Template talk:Rfcquote

Random indentation in RfC listings

As seen here, some RfC listing entries are seriously indented, others are not. I don't see a logical reason or purpose for this. There's something to be said for neatness and consistency, and in the 21st century how hard can it be for the template to prevent this indentation?

If the "solution" is simply for RfC creators to do something different in their formatting, I think that's a unreasonable expectation; correct RfC formatting is already too complicated for many editors. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:46, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Mandruss: As I have described often, Legobot (talk · contribs) copies a string of text and places it inside a {{rfcquote}} template. The string of text begins immediately after a {{rfc}} template, and ends immediately after the next valid timestamp. Certain things occurring within that string will break the {{rfcquote}} template, so we try to guard against them with guidance such as WP:RFC#Statement should be neutral and brief "For technical reasons, statements may not contain tables or complex formatting". We cannot change the way that Legobot works: the botop is Legoktm (talk · contribs) but they are no longer maintaining the bot, so we must accept what the bot does and work with the material that we can control. {{rfcquote}} is one such controllable factor.

Regarding the indent/centring: it might be something to do with this edit by Harej (talk · contribs), who had a lot to do with the RfC listing process before Legoktm took it over. But it's not random. Short, one-line paragraphs are centred; longer paragraphs are left-aligned. If you have an idea for a better version of {{rfcquote}}, please make it at Template:Rfcquote/sandbox. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:00, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I've said before that I'm incompetent as to template coding, and I'm always puzzled why editors who code templates seem to believe that it's so easy any editor can do it. Many of us are dependent on people like you to implement changes that make sense.
Short, one-line paragraphs are centred; longer paragraphs are left-aligned does not make sense to me; actually it seems a hare-brained idea that has no basis in anything I've seen at Wikipedia or anywhere else in the world. English-language writing left-aligns unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, such as headings in some types of documents, artistic styling such as some poetry and song lyrics, etc. Even when centering is done, it's done consistently. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:30, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Whoops - accidently tested on the main template - gotta pay attention. Thankfully didn't actually do anything.. Not that it is a very visible template... Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:58, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Now at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Left-align all RfC listings. Had I known you were going to WP:BOLD this, Galobtter, I would have waited to see whether that flew. Might as well continue with the consensus-first approach now that it's already started. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:06, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that's where I saw it. I wasn't going to boldly do it, however I was trying to figure out how do it- which I've already done. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:08, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for making it obvious that it's an easy fix. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Hahahaha. It's just css styling in a table, no real template complexity is there, so there aren't too many parameters that could cause it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Not that it is a very visible template - there are over 300 transclusions spread across 32 different pages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:16, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Didn't change anything visible, anyhow (was actually a revert of a previous edit). Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:20, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Is this template worth its cost?

There are various things that editors put in RfC statements that break this template; one example is seen in the first listing here. This editor, after 12 years experience including the creation of many RfCs, included some exposed pipe characters that caused roughly half of the RfC statement to be truncated. This is because Rfcquote was confused by the pipe characters. I could find many more examples of other things that break Rfcquote, and avoiding them seems an unreasonable expectation—for any editor, let alone the average editor.
Legobot copies all of the wikitext up to the first date stamp, wrapping it in {{Rfcquote}}. If Legobot left the template out of it and simply added the indentation, then anything that worked within the RfC would work equally well in the RfC listing, no? Galobtter, do you see anything in the template that justifies its use? If not, I'll start another VP proposal to eliminate the use of this template. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:16, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

So what the template does is shift the text 30 pixels to the right and, currently, producing that variable centering. That 30 px padding is not really necessary, but I think makes listings a little nicer. I don't think it should matter since RfC statements shouldn't have anything weird. Anyhow, you should probably ask someone who knows what they are doing to see if there's a way for templates to accept pipes etc as a parameter or something like that. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:29, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

RfC statements shouldn't have anything weird. Define "weird" in some way other than "that which breaks Rfcquote" and we can add that to WP:RFC. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:57, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

For technical reasons, statements may not contain tables or complex formatting is what's there currently, and I think it's reasonable.I'd define it as: tables and images (perhaps unless formatted as a <nowiki><gallery><nowiki>) Anything like tables etc should be extra background information after the neutral statement, I think. Takes up too much space in the RfC listings; images would look strange if left aligned and not as a centered gallery; even then draw undue attention.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't think pipes in templates is likely to be possible. However, redrose64 said that the bot is no longer maintained, meaning it'd be difficult to change what the bot does. I think have to figure if doing so is possible before proposing such a removal. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:33, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

If needed, that styling could be added by the bot without using the template, which would help. However that would require modifying the bot. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

That is precisely what I suggested.
I don't know about you, but I'm a developer in the real world and having unmaintainable code around would be considered a serious problem, especially for code essential to infrastructure. It leaves you with three bad options: live with status quo forever, rewrite the code from scratch, or eliminate infrastructure. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:49, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

A bare pipe (one that is not within double square brackets, double or triple braces) in a template's parameter list is always interpreted by the MediaWiki software as a parameter separator, there is no way to change that. In many situations, you can work around it by using either the {{!}} template which displays | or the character entity | which displays |. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:01, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Is that the only thing that breaks Rfcquote? ―Mandruss ☎ 12:03, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Not sure on that one, I was primarily considering the problem linked in the first post in this section. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:06, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah it isn't good, but it isn't broken.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Disagree. If it prevents improvements like this, it's broken. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)