Template talk:Quotation

Latest comment: 6 years ago by SMcCandlish

From the history of the article:

  • (cur | prev) 19:30, 7 February 2016‎ SMcCandlish (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (28 bytes) (-22)‎ . . (retarget to the WP:MOS-expected template for block quotations, not a pull quote template that should virtually never be used in mainspace) (undo | thank)
  • (cur | prev) 09:43, 26 March 2017‎ PBS (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (50 bytes) (+22)‎ . . (Undid revision 703804607 by SMcCandlish I am not against the change but first run AWB so that all those pages using quotation point to the quote frame, probably all but certainly all outside article space) (undo)
  • (cur | prev) 02:29, 16 April 2017‎ SMcCandlish (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (28 bytes) (-22)‎ . . (This change has been perfectly stable for over a year; you're insta-injecting loads of abuse of pull quote templating by doing that. *You* run AWB? I don't use Windows.) (rollback: 1 edit | undo | thank)

I have no idea what you mean by "you're insta-injecting loads of abuse of pull quote templating by doing that" please explain.

This template was used in a lot of places in place of quote, particularly in the Wikipedia and talk name spaces. You made a bold edit that affects many pages, as far as I can tell you did not get a broad consensus for the change. It is up to you to fix such problems before making such changes. If you can not run AWB then why not ask for a bot to do the changes for you? -- PBS (talk) 16:25, 16 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

If you change a block quotation template to a pull quote template, it insta-injects pull quote formatting into every page using the template, including many articles. There are templates specifically for pull quotes, like {{Pull quote}}. If you want a pull quote on your user page or whatever, then use one of those. It's a terrible, terrible idea for a template with a name as generic as {{Quotation}} to not be a generic quotation template but an odd-ball template for decorative pull quotes, which are deprecated in articles. That is probably why so many articles were abusing pull quote formatting for block quotations. It's a huge mess we've only partially cleaned up. Please do not reverse the efforts to do so. My change was not bold, but pursuant to extensive discussion of pull quote deprecation at MoS, which has since then been reinforced by further consensus against pull quotes and their formatting being in articles; MoS no longer even suggests they are sometimes permissible. It's just not an encyclopedic style, but a magazine style. That is, insta-changing misused pull quote formatting into standard block quotation formatting is the desirable result. If you wish to champion the cause of pull quotes in WP articles, take it up at WT:MOS, and good luck. If you're just perturbed that formatting of quotes in some projectpages and talk page discussions has changed, who cares? WP:ENC. We are not here to prettify talk pages and preserve their exact prettification forever. If you like, you could fork the old code of the template to {{Talk pull quote}}, and install a namespace test in it so it can only be used in talk namespaces and the Wikipedia and User namespaces without either displaying an error or reverting to plain blockquote formatting. Or just use any of the still-extant pull quote templates (which also need namespace checks to keep them from being used in articles, but we'll get to it eventually). Creating a new pull quote template is probably a waste of time and attention.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  04:18, 2 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
@User:SMcCandlish To repeat myself: "You made a bold edit that affects many pages, as far as I can tell you did not get a broad consensus for the change. It is up to you to fix such problems before making such changes. If you can not run AWB then why not ask for a bot to do the changes for you?". Do that and the problem goes away. I fail to see why you are not prepared to ask for a bot job to fix what you perceive to be a mess. It is easily done by having a bot run over all the pages changing all of them in article space to you preferred template style, and all of those in other spaces to use a template that places the into the old style. We can then place a red error message in this template suggesting that one or the other alternative template is used. -- PBS (talk) 14:36, 16 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
That's orthogonal to everything I said, and you don't appear to be getting the points I'm making. It has nothing to do with whether a bot could be used to change extant references from one template into another. It's exceedingly undesirable for a template (or template redirect) called {{Quotation}} to do anything other than the MoS-expected quotation formatting. It is verboten to have pull quotes in WP articles (per WP:MOS) or to abuse pull quote formatting to drag the readers' eyes to a decorated quote you want to shove in their faces (per WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV policies). These concerns vastly outweigh any "my user page or wikiproject page doesn't have exactly the same quotation decoration today as it did last year, and I just now noticed, and I alone out of all WP editors actually care" concern, per WP:ENC and WP:NOT#WEBHOST policies; decorating pages is not what we're here for. The complaint is hollow, even aside from all that, when there are still pull quote templates on the system that you can use for talk page and project page decoration. Can we drop this now?  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  21:14, 19 June 2017 (UTC)Reply