensus on these videos, they have the right to fork the project, and thus gain full control. -- Colin°Talk 19:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"If one saves Wikipedia pages for offline viewing, this template has no effect". Not so. Anybody who remembers to apply the Mediawiki:Offline.css settings for offline use finds that the template works just as I've stated. You're lying again about my intentions, and I'm really sick with you making up such nonsense. I created a general purpose template to do a general job. I don't give a monkey's about the videos, but I do care about improving the experience for offline viewers. If Colin has no interest in making extra online content available for those unable to use Wikipedia online, then he is free to fork the project and keep the content entirely online as he wants. --RexxS (talk) 22:47, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I understand how it works, RexxS, and it isn't "anyone who remembers to apply the Mediawiki:Offline.css settings for offline use". You make it sound like that CSS is a standard part of Wikipedia and there is a button somewhere for turning it on or off. That CSS was created solely for James to add Osmosis videos to Internet in a Box (see talk page). Stylesheet changes are a developer feature, not a user feature. -- Colin°Talk 07:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You have no understanding of how it works as you've amply demonstrated already. The use of CSS is a standard part of MediaWiki software, which employs commom.css, user css and TemplateStyles in rendering content delivered online from the Wikipedia site. Offline.css is the extension that allows Kiwix and other offline apps to style offline content differently, and it's that functionality that I took advantage of to make a template that could deliver extra content to offline users. As for "Stylesheet changes are a developer feature, not a user feature", that's pure bunkum. Stylesheet (CSS) changes are made by editors all of the time. Editors change the display of content with inline styles in tables, with new classes in WP:TemplateStyles, with their own user stylesheets, and so on. This is the encyclopedia that any editor can edit; you don't have to be a dev to do that. --RexxS (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Could allow videos already on Commons under an open license to be provided in an offline environment including the medical app and Internet-in-a-Box. Discussion for that is ongoing. The links to commons we currently provide do not work offline. Video is now easily editable via WP:Videowiki. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:58, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • James, the medical app and Internet-in-a-Box are not Wikipedia. Can you please explain why every editor on Wikipedia must permit your team to insert metadata into our articles in order to include videos just for your apps? And why must millions of readers of Wikipedia online download a 10-20KB thumbnail for a video they won't see in order to provide metadata for your apps? Please stop lying about the videos being editable; dishonestly doesn't help your case.-- Colin°Talk 07:19, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Credible concerns are undermined by ad hominem attacks. I've been critical of the videos, but James isn't lying - people can edit the video script, which then changes the video - so they are editable. These personal attacks are disruptive. — soupvector (talk) 11:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • Editing the narration script, after first accepting a robot voice rather than the carefully synchronised human narrator, is not "easily editing the videos". That is a lie [a untruth told to deliberately deceive] and James and RexxS need to stop it. And per my post at WT:MED, despite the 30-odd videowiki videos being in articles since the spring, with a link to the script for "anyone to edit", nobody else has edited the videos. Facts vs lies.
          • Editing a script is easy, contrary to the nonsense you're peddling. The voice is not a robot; it's standard text-to-speech used in thousands of applications. You're the one lying, with the sole intention to sling enough mud and hope some of it sticks. We get it. You really don't like the videos. Now go and take your hatred off to Commons where it's relevant, and quit bludgeoning the commentators here with your off-topic rants. --RexxS (talk) 22:47, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
soupvector, I suggest you read Wikipedia:No personal attacks. I am not attacking James the person, but what James has written. He has repeatedly written things that are untrue, and he knows are untrue, with the intention of making false claims about projects he is involved in. We are permitted to make serious accusations against other editors, provided the have evidence, and that's the case here. I'm making very serious accusations, with plenty evidence.
The whole purpose of this template is to subvert the consensus of Wikipedians that the Osmosis videos are not welcome on Wikipedia. James wants to present "Wikipedia in a box" as if we still had them on wiki. They aren't community edited or community approved and they never were maintained by the company that produced them. Compare Wikipedia which is constantly updated and text approved by the community. So the version of Wikipedia that James wants to download to his Internet in a Box project is just a fork, and this is not the way to fork. Even if this template is kept, based on "could have future uses" speculation, James still needs to launch a community-wide RFC to gain consensus to restore the videos to articles for download to Internet-in-a-box. Otherwise any claim that Internet-in-a-box contains Wikipedia would be false marketing. -- Colin°Talk 12:11, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I just edited the Dengue VideoWiki to confirm my impression. Similar to editing WP generally, with the additional step of letting the video render (seconds). I stand by my characterization of disruption. — soupvector (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
soupvector, let's be clear. James is saying that it is easy now to edit the Osmosis videos with VideoWiki. Go watch File:Epilepsy video.webm. At 1:39 it refers to "patients with epilepsy" (remember this is a medical training video, not really a Wikipedia article where WP:MEDMOS discourages the word "patients"). So please change that word in the narration and the onscreen text to say "people with epilepsy". You'll also have noticed that the narration and the text being scribbled onscreen is exactly in sycn. So please ensure your new robot narration is also exactly in sync for the duration of the 8min43sec of the video. At 3:55 the video refers to "simple partial" seizures and "complex partial" seizures. These terms were already out-of-date when the video was made. Per ILAE New seizure classifications, please change those to "Focal Aware Seizures" and "Focal Impaired Awareness Seizures". Now add a new slide on the "History" mentioning the ancient Greeks and the development of effective drugs in the 20th Century. Remember you need to do the same scribble text style of presentation, with cute little animated drawings of Hippocrates rejecting the idea of epilepsy being caused by spirits. Then tell me you can easily edit the videos. -- Colin°Talk 13:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So if I can make these changes will you drop your opposition? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:45, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and one has to question the weird concept that any Wikipedia would actually edit videos they can't see on Wikipedia. We've had 30 VideoWiki videos already on Wikipedia and nobody has edited them. -- Colin°Talk 13:20, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This deletion nomination is unrelated to the template itself and is rather directed at an experiment with new technology at the intersection of Wikipedia, Wikidata, the mw:Extension:Translate, a proposed meta:Wikispore project called meta:VideoWiki, and WP:Wikipe-tan. I recognize that the Wikipedia community requires the power to protect itself from disruptions. This template is just one tentacle of the larger sea monster, and cutting this does little to change the direction of the beast. I am one of the participants bringing the VideoWiki sea monster into Wikipedia and I like this project and think it is moderate. To experiment we require this template on hopefuy ~100 articles for a 6 months with possible extension. Among the many ongoing Wikimedia experiments with matching Wikidata to Wikipedia - Commons and everything else, this project seems to me to be one of the least secret, lowest budget, most community oriented, and safest experiments in the mix. Personally, I get more irked at the secret big budget Wikimedia Foundation experiments which have zero community participation or documentation and which are more disruptive and bigger perpetual resource commitments than this one. To me, the resistance to this experiment has its origins in being documented and accessible to target with objections. If the WMF does weird things with 10 million USD, no one comments, but if a few community members plan an experiment to affect a 100 articles over months with ongoing conversation, sometimes it seems like a big deal. I generally support Wikimedia community experiments and this project seems to me to be better. safer, and more inclusive than most. I encourage people to raise objections about this and other experiments. I only wish we had a more effective way to document, discuss, approve, and run experiments. I regret that the most controversial experiments are the ones that get discussed, and the safest way to run an experiment in the wiki community context is to fail to document it. I have trouble recognizing that in this deletion nomination, that this actual template is the cause for concern. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:14, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for now. I'm swayed by User:Bluerasberry's moderate approach to allowing this template. I'm sensitive to any risk of forking our content, and hope there could be, at a minimum, aspiration to either (a) accomplish this in future with one of the suggested metadata suggestions or (b) more fully integrate the relevant video content in Wikipedia mainspace. I find WP:VideoWiki/Dengue_fever and other editable videowiki content to be conformant with WP principles, whereas I'm still troubled by the Osmosis videos. I'm inclined to allow this template but limit the test, with limited scope and duration while another solution is pursued. — soupvector (talk) 19:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I am convinced by Colin's argument that the videos are un-wiki and not actually part of the article, especially given the March 2018 decision not to include them and therefore should not be in the wikitext of the article. Given that, the template becomes an unused template with little possibility of use as no other project has needed to create such a template in the history of Wikipedia. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:09, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep if the issue is the Osmosis video, then remove the videos. This template can be used in various printed version for a lot more than just Osmosis videos. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:56, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Headbomb, can you explain how this template includes the material in a printed version? Are you saying the material appears when one creates a PDF version of a page? At the moment, this appears to be just speculation about what an "only offline" template might do, but not what it actually does. I would think a "OnlyForPrint" template would be more relevant for that purpose. -- Colin°Talk 20:10, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • If the application that prints the articles offline applies Mediawiki:Offline.css - the common stylesheet for offline content - then the content can be rendered and styled by the application. You're so blinkered, Colin, by your hatred of the videos that those are all you consider. This template can be used for any content whatsoever to make it available offline: additional text; more references; translations; as well as images, videos and audio files. The last two wouldn't be suitable for printing, of course, but all of the others could be incorporated into print via a simple third-party offline browser. --RexxS (talk) 22:47, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • RexxS, do you think it could it handle a multi-page PDF? In the context of offline medicine-related contents, official drug information might be particularly useful. It's usually available online as a multi-page PDF (NB this use might be doomed by copyright complications). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • @WhatamIdoing: Any pdf could be added in a folder on the SD card that Kiwix (for example) has access to. By making an external wiki-link to that folder and file inside this template, the pdf would be delivered only to the offline browser. There would be no thumbnail download on-wiki because the link is invalid online. Is that what you were thinking of? --RexxS (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • RexxS, why would an application creating printed content based on Wikipedia want to display James's Osmosis video? A video has no purpose on paper unless we live in the Harry Potter universe. There is no single "offline" use-case. There are potentially several, each of which deserves their own template. You claim Mediawiki:Offline.css is "the common stylesheet for offline content". No it isn't. Read MediaWiki talk:Offline.css and you will see it was created precisely for James to offer DocJamesipedia Osmosis videos on his Internet in a Box project. -- Colin°Talk 07:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
            • Which bit of "this is a discussion about the template, not the videos" didn't you get your head around? This template can be used with far more content than those videos that you're so obsessed with. If you think there are "several [cases of offline content], each of which deserves their own template", let's see your suggestion for one of those templates. And then your explanation why this template doesn't already do that job. You're going to have to put up or shut up. --RexxS (talk) 14:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • WhatamIdoing, see Template:Commons. We don't need to just link to a Commons category (which could contain an unlimited number of images) but can link to a Commons page (e.g. Commons:Reconquista). It is quite feasible for an offline project such as InternetInABox to choose to download the linked Commons page as well. I think that meets your use-case. Whereas I can't see how this template, which merely tells the browser on the client side to hide an image it has already downloaded, could be used to request a curated set of Commons images in the offline-only scenario. -- Colin°Talk 07:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
            • And how do you think, Colin, that the "offline project such as InternetInABox" would link from a relevant article to that Commons page which is also downloaded onto the memory card? By magic? No, by using this template so that the "external" link functions offline, but doesn't show up in the online article. Now do you start to see the uses of this template? It's not just for videos. --RexxS (talk) 14:14, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep even though I agree that the video inclusion is highly dubious I find the alternative uses of offline galleries for when the commons isn't a click away. There has been some concerns about loading tumbnails for online users which may be a serious problem, but I'm not convinced this is an intrinsic problem rather than a flaw in the current implementation. --Trialpears (talk) 19:15, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Trialpears, the "offline Commons gallery" idea by WhatamIdoing was just a bit of brainstorming about what an "only offline" template might be used for. It doesn't actually achieve that, nor has anyone proposed how such a gallery might be implemented, and whether it would be maintained on Wikipedia or on Commons. Very likely if that was an idea folk wanted, a "OfflineGallery" template would be created for that purpose. I'm afraid thumbnails are an intrinsic problem if wikitext is used to refer to a video. Of course an alternative implementation is totally possible: the WP:MED/App and IIAB folk find somewhere off-wiki to store their metadata about what commercially-created videos they want to include in their package. There never was any reason to add this to mainspace. -- Colin°Talk 20:10, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • No it wasn't. You really need to stop imagining you can see inside the minds of other editors. WhatamIdoing was making a valid point about "only-offline" content. That content could be used for extra images that may be useful to some audiences, but are considered an excessive number of images within an online article. We normally direct editors to Commons galleries for that purpose online, but it would be a simple task to include within this template links to images stored locally on an SD card, for example. They clearly mustn't show online, and that sort of functionality is exactly what this template was designed to deliver. --RexxS (talk) 22:47, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • The talk page discussions on the template and css pages suggest otherwise, RexxS. See above about the already existing Commons template. Your hack only hides images that the browser has downloaded, so if people inserted e.g. 20 images from Commons for offline use, all 20 thumbnails would in fact be downloaded by the millions of Wikipedia online users. -- Colin°Talk 07:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
          • If the 20 images were placed in a gallery or slideshow or some other container outside of the article space, then that container would be coded in this template as an external wiki-link when viewed offline. In just the same way that MediaWiki software doesn't download all 20 thumbnails from a Commons page, it also doesn't download thumbnails from what it considers external links, so there would be no overhead for the online reader in these cases. --RexxS (talk) 14:22, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as per arguments from User:RexxSIan Furst (talk) 19:46, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete, WP should not be a link farm, even if the links are suppressed here. Frietjes (talk) 16:12, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep per RexxS --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:59, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, seems handy in theory and in practice. And per @Bluerasberry:, experiments like this should be no big deal. – SJ + 19:09, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Unloved and unwatched[edit]

The epilepsy article gets over 2000 hits a day and is on 515 people's watchlists. Granted not all of those 515 users are still active, or even alive, but that's a lot of eyes. It has had 5,029 total edits by 1,952 editors. In contrast File:Epilepsy video.webm on Commons has had one editor: Osmosis, a private company offering medical training videos, not Wikipedians or Commoners. It was uploaded by User:OsmoseIt, from Osmosis, who has since departed the project. The file description page has had a few bot/mass-admin edits which won't have added it to anyone's watchlist. Thus this article-as-a-video has one author, one edit and very likely one watchlister, who is a user who left the project over 18 months ago.

James wants to add hidden links to these unloved and unwatched videos, so that his Internet in a Box and WP:MED/App can include them. They do not represent Wikipedia nor are edited, watched and maintained by Wikipedians. Even if you did watchlist the video, and popped over to Commons to check your watchlist from time to time, you'd have to view e.g. all 8 minutes of the epilepsy video to check if anyone had added a naughty word or a picture of some boobs. There's no way to "diff" the change, so anyone could muck about with the content in a way that would be very hard for you to spot. Perhaps change a 5mg to 500mg or hypertension to hypotension.

So James is proposing to offer 300+ commercially-produced short medical-student training videos to medical students in the developing world. This project is not watching and monitoring their content, yet we are being asked to put up with invisible article template links and unviewed thumbnails to achieve this. Isn't that a bit scary? -- Colin°Talk 14:30, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think this statement from User:Colin is inaccurate in a variety of ways. First I should stipulate that I was a pretty severe critic of the linking to Osmosis videos from WP, for reasons that have been incompletely addressed (I still think WP should be easily editable). To that last point, User:Doc_James said above that "Video is now easily editable via WP:Videowiki" - which is true for many of the videos linked from that page (and Epilepsy is not among them - so Colin's chosen example isn't representative generally, though it might highlight issues with Osmosis video editing). As noted above, I edited the Dengue fever video a little while ago, and the edited version was rendered in seconds, uploaded to Commons in minutes (each with a single click on the script page, after editing), and is now live on the Dengue fever page. — soupvector (talk) 14:55, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Soupvector, perhaps you missed this comment from Doc James. When WhatAmIDoing challenged the claim the Osmosis videos were editable: "Although it's technically possible to make some kinds of edits, as a first approximation, saying that videos aren't truly editable is not very far from practical reality", James replied "actually it is fairly easy to edit these now with Videowiki. You simple convert them into a video script. Cut up the video into bits. Replace the human voice with machine read. And update away... ". He repeated this claim above. Soupvector, James did not use the template we are discussing to add hidden links to VideoWiki videos. He used it to add hidden links to the Osmosis videos, which the Wikipedia community rejected. His edit, with misleading edit summary "offline only", showed up in my watchlist on Epilepsy. So the Epilepsy video is pertinent and I'm afraid the Dengue fever video is not. Please let me know when you have made the simple edits I requested above. It is only a few sentences, though of course the video bit of "video is easily editable" is likely to be much more of a challenge for you. -- Colin°Talk 16:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Colin I did not mean to imply that I was interested in being your editing monkey. — soupvector (talk) 16:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, but you made a claim, and it seems reasonable to ask if your claim can actually be done. You don't want to edit the Osmosis videos and neither has anyone else shown the slightest inclination. Never enhanced, never fixed, never polished. They are the dead product of a misguided commercial collaboration. They have no place on this project, hidden from online readers or not. -- Colin°Talk 19:00, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I edited one of the videos that originated in VideoWiki. I have not defended the (distinct) Osmosis videos. I think you may be a bit off-topic in focusing on the latter in this TFD discussion, since Osmosis videos aren't the only possible use for this template. — soupvector (talk) 19:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It certainly isn't off-topic since the only use for this template was to restore the contentious Osmosis videos for the next offline refresh of projects James is involved in, projects that claim to be based on Wikipedia but now seem to be based on a "DocJamesipedia" fork of Wikipedia where the community didn't say no. There has been speculation about what an offline template might be used for, but likely any such usage would require specific templates with their own parameters and documentation. Nobody has demonstrated a working example of a usage outside of WP:MED/App and IIAB. We don't need to keep this template hanging about in case someone finds a use for it: that would be the very definition of a solution looking for a problem. -- Colin°Talk 20:24, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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).

Template:Roma etymology[edit]

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).

The result of the discussion was delete. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:05, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Etymological tree for use in some see also sections (1 article and 4 dabs). This mess should be reduced to only the most relevant links and then deleted. --Trialpears (talk) 17:31, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, --Trialpears (talk) 12:58, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • substitute and trim to reduce to the most directly related links. Frietjes (talk) 14:41, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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).
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