User:Peter M. Brown/Anomie 2012

Why not use {{fix}} directly?

The template {{failed verification}}, which does produce the tag ^{[not in citation given]}, is certainly easier to use than {{fix}}, but "citation", in the singular, is inappropriate when there are more than one. Why do you object to my putting forth a little extra effort to produce an accurate message? Peter M. Brown (talk) 19:22, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

For one thing, you formatted it wrong so it didn't categorize correctly. It also makes the wikitext more complex, means that if consensus dictates a change to the tag then every article needs editing rather than just the one template, and it goes against the template's own documentation: It should not be used directly on articles by itself. Anomie⚔ 23:19, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I certainly welcome a correction to the format. The fact that I got it wrong suggests that the documentation is unclear. I could pose, on the template talk page, the same question I pose here, suggesting that the prohibition against using the template directly be lifted, but I thought you might be able to explain. You seem to be suggesting that my use of a template on one article has some effect on other articles; I don't see how that could work.

You put {{failed verification}} on one reference. I have now put it on the other. It looks pretty silly with both of them there. Of course, I won't leave things that way; in a month or less, I will either delete the badly sourced claim and its references or else alter the claim to agree with the sources. In the meantime, though, why can't I use {{fix}} to flag the references as ^{[not in citations given]}? Why can't I, as a responsible editor, be the one to choose both the text and the category? Peter M. Brown (talk) 00:10, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Your main problem was that you used |cat= where you should have used |cat-date=, although you also created a tag with a rather unhelpful link and no useful tooltip, and you missed categorizing into Category:All articles with unsourced statements. To really do it right, you should have used something along the lines of {{fix|link=Wikipedia:Verifiability|text=not in citations given|title=The material in the vicinity of this tag failed verification of its source citations|date=August 2012|cat=[[Category:All articles with unsourced statements]]|cat-date=Category:Articles with unsourced statements}}. All to change one word from singular to plural. And the consider what happens if you copy this into many articles, and then the community wants to change the link from Wikipedia:Verifiability to a page more specifically addressing the issues in the tag: for {{failed verification}}, just the one template needs editing, while for your custom tag someone has to go through and edit all those articles.

If the singular versus plural in the tag is really that much of a concern, wouldn't it make more sense to either make {{failed verification plural}} or make {{failed verification}} recognize a "plural" parameter to change the one word? Anomie⚔ 01:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I have now edited it to use [[Category]] explicitly. Am I now following the rules? Peter M. Brown (talk) 00:56, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

No, you still screwed it up. Even worse, IMO, as now it lacks the noprint and Inline-Template CSS classes (the former used to skip the tags when printing the article and the latter to support users' adjusting their user css to change the format of or hide these tags. And the categorization is still all wrong, and will probably only get worse if an AWB user or certain bots comes along, as the category will be divorced from the pseudo-tag. Anomie⚔ 01:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the code. I have never created a template; perhaps it's time I learned how. Wouldn't I just make all the errors you've caught, in a different context? I certainly don't have the courage to change a template. Peter M. Brown (talk) 01:29, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

You're always welcome to ask for help, from someone like me who knows templates well or at WP:VPT if you don't know anyone. In this case, if you were going to create the new template I would suggest you make a copy of the old template and then make the few edits needed (be sure to credit the original in the edit summary when creating the new one!). If you were going to go the route of having a |, you'd need to use {{edit protected}} anyway since the template is fully-protected but the change would be to replace "citation" with something like "{{#ifeq:{{yesno|{{{plural|no}}}}}|yes|citations|citation}}". In this case, I'd suggest the latter route to avoid increasing the maintenance burden. Anomie⚔ 12:51, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Since this section will be archived, I am creating a page User:Peter M. Brown/Anomie 2012 to retain the information. Thanks again for your help. Peter M. Brown (talk) 14:22, 20 August 2012 (UTC)