Commons talk:WikiProject Templates

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Bot[edit]

To make the templates more usable, we need a bot that can modify template parameters based on some assumptions. I am thinking of the "date" parameter of Template:Information for example. It should follow the ISO format of YYYY-MM-DD. That would allow to localize the template output to whatever format is preferred by the user (or common in the user's preferred language, to be more precise).

Another example is the "source" parameter of Template:Information. Many users use strings along the lines of "own work" for this parameter. Some use "own work", others use "made by myself" or "Jag själv" (Swedish for "I myself") or "Собствена снимка" (Bulgarian for "own picture") or "アップロード者本人が撮影" (Japanese expression whose exact meaning I don't know, but it means something like, well, "own work"). It would be much better if we standardized all these different ways of saying "I created the file myself" and provided a localization based on the standardized value.

Yet other examples are parameters specifying languages or countries. "US" or "de" is much easier to localize than "United States" or "VSA" and "German" or "Deutsch".

We should use a bot to standardize values like that. Of course we have to be careful to make no errors (would be rather uncool, if we by accident changed the Mongolian phrase for "stole it from a random website" to "own work"...), but the benefit for localization would be enormous. --Slomox (talk) 02:24, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Collecting[edit]

I will start collecting:
Notes for replacement process:
  • we should do it case-insensitive, cause there can be much variation
  • if the strings end with a full stop, they should be replaced too
  • if the strings are enclosed in a language tag (for example "{{en|own work}}"), they should be replaced too (of course the language must match the string)
  • if there are several strings in the source parameter, in different languages (for example "own work<br/>eigene Arbeit"), separated by ",", ";", "/", "<br>", "<br/>", "<br />", "\n*" [list] or "\n:" [list]), they should be replaced too
  • Whitespaces, "'", """, "‹›", "«»", "„“", "‚‘" etc. should be stripped from the start and end of the parameter
  • some users use the style "LOCAL STRING (ENGLISH STRING)", this should be replaced too

Notes:

  • A list of files with one of those string as a substring of the source parameter would be very useful too, to process them manually.
  • And additionally a second list with files containing one of the strings outside the source parameter would be useful to check them.

If you are a native or competent speaker of any of the languages in the list, please have a look, whether it is true, that the text is synonymous to "own work". If there are spelling errors in the text, please do not correct them. Most of these texts where copied and pasted from existing pages on Commons. The misspelled texts should be replaced too. But if the correct spelling is missing from the list, you should add it. If there are common synonyms of "own work" in your language are missing from the lost, please add them too.

Collection of date formats[edit]

-> 2007-08-21

21 VIII 2007
21. [August|Aug.|Aug] 2007 (de)
21-08-2007 (at least, if one of both numbers is above 12)
[August|Aug.|Aug] 21[,] 2007
21-08-07 (?)
21/08/2007 (at least, if one of both numbers is above 12)
[Sep|Sept|Sep.|Sept.|September] 21th[,] 2007
21.08.2007
le 21 août 2007 (fr)
21/set/2007 (it)

-> 2007-08

[August|Aug.|Aug] 2007
08-2007
8-2007
08/2007
8/2007

-> {{season|2007|summer/winter/spring/fall}}

Summer/Winter/Spring/[Fall|Autumn] 2007 (en)
Sommer/Winter/[Frühjahr|Frühling]/Herbst 2007 (de)
Zomer/Winter/[Lente|voorjaar]/[najaar|herfst] 2007 (nl)
Лето/Зима/Весна/Осень 2007 (ru)
été/hiver/printemps/automne 2007 (fr)
Estate/Inverno/Primavera/Autunno (it)
Verano/Invierno/Primavera/Otoño (es)

-> {{century|19}}

19th century (en)
19. Jahrhundert (de)

-> {{decade|1960}}

1960s (en)
1960er (de)

Typing-aid templates[edit]

How should we handle templates like Template:Okina and Template:Bull? They are not necessary cause MediaWiki can handle those signs perfectly. They don't improve display and they don't ease the maintenance of content, so they fail the typical purposes of templates. But they ease the insertion of content, which calls for substing. Should we have a bot regularly substing all instances of these templates? And should we add documentation to the templates that they are supposed to be substed? (I personally would also accept to delete them completely and handle this with charinsert, but I don't know whether this could gain consensus.) --Slomox (talk) 20:57, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you're going to replace it, replace it with the unicode symbol. Multichill (talk) 17:43, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

lang templates[edit]

Whenever I put some of my translations into a lang template like Template:FAL/lang, I have to copy one line, put it in the right place and change the code two or three times to the code of my translation. It's a line like <!-- ar -->[[Template:XYZ/ar|{{#language:ar}}]] |. I created Template:Langlist to make this somewhat easier. With Langlist you just have to put your code at the right place in the list once. For example (Template:FAL/lang): {{Langlist|base=FAL|ar|ast|bg|ca|de|el|en|es|fr|ga|gl|hi|hu|it|ja|ko|ku|nl|pl|pt|ru|tr|uk|zh-hans|zh-hant}}. That's much easier and much less code than the current version (see source code of the template). A solution completely without the need to put any parameters exists under Template:Lang links. But that version needs much expensive parser functions (ifexist) and is thus not encouraged to use. Should we change lang templates to use Template:Langlist?

It's supposed to work with autotranslate and so it assumes, that the English version is under "XYZ/en" and not under the base name "XYZ". It won't work properly old style templates. (It wouldn't be too complicated to make it work with old templates if there is a need) --Slomox (talk) 15:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

{{subst:Lang links subst}} is easy. I changed it to understand old and new templates. We probably only have to add some languages. Multichill (talk) 17:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template category scheme[edit]

I'm not really active right now, but I thought I should point out the scheme I was working on. It's probably outdated by now, but you might find it useful. Cheers, Rocket000(talk) 04:35, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Request: Vorlagen für Benutzerdiskussionen, Überschriften[edit]

Hallo, ich stelle meine Anfrage mal hier auf Deutsch da ich von der Sache eh keine Ahnung habe und es mir auf englisch nicht leichter fällt. Seit einiger Zeit sind ein Großteil der Informationsvorlagen für Benutzer (z.B Template:Copyvionote auf das ich mich im Beispiel beziehen werde, Template:Image permission und die meißten anderen) auf autotranslate umgestellt, allerdings sehr stümperhaft: Die Vorlagen werden mit 

{{subst:copyvionote|image.jpg}} --~~~~

auf Benutzerseiten geklatscht, auf einer leeren Seite resultiert das einzig in folgender Zeile: 

{{Autotranslate|1=Image:file.jpg|base=Copyvionote}} --~~~~

mehr nicht. Schön die Sache mit dem Autotranslate, schöner wäre aber 

== [[:File:file.jpg]] ==
{{Autotranslate|1=Image:file.jpg|base=Copyvionote}} --~~~~

also mit Überschrift. Die Umsetzung beim Umstellen einer Vorlage von alt auf autotranslate wäre ganz einfach gewesen: Die Überschrift muss direkt aus dem ge"subst"eten template kommen damit sie anschließend hart auf der Seite steht und nicht aus dem /layout template wie es jetzt leider bei allen Vorlagen ist. Auf eine Sprachlich individuelle Überschrifft hätte der Einfachheit halber verzichtet werden müssen oder sie hätte seperat mit einem autotranslate versehen werden müssen. Die Folge: viele 1000 Benutzerseiten sind mit den Templates ohne Überschrift zugemüllt, die Diskussionsseiten sind selbst für erfahrene Benutzer unübersichtlich, die Sektionen sind nicht einzeln editierbar. Untragbar wie ich finde, aber nicht mehr rückgängig zu machen.

Ich dachte, ich könnte es vielleicht selber reparieren und habe Benutzer:Umherirrender gefragt, Resultat war ein Lösungsvorschlag den ich nicht umsetzen kann: Allen {{Autotranslate|1=Image:file.jpg|...}} müsste per Bot eine Überschrift ==[[:File:file.jpg]]== gegeben werden, dannach könnte die Überschrift aus dem /layout template entfernt und direkt in das basetemplate eingefügt werden. Gibt es keine einfachere Lösung mit der die nun leider schon getätigten Einbindungen (zu sehen sind diese unter What links here im Template:Copyvionote/layout) ihre weich geschriebene Überschritft behalten und für neue Einbindungen eine harte Überschrift auf die Benutzerseiten kommt? Viele Grüße, --Martin H. (talk) 17:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Die Anfrage wäre vermutlich besser auf Commons talk:Template i18n aufgehoben, wo ich übrigens dasselbe Problem schon unter Commons talk:Template i18n#I18n of message templates angesprochen habe. Ich stimme dir zu, dass eine Änderung hier dringend notwendig ist, aber leider habe ich im Moment nicht die Zeit dazu. Die bisher eingebundenen Vorlagen würde ich einfach so lassen. Grüße, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 17:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hallo Chrisi, danke für die Antwort und den Hinweis. Ja, leider ist bisher noch nichts passiert, im Gegenteil: Das Template copyvionote wurde erst im Januar umgesetzt und der html-Trick mit <h2> wird jetzt fleißig angewendet. Zu deinem Vorschlag die eingebundenen Vorlagen einfach so zu lassen: Wäre mit der einfachen Änderung wie ich sie genannt habe eine schnelle Sache, die seit der Umstellung getätigten Einbindungen würden allerdings entstellt werden da sie keine Überschrift mehr hätten. Trotzdem machen? --Martin H. (talk) 18:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nach BK: Nein, einen anderen Weg gibt es wohl nicht. Ich hab jetzt Template:Copyvionote entsprechend geändert. Wird erstmal einige Einbindungen ganz ohne Überschrift erscheinen lassen, aber abwarten hilft ja auch nichts. Werden ja bloß immer noch mehr falsche Einbindungen werden. Wenn ich nicht revertiert werde, werde ich auch die anderen Vorlagen entsprechend ändern. Und dann muss man anschließend die Einbindungen ohne Überschrift ändern. Denke schon, dass das besser ist. --Slomox (talk) 18:12, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Danke Slomox für den Mut :) Ich denke, bei den sichtbar umrandeten Templates ist das so problemlos möglich, also auch {{Idw}}, unansehlich wird es bei den Templates {{Image permission}}, {{Image source}}, {{Project scope}} und einigen mehr die nur aus Text bestehen. --Martin H. (talk) 18:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Bei {{Idw}} hast du kein {{Idw/heading}} angelegt. Das ist das Template, das durch das Autotranslate in der Überschrift aufgerufen wird. Rein kommt da das, was du bei /layout aus der Überschrft rausgenommen hast. Hab ich jetzt korrigiert.
Bei den unumrandeten Vorlagen kann man ja gegebenfalls Ränder zufügen. Ein zentrales Design für solche halbautomatischen Nachrichten kann ja sowieso nicht schaden, oder? --Slomox (talk) 19:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, danke vielmals. Zum Verständnis: das {{Idw/heading}} ist die Vorlage auf die die Anzeige zurückfällt wenn keine Sprachversion angelegt ist? Mir ist auch noch aufgefallen, dass das Script welches durch den "Nominate for deletion" Knopf ausgelöst wird das {{Idw}} nicht substituiert, besichtigen kann man das in der Problemsammlung User talk:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske). Das kann man doch sicher per Bot berichtigen.
Zu den Rändern: Ja, wäre eine gute Lösung. Ich schlage vor die gleiche Umrandung zu nehmen wie in den Vorlagen die auf den Bildbeschreibungen verwendet werden, also {{Image permission}} = {{No permission since}}. --Martin H. (talk) 19:42, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
das {{Idw/heading}} ist die Vorlage auf die die Anzeige zurückfällt wenn keine Sprachversion angelegt ist? Mh, nein. Um genau zu sein, hab ich Unsinn erzählt. Natürlich muss man {{Idw/heading/en}} etc. anlegen. Der Default ist "/en". Du hast es also im Grunde vollkommen richtig gemacht. Der Grund warum ich dachte, dass du etwas falsch gemacht hast, war, dass die Überschrift falsch angezeigt wurde. Als ich dann nachgucken wollte, warum das passiert, hab ich die falsche Adresse eingegeben (eben {{Idw/heading}}) und natürlich nichts gefunden. Da dachte ich, dass das der Fehler sei. Und als ich zur Hauptvorlage zurückgegangen war, funktionierte die Überschrift dann korrekt (was aber nicht an meinem Edit lag, sondern daran, dass du zwischenzeitlich die richtige Vorlage repariert hattest). Vergiss also, was ich gesagt hab ;-) --Slomox (talk) 20:24, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
User:Lupo hat den Skript-Text für den Löschknopf in der Toolbox berichtigt so dass {{Idw}} jetzt korrekt eingebunden wird. Jetzt wo ich dank des Musters das du mir mit copyvionote gegeben hast weiß wie es geht werde ich mir die Tage mal nld/npd/nsd anschauen wegen Rahmen einfügen und Korrektur der Überschrift. --Martin H. (talk) 17:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In Category:Translated user templates warte noch ne Menge ähnliche Vorlagen auf ebendiese Änderung. Es wäre vielleicht gut, wenn du das auch auf Commons talk:Templat i18n ansprechen könntest, sodass man sich bei zukünftigen Übersetzungen die Nacharbeit sparen kann. Grüße, -- ChrisiPK (Talk|Contribs) 18:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hab ich gemacht, Commons_talk:Template_i18n#Headlines_in_User_templates. --Martin H. (talk) 20:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Push for evey template categorized[edit]

I'm going to get my bot up and running again categorizing all those POTD/MOTD templates where I left off. That will help make Special:Uncategorizedtemplates useful again. The others, that take a human to categorize, I'm thinking of putting in Category:Uncategorized templates. Good idea? Or should I leave them actually uncategorized? Personally, I like to clear out Special:Uncategorizedtemplates even if they still aren't really categorized yet. We can keep an eye on new templates that way. It also makes it easier to add a category if the <noinclude>s are already there. Rocket000(talk) 19:06, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Potd templates[edit]

I don't like the size of Special:UncategorizedTemplates either. Let's first start with breaking out all the potd templates. Wouldn't it be nice to have all potd templates (like Template:Potd/2008-10-10 (nl)) tagged with 
{{POTD category template better name needed|language|year|month|day}}
? This would place the template in the relevant language and date category. We could even use it to clean out Category:Potd templates, that category is way to big. Any suggestions on the name of the template? Or does it already exist somewhere? As for the other templates. Let's first break out the easy stuff and when than tag all filex with {{subst:unc}}. Multichill (talk) 19:53, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Creating a template like that sounds good. But I too don't know a good name. But the name shouldn't contain the word "category". The template could be used to display a info text too. Perhaps just {{POTD page}}? The POTD text should be a parameter of that template, I'd say. Adds some more flexibility. On inclusion just the plain text will be output by the template, while the unincluded page will show additional info and the categories. Then the page would look like this (for Template:Potd/2008-10-10 (nl)):
{{POTD page|De [[:nl:snuitkevers|snuitkever]]soort ''Phyllobius calcaratus''.|nl|2008|10|10}}
--Slomox (talk) 21:46, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
See {{Potd description}}. I will add it to Template:Potd/2008-10-10 (nl). Multichill (talk) 21:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, 32,583 is kinda a lot for one category, hehe. Imagine how Special:UncategorizedTemplates was before this category existed. I'm surprised you can still see the end of it (i.e. under 5000). It seems some POTD template creators caught on (they make so damn many!). However, before I left I had it down to one page (~400). That was workable and I think it will be easy to get to again. When I first started moving the bulk of it to Category:Potd templates my main goal was clearing up the Special page and I wasn't thinking about subcategorizing. I'm not sure how useful it would be to sort them by language and date, but for the sake of organization I'm not against it. Who knows, maybe it will be useful. I still see new translations pop up for POTDs that were years ago (I guess it's because they continue to function as the image's description after it leaves the main page). I just looked at {{Potd description}}, I don't know if making users do all that will work. Why not just pull the info from the title? Rocket000(talk) 21:57, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Or were you planning on just having a bot keep up with adding the template? Rocket000(talk) 21:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Users? No way, this is a bot job. Almost have the code finished and so i'm almost ready to run. Multichill (talk) 22:01, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, nevermind. I forgot how they were named (not as subpages). Well, if you got this coded up already I'll let you handle it. :) Rocket000(talk) 22:11, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just some simple search and replace. Multichill (talk) 22:31, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just made my own try on a template (unaware of yours). See {{POTD page}}. I'm all for including the text as parameter. It's just more flexible (and has no disadvantages). --Slomox (talk) 22:09, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only thing i can think of is hitting an include limit because this template is used a lot of times at a single page. Multichill (talk) 22:31, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
One disadvantage is that pages like COM:POTD, which already includes a lot of code, will have to include the code from the new template (multiple times, for each day of the month for each language). With Multichills template in noinclude tags this template will not be included on such pages. COM:POTD already reached the include limit before and had to be simplified. I see no need to complicate things again (even if template handling has been improved in MediaWiki software). Is there anything specific that the template would need the text for? /Ö 22:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also Special:WantedTemplates is useless because of MOTD/POTD, maybe this can be fixed also? Thanks, --Martin H. (talk) 22:44, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, there's no limit on the number of template inclusions. Just a limit on expensive parser functions and the post-expand limit. The post-expand limit is not affected, cause the size of the expanded template is the same. There should be no problems from a performance point of view.
There are no "must have" reasons to include the text as parameter, but as I said, it adds flexibility. You could add language tagging in the form of "<span lang="xx"> ... </span>" for example. Or any other type of markup. It's just more organized and flexible. And it'll save us from having all those ugly noincludes in the templates...
@Martin H.: That would call for using "ifexist:" on COM:POTD. But ifexist is an expensive parserfunction and thus the page will hit the limit. So that won't be possible. --Slomox (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can present no good reasons why including the text as parameter would be a good thing. But Commons suffers from many problems that were created by building structures based on solutions not looking to the future. Many people create solutions that "do their job" _now_ but without caring about whether that solution will also work well with future developments. They just think for the moment.
A user wants to write down a text in red. But instead of creating a template, that takes the color as parameter and thus allows to use any color, he creates a template that makes red text, and only red text. That does the job for him, but is not that useful when another user wants a violet text.
And that's what I want to avoid: That tomorrow we slap our forehead, saying "Why didn't we do it right right from the start". --Slomox (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In my defense, I created a few color templates because it made the code simpler when documenting templates, for which I made them for. I was fully aware of things like {{color}} but saw little benefit using it. IMO, typing out {{color|color|text}} is not much better than using a <span> tag directly. If you're going to make a shortcut, make it as short as possible. Rocket000(talk) 00:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I hope I didn't disgruntle you with that example. ;-) In my wiki lifetime I have created many templates that could have been so much more useful if I only had spent some more thoughts before implementing it. To err is human... --Slomox (talk) 12:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I started running. We'll just see if the wiki explodes. We could always use onlyinclude when we hit a parser limit. {{Potd page}} and {{Potd category header}} need to be improved. Adding links (yesterday? tomorrow? month page? etc etc) and that sort of things. I'll split this topic up into several topics. Multichill (talk) 09:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I guess, if the wiki explodes, I have to run fast ;-) --Slomox (talk) 12:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Subpages[edit]

When i browse the Special:UncategorizedTemplates i see several subpages. This can probably be categorized quite easy:

I just did a query. We have 53394 templates. When i filter out the subpages (all templates containing a / ) we have 9164 main templates. Multichill (talk) 09:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, thanks for all that work! This is going a lot faster than I thought. Rocket000(talk) 14:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
{{Translated tag}} purposely doesn't work (as far as auto-categorizing) without at least the first parameter (cleanup, license, etc.). This was done for backward compatibility, but maybe it's time to remove that check. Rocket000(talk) 14:58, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Please change the template so that it also adds some category when it's tagged without the first parameter. Makes cleanup easier. Multichill (talk) 21:17, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fallback and switch[edit]

Some translation templates with short strings like {{Own}} use {{#switch: {{int:lang}} | ... }}. Does anybody have an idea how this can be altered, so that the user will see the correct fallback language if his language is not yet supported?

'als' for example is not yet supported by {{Own}}. An 'als' user will see the English default message, although 'de' is defined as fallback for 'als' in {{Fallback}}. Is there any way to show the 'de' string instead?

I guess, it could be done if we create a new template with all supported languages as parameters: {{#switch: {{foo|af|an|ar|ast|...}} | ... }}. This template could then check {{int:lang}} against every single parameter and could call {{Fallback}} if {{int:lang}} is not among them. But I would rather like a solution without a redundant list of the language codes... --Slomox (talk) 13:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget the nasty template loops. Multichill (talk) 13:13, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
At which point would a template loop occur? My hypothetical {{foo|af|an|ar|ast|...}} would not call any templates except {{Fallback}}. Or did you mean something else? --Slomox (talk) 13:28, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't actually that problematic as I thought ;-) I created {{LangSwitch}}. Should provide proper fallback for switch lists. --Slomox (talk) 16:18, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

formatnum[edit]

I've now created a template ({{Formatnum}}), that allows to format a number in whatever language format. See test cases at User:Slomox/test1. This is especially useful for languages like Hindi or Farsi which use digits completely different from the Western ones. But it is of course useful too for Western languages with differences in punctuation.

It would of course be much much better, if {{formatnum: ... }} would support this natively, but it doesn't. And when I suggested it, the answer was: won't implement, caching issues etc. pp. (this argument doesn't pay regard to Commons' needs, but that's, what I got told) So here it is as a template. What do you think about it?

It supports numbers from 1018 to 10-12, but has some issues with numbers that occupy a wide floating point number range. {{formatnum|12345678912345678.0456}} for example is incorrectly rendered as 1.2345678912346E16. But those are issues with the internal handling of floating point number in the Mediawiki code. They occur in all mathematical functions on our projects. --Slomox (talk) 15:57, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I added Farsi support to {{Date}} and it seems to work fine for dates. (Very weird experience to browse Commons with rtl. [But must also be very weird to browse Commons as a speaker of Farsi, cause the strings are all rtl, but the whole site layout is ltr. That really needs to be fixed.])--Slomox (talk) 20:45, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

COM:TS[edit]

I'm just informing you guys...if people are even active here, that proposal to adopt Ambox and such on Commons is still up in the air. ViperSnake151 (talk) 21:31, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We're active (well, I am), but that's a huge proposal. We're having trouble just getting started with standardizing the license templates (or even {{Assessments}}). There's also a lot of autotranslation work to be done yet. Honestly, I don't think we're ready for total standardization yet. We need to focus on certain areas first. For example, if we already had some meta templates that all licenses used, changing their style would be as simple as changing one template's style (yes we have layout templates but those won't work since they're only some html styling). All that is proposed right now is cosmetic changes, but we have deeper fundamental standardization needs that we have to address first or the proposed standardization would half-assed and forever incomplete. And incomplete standardization is not really standardization at all. I understand how you feel with Commons lack of interest in these matters (which may be a good thing if our interest is monopolized by the content—the important part). I've proposed similar (but smaller) things like {{Cc-meta}}, {{Meta-cleanup}}, and {{Header}}, and progress has been slow. I've also spent much time implementing things like {{Translated tag}}, {{Template category}}, {{Global maintenance category}}, etc. But these minor forms of standardization are way more achievable than everything all at once. I think everyone supports template standardization to some degree; the lack of response may be less of "who cares?" and more of "I support, but who's going to do all the work?". I'm not sure you realize how big of a challenge this would be. Think of all the license templates, all the custom user templates (conviencing them to give up their personal templates would be quite the challenge itself), complex OTRS/Flickr tags that bots need to be certain way, tools and scripts that would need to be updated to recognize the new templates, all the translations... We need to start small. Maybe a namespace like category or commons to start with. I'd be willing to invest time in something like that—something a little more feasible. Rocket000 (talk) 22:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm active too, but I'm a bit in a "don't discuss too much" mode. The easiest way to kill a good idea is to discuss it to death.
Yea, I would favor a big leap too. We need layout standardization like mbox provides it, we need license integration like {{Cc-meta}} provides it, we need better separation of license and source templates and need to cut the user license jungle. We need much better documentation, we need a _completely_ revamped categorization system. To make it short, we have to change almost everything. Commons is a super-mess.
My advice: Don't seek community consensus. Don't discuss too much. Community consensus is utopic. The community is too big and opinions too diverse to make consensus possible. Somebody will always be against it. If you go to the village pump and ask "what do you think about {{Cc-meta}}?" they will have objections.
{{Cc-meta}} is obviously a good idea. There's no good reason to have all those different CC sub-licenses. But people will still have objections. The right way would be: just go ahead and change the templates. Don't ask anybody, just implement it. If you are careful and your edits don't "damage" anything, you have a good chance that it will be accepted.
The same is true for a standard layout. There's no reasonable reason to have "wild" layout. Reason is on your side. The enemy is particularism, the unwill of users to bear change. But if you are careful and try to be non-intrusive it's possible to introduce a standardized layout. The important thing: You have lost, if there's a "mob" against you. --Slomox (talk) 23:52, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I guess by "proposals" I meant I was more or less inviting others to help out with it and provide feedback/ideas, not so much looking for approval for me to do something. And major template projects like this aren't a one-man job, so support is needed in that sense. Rocket000 (talk) 10:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

3 templates for exactly the same thing[edit]

I just came across the 3 templates {{UsernameBlocked}}, {{UsernameHardBlocked}} and {{Inappropriate username}}. After checking them, I've seen that they're all saying more or less the same ting. However, {{Inappropriate username}} looks most professional and has the most translations. I'd merge them into {{Inappropriate username}}, but I first wanted to hear what you think of this. Thank you for your help. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They should definitely be merged. --Slomox (talk) 19:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It seems we have more templates to block username than blocked usernames. I like the {{Inappropriate username}} best too. --Jarekt (talk) 21:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Template:UsernameBlocked is even wrong regarding the handeling of non-latin writing in usernames. Of course we have usernames in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and many other languages. This template should go. {{UsernameHardBlocked}} is redundant to the {{Inappropriate username}}. The latter serves the purpose, merge per Slomox and Jarekt, maybe adding a link to Commons:Username policy? --Martin H. (talk) 23:02, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

✓ Done, merged them. Redirected Template:UsernameBlocked, Template:UsernameHardBlocked and all redirects to this templates to Template:Inappropriate username, checked inclusions and the helppages like Commons:Message templates or COM:EIC and projects like Commons:Template i18n/User templates. --Martin H. (talk)

Another example, I just found: {{Must be substituted}} and {{Should be substituted}}. Do we really need both? I don't know whether the difference between "must" and "should" is intentional, but they seem rather redundant to me. --Slomox (talk) 10:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, those mean exactly what they say. "Must" as in order to get to work right, and should as ones that normally are, like user messages, but don't have to be. I made them separate instead of adding a switch so that the "must" ones can be tracked. Unsubst'd templates can then be subst by a bot or something. Rocket000 (talk) 09:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template name[edit]

Ok, this thing doesn't really matter that much, but I thought it's better to ask for some advice here. I pan to merge {{Main gallery}} and {{Main}} (I hadn't noticed that {{Main}} existed when I moved the one template). I was just wondering as how to name it. Main gallery would be more specific, but Main is probably used more often and will probably used a lot from people who come from en.wikipedia and aren't that involded in Commons. I'd use main gallery as the template name, since it's more specific, but using Main also wouldn't kill me. Let me know what you think. --The Evil IP address (talk) 16:10, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

how about keeping both with a redirect? --Jarekt (talk) 17:10, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ether one is fine; redirect the other. Just not {{Main article}} please. :) Rocket000 (talk) 17:14, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
✓ Done, took "main gallery", using {{Main}} or {{Main article}} still possible as they redirect to this template. --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:48, 13 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template expert needed[edit]

I failed with this edit request. Maybe someone can do it better. --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:20, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed --Jarekt (talk) 15:56, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

{{Information field}} in other_fields parameter of {{Information}}[edit]

Hello! I failed using {{Information field}} in conjuction with the {{Information}} other_fields parameter. I have tried specifing my problem more detailed on the template's discussion page. I would appreciate if someone could have a look at this issue. Thanks in advance! Greetings, --Sponk (talk) 10:59, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have finally received an answer to my problem from  User:✓ – my thanks to him! Anyone who's also interested in a solution to this issue will find a workaround on the {{Information field}} template's discussion page. Greetings, --Sponk (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed DieBuche has fixed the {{Information field}} template code. A workaround is no longer needed. Thanks a lot! Greetings, --Sponk (talk) 17:10, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for some good regexes[edit]

I working on building a set of general maintenance and localization regexes for my bot to preform whenever it's doing something else (like changing a category). There's so many variations out there to localise I thought it would be better to ask if anyone already has some they use. I'm especially looking for a good date one. Rocket000 (talk) 13:29, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FYI[edit]

Per conversation I've had with Multichill, I've started up Commons:WikiProject Templates/Testing. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Requesting a New Template[edit]

I am not sure if this is the place to post this request but, I want to request a template that combines {{Box-shadow}} and {{Border-radius}}. I already have made a thing that combines them both see my sandbox page User:Clarkcj12/Sandbox as you can see. With both of them combined it can make a nice impression, and also nice looking as it makes them both stand out. Tell me what you think. And let me know if there would be a problem with creating a template for that. --Clarkcj12 (talk) 20:38, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

<time> in templates[edit]

I've made a change to the sandboxed version of the Date template in order to add the new HTML 5 tag time to it. This change is described in the talk page of the template. Can someone have a look to it, please? Tpt (talk) 20:06, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Navbox needs repair[edit]

A template is not working properly, but I don'know what it is ({{Places by decade}}?). It is used in Category:1800s paintings from Italy among others. Cann't navigate trough the decades in the second part called "Navigation paintings from Italy". In the end, the output is Category:Navbox-d pages with problems which is not shown as a category but in plain text. Could someone please fix it? Thanks, --Mattes (talk) 09:25, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Width[edit]

I am wondering that a given width is not always the same. With e.g. width=32em boxes have different lengths

W3CiThe source code of this SVG is invalid.
 
W3C-validity not checked.
 
This image was created with Inkscape .
The same with e.g. width=55%
W3CiThe source code of this SVG is invalid.
 
W3C-validity not checked.
 
This image was created with Inkscape .

Is there a possibility to set the width of a box independent of its layout attributes? sarang♥사랑 11:11, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Different languages redirects[edit]

How about this? Example for VVA. Could this be hard to use them machine-readable, because it can get out of hand uncontrollably!? ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?) 15:33, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Question for experts[edit]

I tried to simplify things with the unified template documentation {{SVG created with/doc}} which can be used by more than 25 templates, instead of having a quite similar documentation in every case. The {{TemplateBox}} is very esoteric, using a module. Some exceptions I could solve with parameters. But one problem still exists: all my efforts failed to activate somehow the facultativ parameter IMPORTANT= which is in exclusiv use of e.g. {{Inkscape}} or {{SVG-edit}}; only there it should be the 4th parameter, between errors= and more=.
Does somebody know how to do it? sarang♥사랑 12:56, 8 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Localization problem Autotranslate per parameter[edit]

Template:Project Heraldry use an autotranslate technique for the head line on the template (which is ok) and an very uncommon translation technique with parameters, which is only working if all languages are always present in the transclusion (so fallback is not available). Has someone an idea or solution to fix (perhaps also a complete other method, what I think). ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?)  16:13, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

✓ Done with this (this template has the potential of 500 inclusions). ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?)  21:13, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Establishments in Russia by century[edit]

This template is making categories with numbers which are always ending with "th" also when there is a 1, 2 or 3 as last cipher in the number. Can somebody pls fix that. Thx.--Sanandros (talk) 21:21, 3 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Sanandros: If you change the category format to "XX-century establishments in Russia" I think you could use Template:Subject by century without a problem. - Themightyquill (talk) 21:59, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Themightyquill: The question is if the Russian project wants to have cats like this.--Sanandros (talk) 12:29, 21 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Broken Templates "by year"[edit]

Hi all, I´ve thrown some categories into Category:Template repair needed as they use templates that seem to be broken. I regret that I don´t have any knowledge about fixing templates, so I´d appreciate if someone could look at them. Thanks, --Rudolph Buch (talk) 11:08, 18 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Language converter change for external links[edit]

Hello!

LanguageConverter (LC), used to switch from one language to an other on wikis where multiple scripts are used, has a problem: links using LanguageConverter with a wrong syntax do not show up properly on Special:LinkSearch. Some templates on Commons may use that system now or in the future, that's why I'm informing you about that change.

If you want to use LC for an external link, a new syntax must be used:

Old syntax (examples for Chinese languages): http://-{zh-cn:foo.com; zh-hk:bar.com; zh-tw:baz.com}-

New syntax: -{zh-cn: http://foo.com ; zh-hk: http://bar.com ; zh-tw:http://baz.com }-

The space before }- is really important.

If you use the old syntax, links will break.

Please spread the word and update your local documentation! If you have any question, please ping me or BWolff.

Thanks, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, in the context of commons, this only applies to pages using the Translate extension, when the language is a language supporting language converter (Like zh). It does not apply to "normal" (non-translate extension) templates. Bawolff (talk) 17:41, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New template request[edit]

Hello! In addition to {{PD-Turkey}} we need {{PD-TurkeyGov}}. Any takers? --Hedwig in Washington (mail?) 19:47, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Subject by decade?[edit]

I just asked at Template_talk:Subject_by_century#Subject_by_decade.3F, but I thought I'd ask here as well. There are thousands of categories using Template:Subject by century but we have no equivalent for the many many "by decade" categories. If there's an efficient way to code that, it would be really helpful. - Themightyquill (talk) 19:55, 16 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Templates not working[edit]

Hey there!

I noticed that Template:States of Germany and Template:Seasons are not working properly (there are no links when the template is used). Can someone help? Cookies4ever (talk) 22:36, 17 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

this has been fixed recently. category pages may need to be purged. --Te750iv (talk) 00:11, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Template:See also is broken. Need help[edit]

Template:See also is broken. See Template talk:See also.

The problem has been nailed down more. It is not just colons in front of category names that cause problems.

Even without colons in front of category names, the template is not outputting correctly. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ask for a change related to {{Palissy}}[edit]

Hi,

I'd like to change the url used by this template. the current url (http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/palissy_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIELD_1=REF&VALUE_1=) is out-of-date. It should be replaced by this one: https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/palissy/

I feel a bit lost with the LUA code. If someone can explain me how I can do this (small) change?

Thanks by advance. ----Benoît (d) 16:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Benoît Prieur: It looks like the https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/palissy/ link is also dead now. Do you happen to know of another one? --Adamant1 (talk) 22:52, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Template or some general comment in many templates?[edit]

Read/See first this page and the text therein. Furthermore the text says about svg that there are 18 errors, but that is not the issue here beneath.

I am not familiar with the items here. I just want to signal that this template needs a grammatical edit in the Dutch version.

You can read:

In het geval dat deze afbeelding de drempel van originaliteit zou passeren staat de auteursrechthouder staat het gebruik van deze afbeelding toe met de volgende voorwaarden:

The word "staat" is used 2 times and should only be used once. I cannot edit this text, because I don't see the itinerary to do so:

It should be:

  • In het geval dat deze afbeelding de drempel van originaliteit zou passeren staat de auteursrechthouder staat het gebruik van deze afbeelding toe met de volgende voorwaarden:

OR (much better because "in het geval (dat)" is way too formal an old conjunction)

  • Als deze afbeelding de drempel van originaliteit overschrijdt staat de auteursrechthouder het gebruik van deze afbeelding toe met de volgende voorwaarden:

So, let someone of the Wiki-community understand this message (and Dutch as a language) and correct the sentence.

Dartelaar [geef een gil!] 14:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dartelaar (talk • contribs) 14:58, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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