Talk:2010 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier

Use of Template:Country data Ireland cricket team

About two days ago, on 24 March 2014, after spending many hours over several days looking for some other way of doing this, I created Template:Country data Ireland Cricket Team, briefly indicating that it was being created so as to be able to link to Ireland cricket team, and I then used it as a flagicon for Irish cricketers on several pages (most of which were wrongly using the Republic of Ireland flagicon, incidentally), in each case explaining "using new template that has flagicon linking to Ireland Cricket Team rather than Ireland (and uses Ireland cricket flag)". I also soon realised that for consistency it would have been better to have created Template:Country data Ireland cricket team as lower case 'cricket team' is being used in the linked article and in the cr template, but I was unsuccessful in my attempt to correct this at the time.

All my edits were promply changed by User:Andrwsc (an admin with a somewhat intimidating 8684 page deletions currently mentioned on his user page), with the explanation "correct flag template usage", with the result that they now link to the article about the island of Ireland instead of to the Ireland cricket team. He then deleted my template with the explanation "deleted page Template:Country data Ireland Cricket Team ‎(T3: Unused, redundant template: use Template:cr or use cricket variant with Template:Country data Ireland).".

T3 currently says:

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T3. Duplication and hardcoded instances Shortcut: WP:T3 Templates that are substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template, may be deleted after being tagged for seven days. ..... For any templates that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Templates for discussion.

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I will soon be creating Template:Country data Ireland cricket team (with lower case 'cricket team'), partly to avoid wasting time discussing the wrong (upper case Cricket Team) template, and I will then be making the changes to one player at two places in one article, initially for illustrative purposes and so as to be able to have the discussion there if my template gets deleted again as I fear it will be. I plan to change Alex Cusack in the 2010_ICC_World_Twenty20_Qualifier infobox and in its 2010_ICC_World_Twenty20_Qualifier#Statistics table, while initially leaving Niall O'Brien (and William Porterfield, etc) unchanged to facilitate comparisons in both tables and infoboxes. If nobody objects after a few days I plan to make the remaining changes in this and other articles if I still have the time and inclination, or perhaps sooner if people indicate support for doing it sooner (though I do worry that this will just be a time-wasting two-person no-consensus disagreement).

My objections to having my changes undone are as follows:

• 1) It is NOT "correct flag usage". The flag is the flag of the Ireland cricket team. It is NOT the flag of the island of Ireland, which currently has no agreed flag, for various long, tragic, and lethal reasons.
• 2) When icons of other countries are linked to the country rather than the team, at least it is technically correct (though not self-evidently sensible) usage in the sense that it is the correct flag of the country.
• 3) When, as with West Indies, the flag is not the flag of a country, the flagicon (at least in the example of player Sunil Narine in this table) links to West Indies Cricket Board and quite rightly and sensibly does NOT link to the article about the West Indies region. However, on reflection, linking to West Indies Cricket Board (rather than to the West Indies cricket team, as the cr template sensibly does) does not seem all that sensible either, as least not for players (rather than officials), as in the afore-mentioned Sunil Narine example, being the equivalent of linking to Cricket Ireland. Still, given the choice, linking to Cricket Ireland would still make more sense than linking to the island of Ireland (incidentally, there is also no clear reason why we can't have separate templates for officials and players).
• 4) The Template deletion message suggests I might use Template Cr. I wasted much time trying to do so, but unfortunately it currently has no flagicon version. Presumably it would take much time and effort to get this, and quite likely we would be correctly told that this is extremely low priority as it's a waste of limited computer programmer resources, since we can already do it in the way I have just done. Quite likely that is the perfectly understandable reason why there is currently no flagicon version. (If in fact there is a way of doing what I want with this Template, it is seemingly not documented).
• 5) I expect others have wasted time for the same reason that I have, and will continue to do so as long as such useful templates keep getting summarily deleted on incorrect grounds, both in the case of Irish cricket and other countries and other sports (I probably would next be intending to create a similar Template so the Ireland rugby team flagicon can correctly link to its article instead of incorrectly linking to the island of Ireland).
• 6) The Template deletion message suggests I might alternatively use the cricket variant with Template:Country data Ireland, which is what was used when changing my edits (and was what I had to use before I created the new template). But, as my original edits had briefly but repeatedly tried to explain ("using new template that has flagicon linking to Ireland Cricket Team rather than Ireland (and uses Ireland cricket flag)"), this also meant linking to the island, and giving it an incorrect flag, rather than correctly linking to the team, as I had already wasted much time finding out for myself. (Once again, if in fact there is a way of doing what I want with this Template, it is seemingly not documented).
• 7) We are currently having the absurdly inconsistent situation imposed on us whereby if there is room for the country's name we invariably and very sensibly link to the team, but we are not allowed link to the team if there is only room for an icon. Besides wasting editors' time on pointless experiments as already mentioned in item 5 above, this is presumably an awful time-wasting nuisance for ordinary readers as well.
• 8) Ireland is an island where the use of flags still causes frequent riots in Northern Ireland, where in a sense people were killing each other over flags in fairly large numbers until the recent Peace Process, where they arguably still do sometimes kill each other over them (albeit fortunately in greatly reduced numbers), and where unfortunately they may do so again in large numbers at some future date. Repeatedly unnecessarily using the wrong flag for the island of Ireland, as we are currently being unnecessarily forced to do, may well be seen by some as an insult to Ireland and might well in rare instances be the 'straw that breaks the camel's back' and completely unnecessarily pushes somebody in the direction of becoming a dissident IRA terrorist (I can't know how small that risk is, but it is logically greater than zero, and that makes it a completely unnecessary non-zero risk of terrorism).
• 9) It may also eventually be unfairly and completely unnecessarily damaging to Irish Cricket (and Irish Rugby, etc) through 'guilt by association' if they get perceived as being associated with alleged 'repeated unnecessary insults to the island of Ireland', or as somehow failing to adequately object to these 'insults made in their name', etc... Some Irish people probably still hate cricket as a 'foreign/British/English' game - all such games used to be seen by many as vaguely unpatriotic (and 'quintessentially English' cricket perhaps even more so than the others), and some presumably still see them that way, and I don't think Wikipedia should be doing anything that might encourage a growth in the numbers of such people.
• 10) The Template deletion message described the Template as 'redundant'. Reasons 1 to 9 above all show that it was not redundant.
• 11) The Template deletion message described the Template as 'unused', but it was only 'unused' because all previous instances of its use had just been replaced by an incorrect and unsatisfactory replacement (as already explained in reasons 1 to 9 above).
• 12) The Template deletion message justifies itself by citing T3. But the template was not a "hardcoded instance of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template", since the same functionality is not provided, as it links to a different article.
• 13) T3 also mentions "Templates that are substantial duplications of another template". I suppose one could just about try to argue that it is an instance of this, if one wishes to make the subjective claim that objections 1 to 9 above are all 'insubstantial'. Such an argument would leave me decidedly unconvinced, and I doubt if I'd be the only person unconvinced.
• 14) T3 says such templates "may be deleted after being tagged for seven days." I do not know why it was deleted without tagging after only a few hours, so I don't know whether the new template will suffer the same fate.

I am surprised and somewhat disturbed by just how many objections this issue has raised for me, and how much further time it is causing me to seemingly have to waste. Tlhslobus (talk) 20:29, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Note: after initial problems, template now seems to be working and initial illustrative changes to Alan Cusack's flagicon have now been made, as originally explained above.Tlhslobus (talk) 21:19, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Note that possible alternatives might include Template:Country data Ireland (cricket) or Template:Country data Ireland (cricket team) with an Ireland (cricket) or Ireland (cricket team) article that redirects to Ireland cricket team. The possible advantage might be that it arguably calls them Ireland 'somewhat better' than 'Ireland cricket team'. There may also be a similar requirement for an Ireland women's cricket team (I know that would definitely be needed for women's rugby). Of course ideally Template:Country data Ireland and indeed Template:Country data for other countries would have a variable parameter for its link field (there may even be one, but if so, I have so far failed to get it to work, and it's not documented, or perhaps not adequately documented) - or Template:cr would have a flagicon option - but presumably that all involves requests for computer programmers, etc, and I don't know how long it would take, and I suspect it might never get done, for reasons already mentioned in item 4 above.Tlhslobus (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

And I guess I should perhaps have remembered that just because it shouldn't have been deleted as something 'redundant' (which it wasn't), etc, doesn't necessarily mean that it hasn't been discussed before, so it is possible that I am unwittingly breaking some previously agreed consensus. If that appears to be the case I'd be interested in being told where the discussion and decision is recorded and archived, so that I can check for myself whether I am indeed breaking such a consensus, and, if so, whether I should just accept that and give up, or whether I might alternatively have any justification for trying to re-open the discussion. Tlhslobus (talk) 00:46, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I have once again deleted the country data template, but now that you have explained your rationale, I have created Template:cricon as a superior solution. As an alternative to Template:flagicon, it also produces just the icon image, but the link for the image is to the national team article instead of the country article. The problem with your solution is that it only addresses Ireland. You completely ignored every other country in this article and the few others where you had used your Ireland-only template. My solution is also scalable for other sports and womens' teams, should someone need those templates. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:02, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Andrwsc, absolutely brilliant - that seems to be the ideal solution, at least for cricket. Can anybody now create similar templates for other sports (eg: Template:ruicon for rugby union) by copying cricon with minor mods, or do you foresee any obvious problems with that? Tlhslobus (talk) 05:11, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

My testcases with the cricicon/sandbox tell me that new templates for women and other sports teams (as distinct from sporting organisations) are very easily made technically, plus I can easily follow your example in your contribs list to amend relevant /docs, but please let me know if you think there are any potential non-technical issues that I need to know about.Tlhslobus (talk) 23:19, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

No, it's very easy to create {{ruicon}}, {{fbicon}} etc. for rugby, football, and any other sport. Basically, the icon templates would all be almost identical to their respective "parent" templates ({{ru}}, {{fb}}, et. al.) except the second line of wiki markup would use flagicon/nt ("nt" for "national team") instead of flaglink/core. Compare {{cricon}} with {{cr}} to see that this is the only difference. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Also do you know whether there's an equivalent of 'altlink = national cricket team' for 'national cricket organisations' (and similarly for other sports) as this would seem more appropriate for officials (umpires, referees, etc) at both icon-with-name and icon-only levels, (presumably requiring crorg and crorgicon templates, and similarly for other sports)? Is there any place available altlinks are listed, and, if necessary, are new altlinks such as 'national cricket organisations' easily created (and similarly for other sports)? Tlhslobus (talk) 08:21, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Not really, and this would be a fairly substantive change to the flag template system. The {{cr}} et. al. templates all rely on the consistent naming of national team articles, as "Country national cricket team". (See Category:National cricket teams.) Any exceptions to the naming rule (e.g. Ireland cricket team) are handled by additional code in the respective country data template. For example, Template:Country data Ireland includes link alias-cricket = Ireland {{{mw|}}} {{{age|}}} cricket team to generate the article name. (including Ireland women's cricket team from {{crw}} and Ireland Under-19 cricket team from {{cr19}}). For most sports, there are few exceptions to the respective national team article naming style, so this system works well.

But for the cricket organisations, there is no consistent naming scheme. For the articles in Category:Cricket administration, "Country Cricket Association" appears to be the most common name, but there are more exceptions than the rule. Therefore, instead of adding code to dozens of country data templates, I think it is probably better to create a custom template specifically for this purpose. In fact, this has already been done for rugby union with the {{runion}} and {{runionflag}} templates, so these would be good starting points for you to see how this is done. Hope this helps — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Andrwsc, that was very helpful, and I hope to have a detailed look at the two templates you mentioned in due course (though unfortunately that may not be for some time, due to something that has just cropped up in my life outside Wikipedia). Regards. Tlhslobus (talk) 11:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

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