Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 November 12

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November 12 edit

Template:Infobox Stausee 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). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was no consensus. It would appear that any alternatives proposed can be done through regular editing, outside this process. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:58, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Infobox Stausee (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Duplicate of {{Infobox dam}} and maybe also {{Infobox lake}}. Also unused. Rehman 15:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This template is extremely useful in aiding the rapid transfer of dozens of dam and reservoir articles from German Wikipedia, allowing the translator to do what they are good at - i.e. translation - and enabling others to fully replace the template in due course, which is exactly what Rehman has done (hence why the template now appears "unused"). This is great Wiki teamwork. The work by translators to import articles is still ongoing. If this template is deleted, we will significantly increase the workload on translators, who are a scarce resource, by asking them to do repetitive work that does not require language skills. That will slow down the rate of transfer of new articles or, worst case, translators may just give up and go elsewhere.
Alternative Proposal. Do not delete the template, but convert it into a "pivot template" that calls up "Infobox dam" and maps the parameters across where they match. This provides consistency of appearance and still leaves the option open of replacing the templates in the fullness of time. This has been done for several similar templates following discussion on this forum. I am willing to do this. --Bermicourt (talk) 17:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While I like your approach on this, and the nice message at my talkpage, I still think this is good to be deleted. You could simply add the {{Infobox dam}} at the area where you deal with this template (WikiProject Germany?) when transferring the articles to en.wiki. For example:

| name =

| image =

| image_caption =

That way you don't need to go through the great evolution from Infobox Stausse to Infobox Dam. Although your transfer work is excellent, generally the inter-wiki transfer shouldn't made that easy to transfer so quickly, so that it avoids junk be transferred, and gives time to examine key areas like categories, infoboxes, words, etc. Trust me, I have seen how bad interwiki transfers can be. Rehman 01:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean. It still looks like a line by line transfer from one infobox to the other which is very tedious. I agree the translator must check that infobox data make sense - usually a couple of tweaks are needed - but it's a lot easier than doing it from scratch every time. My proposal is a compromise agreed on this forum before - take a look at Template:Infobox Burg for example, which uses an en.wiki template and cleverly translates the most common data automatically - a real aid for those who don't have specialist vocabulary. That said, the idea is that, once the bulk of the article transfers are complete, the template gets deleted, but not just yet. Please support your translators - there aren't many of us and we should concentrate on 'real translation' which is where our skills are most needed, not data copying. Regards. --Bermicourt (talk) 08:26, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For instance, you current procedure is to fill Infobox Stausee, and then later gradually convert it into Infobox Dam. And you don't fill directly into Infobox Dam because of language issues (right?).

So, instead of going through Infobox Stausee, you copy the codes of Infobox Dam to the area where you bring in the data from de.wiki (WikiProject Germany?), and save a modified code with the translations in brackets/etc (like shown above). And then when the German-speaking editor fills in, s/he could simple read the bracketed info (the translation of the relevant field) and add the relevant values to the field, replacing the bracketed data...

I think the same could be done to Infobox Burg you mentioned above, and any other such "interim" infoboxes. Rehman 08:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No I don't fill Infobox Stausee at all. The beauty of this template is I can just copy the German infobox straight into the English article and 95% of the work is done - it automatically translates all the fields and much of the data and produces the required format. All I have to do is translate the occasional data that isn't automatically translated. So the whole process takes a few seconds. Then I can get on with the hard bit - translating the article itself. Having translated over 2000 articles, this time-saving type of template is a massive bonus and means more information faster on English Wikipedia - trust me!! --Bermicourt (talk) 08:50, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although your work is good, I have to say there is a good reason why we have separate language wikis. We have no use in having a foreign language template here on en.wiki (no offence meant), and many such templates were deleted before, without doubt.

Since most of the incoming infoboxes for de.wiki are mostly with numbers, I suggest you take a little extra effort by simply copy/pasting the numbers into the relevant fields of the dam infobox, since you know the language. For other editors, they can follow the method I mentioned above. But clearly, a foreign-language "interim" template like this has been deleted multiple times before, and this template will most probably be deleted too. Rehman 09:02, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The main point of a template is to save time by avoiding highly repetitive work. That's what this does. Of course sooner or later it makes sense for someone to replace the template with the main en.wiki one, but there are probably 100 people who can do that for every translator. And no, I don't know of any useful foreign-language "interim" template being deleted; some have been proposed, but in the end the argument has been accepted to retain them whilst the transfers are going on. However, to simplify subsequent work, I am happy to amend it to be a "pivot" which calls up "Template:Infobox dam". Of course, I can't stop it being deleted if that's the consensus here, but I won't be translating any more articles on dams. It will double the workload. --Bermicourt (talk) 21:12, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I don't see how this template is hindering article creation or Infobox dam but I am still curious how it works. Let's say I am moving a dam article from .de, all I do is fill in the infobox with the English parameters, create the article and 'poof' it automatically becomes an Infobox dam? I am curious also because I wonder if it belongs in the mainspace or just in a User/Project space somewhere. It doesn't appear to be a heavily traffic'd template.--NortyNort (Holla) 04:41, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The template actively promotes article creation. It speeds up the transfer of dam and reservoir articles from German Wikipedia because (Stage 1) you just copy the infobox across from de.wiki with the data - you don't even need to fill it in. The only work required is to change any data that haven't been automatically translated by the template and, if you're fussy, swap decimal commas for points. That means we can concentrate on the serious business of translation. At any stage, a non-German speaker can use the decode table in the template docs to change it to Infobox Dam (i.e. Stage 2). It's not heavily trafficked because all the articles that used it have recently been amended to use Infobox dam exactly as planned. But there are potentially hundreds more to be transferred and this template will held with that. --Bermicourt (talk) 15:29, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If this practice is allowed, then we would basically copy all templates from all wikis and basically merge all wikis to en.wiki. There is a good reason why separate wikis exist. IMHO, you should really consider taking that little extra effort and working directly in the dam template, as I mentioned above with the template example. Rehman 15:44, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I did a test with the .en Xingo Dam and the [.de version] in my sandbox and I see exactly how it works. I think this is useful and can do the same job as Google translate but I don't think it belongs in the mainspace. It doesn't link to any articles and should be in a project mainspace. I like the idea of facilitating the movement of German dam articles to English Wikipedia, which probably has less of them. I can help make a spot to stick it in the WikiProject Dams space.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, that seems like a better place. Rehman 13:25, 22 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, please help me understand what this proposal means? Will articles still be able to call it up? --Bermicourt (talk) 07:29, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It means that instead of typing {{Infobox Stausee you would type {{WP:DAMS/Infobox Stausee or {{WP:WikiProject Dams/Infobox Stausee or wherever this template is moved. The usage of the template would be temporary, and would be substituted when you are finished filling in the fields. If it's not going to be temporary, then there is no reason to not have it stay where it is right now. I imagine the template would be coded to act just like Infobox Burg, which would allow for easy substitution. Note that cross namespace templates into the article namespace are generally discouraged, especially from the user namespace (Wikipedia:Database reports/Transplanted user templates) 134.253.26.12 (talk) 17:24, 24 November 2010 (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). No further edits should be made to this section.