Template talk:Expand language/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

New named param 'section': feedback requested

Hello. I've mocked up a new version that replaces the boilerplate "This article..." with "This section...", under control of the new param, |section=. When section=yes (or any other legal YesNo value), the replacement occurs; otherwise it doesn't. It works in the single, and multi-lang cases. Code is present in the sandbox, test cases have been added.

I've been creating and modifying templates for some time; this would be my first use of template-editor permissions on a protected, highly-used template, and I would prefer to have some additional eyes on this, before I make the change in the template itself. Does anyone see an objection, or perhaps a better way to do it? Here is a diff between the live template (left) and the sandbox (right), and here are the test cases. Once approved, I'll make the corresponding change to /doc page. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:49, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Soliciting feedback by pinging top contribs (over 4% of text): @Calliopejen1, Trialpears, Rich Farmbrough, SilkTork, MSGJ, and Fuhghettaboutit:. Thanks (and ping, please), Mathglot (talk) 01:39, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Mathglot, looks good from a technical perspective! Thanks for being careful and setting up proper testcases. I would usually wait a bit to make sure no one objects before adding features to protected templates, but since it's such a small feature and we've had at least two pairs of eyes looking over it I think you are good to go. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 01:59, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Trialpears, thanks! Since the pings are out there, and there's no hurry, I'll wait a bit for others to chime in who may wish to. I'm forgetful; somebody ping me if I forget to come back in a few days! Mathglot (talk) 02:47, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The normal way of doing this, for cleanup templates, is to have {{{1}}} support "section", and to have a matching template called {{Expand language section}} which has the same functionality, usually as a wrapper. Other than that I have full confidence in your technical ability. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 06:48, 16 June 2020 (UTC).

Rich, thanks for your comment. I don't disagree, and there are numerous templates that do it that way. The ones that use |section=yes either are just variants, perhaps early ones, that should maybe be extended now to do it that way (otoh: if it ain't broke...), or, they have to do it that way, because {{{1}}} is already in use, as in {{Merge from}}, and we can't usurp it, or as in this case, where no positional parameter is defined. Further complicating the issue, is that {{Expand language}} isn't really intended to be used on its own, but only via invocation by any of a series of child templates ({{Expand French}}, {{Expand Spanish}}, and so on). I think there are dozens and dozens of them; frankly, nobody is really going to ever create {{Expand French section}}, modify {{Expand French}} to accept the |section= param, test both templates with new test cases, modify the doc for them both, and then do it all again for dozens of templates. Unless you can think of something, I think we're stuck in this case; there just isn't enough volunteer bandwidth for it. Mathglot (talk) 01:59, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

These templates used to support param 1 as section: See this apparently heavy-handed 2009 edit. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 15:32, 17 June 2020 (UTC).

I have no comment to make on the technical aspects. My concern with this template in general is that it should be on the talkpage or page notice rather than the article page, as it is not alerting people to an actual or potential fault, but is suggesting a potential source to help build the article (I say "potential" because in random checks I have done I often find that the other language article has so few or such poor quality references that it shouldn't used at all - simply copying in and translating would not be appropriate unless the sources can be checked). The find sources templates do the same sort of thing (arguably more usefully and effectively and more in line with Wikipedia's policies and ethos) as this template and those are placed on the talkpage. As such I would oppose this addition as it assumes that the rightful place for the template is on the article page, and builds in more arguments for keeping the template there. SilkTork (talk) 09:23, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

SilkTork, I understand your concerns, and I do recall a discussion about where the templates should appear, including (at least) one arguing for the article page, but down near the categories. I also see why the addition of a |section= param would seem to move things in the direction contrary to your preferred outcome. I'm not quite sure what to say about this, other than to try and separate the issues, deal with this one first on the (narrow, technical) merits, and that I'd be willing to revisit the whole issue of placement, as enough time has passed that consensus may have changed. If you decide to raise it, please {{ping}} me to the discussion. Thanks for adding your thoughts, Mathglot (talk) 02:06, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

 Done. Code change implemented in main template. Doc change coming soon. Thanks to everyone for your feedback! Mathglot (talk) 00:14, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Downstream changes

I've started in on the knock-on changes required to fully implement the |section= param:
Updated:

• Template:Expand language – pasted Template:Expand language/sandbox into Template, verified change.
• Template:Expand language/howto – to add |section={{{section|}}}
• Template:Expand language/doc – |section={{{section|}}} in, "How to create a new daughter template" (twice, once for Spanish example)
• Added |section={{{section|}}} to: ca, de, es, fr, it, ja, ko, nl, pt, ru, sv, zh,
• For pl: as above, plus Template data update.

Still t.b.d.: add the param code for the remaining language templates. Please update the list as needed.

I can do a handful now and again, but help would sure be appreciated! Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 08:16, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Added ar cs et da fa fi hu no ro sl sk tr uk vn. Mathglot (talk) 18:02, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Added Bosnian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Kurdish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Tagalog, Tamil. Mathglot (talk) 03:01, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Added Croatian, Greek, Kannada, Macedonian, Nepali, Punjabi, Urdu. Mathglot (talk) 07:41, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 3 July 2020

Please apply Special:Diff/963293142/965808749 to disable automatic template categorization on /sandbox subpages. For example, see categorization of Template:Expand French/sandbox and Template:Expand Spanish/sandbox. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:58, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:11, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Expand vs. Further

@SilkTork:, I haven't forgotten the issue you raised above (perma), and I wanted to address it. If I understand correctly, you have two main concerns: one is where to place the Expand template, and the other is whether it's even appropriate to use it at all, due to "defect" versus "further improvement" considerations. The first issue has been contentious, and I don't wish to address that just now. In this discussion, I want to focus on the second issue.

I had a thought about a possible way to address the issue without a code change. My idea is to add a link and some text about the {{Further}} template to the /doc page. {{Further}} has no whisper of "defect" about it, and is also less obtrusive than a banner (I wonder if that isn't perhaps a third objection to the Expand template, in your view).

{{Further}} already supports interwiki links. They aren't used very much, but this may change. They can be very handy, both for translators who wish to expand an article, as well as for bilinguals who want to view the originals without having to scour the history for them (which doesn't always contain proper attribution anyway). See for example Offshoots of Operation Car Wash.

Ironically, the new |section= param here might be a driver of increased use of the {{Further}} template with an interwiki link. If we altered the /doc here, to suggest use {{Further}} template as an alternative in some cases, and added some text to {{Further}} documenting the use of interwiki links, would this help assuage your concerns about the use of {{Expand language}} any, in particular, that of the |section= parameter? If it does, we could disuss here what wording to use for this template, and have a separate discussion at Template talk:Further. (Alternatively, I see nothing stopping us from making a not-so-bold change to better document what already works there, without waiting for a discussion about it.) Your thoughts? Mathglot (talk) 20:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable, though I confess I'm not entirely clear what the finished template would look like on the page. SilkTork (talk) 21:18, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Location of this and related templates within articles

For information, there is a discussion at Templates for discussion about where this and related templates should appear in articles, with a possible outcome that they should be placed only at or towards the ends of articles, and not at the beginning. Hallucegenia (talk) 19:23, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Improving multiple language documentation

Hi Mathglot, just wanted to follow-up from the template discussion. I poked around and I think my confusion came from the fact that only (I believe) Template:Expand language can have the multiple language codes. I had assumed the daughter templates, like Expand Italian, could take the multiple language arguments, but they failed when I tried to use them. If either the main template multiple languages header had another sentence or the daughter templates had a single line to the effect of "You have to use Expand language to link to multiple language wikis", I think I would have been able to figure it out. —Wingedserif (talk) 12:22, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Wingedserif: thanks for adding your experiences here. That makes sense and should be easy to fix. The template itself is protected, but the doc page (Template:Expand language/doc) is not. This is a wiki; if you'd like to make an addition or change to the template doc to add that line, or some other wording that might have helped you earlier, by all means do so. As far as the daughter templates, I'll take a look later to see if they transclude bits of the doc, or if we'd have to add wording individually to each one. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:51, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Now that I look at it, there have been a number of changes made to the functionality of this template, which changed it from a template not to be used on article pages, to one that is designed for article pages. The documentation was not altered to keep up fully with those changes, as it should have been at the time those changes were made. In any case, we may need to make additional changes to the doc of this page to rectify that, beyond just the one issue you raised here. However, this type of additional change isn't on you, Wingedserif; I'm only mentioning it here while it's fresh in my mind so I don't forget, and to alert other habitual editors of the template of this situation. If you make just the one change based on the issue you first identified, that would be plenty. That said, you have as much right as anybody else to dive in and fix up the entire doc page based on the current state of the template code, if you feel like it. Thanks again for your comment above. Mathglot (talk) 20:12, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

The lacking documentation is probably largely on me (I added the multi-language support and some other minor improvements in early 2020). I I'll have a look and see what I can do. --Trialpears (talk) 20:19, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I've gone through the docs and tried to improve it and make sure everything is documented. Don't have more time today, but I believe there should be some categorisation improvements to the template as well to prevent nonexsistent topic or fa categories to be added when used in the main template directly. When that is done basically everything should be possible to do using the main template without issues. With a solution like {{globalize/name}} it would be possible to add aliases to allow for things like "French" instead of fr which would make it possible to have one easy to use template for all languages. I'm not sure if that last step would be desirable though. --Trialpears (talk) 20:55, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears:, I can see that there is already code to prevent non-existent category generation per fa or bad topic, but I haven't run tests to see if they work or not. Maybe add some testcases, and we can work from there. Adding 'fr' or 'French' already exists in some templates, such as {{Needtrans}} and is pretty easy to do. I wouldn't bother with the code, though, until the active Tfd resolves itself. Mathglot (talk) 00:48, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot The non-existent categorization code was not comprehensive and not fully applied for topics and FAs. It is now however. There is still some problems with missing categories for topic though which I may fix shortly (no promises though). I don't feel like this is the project I want to push for right now, but I could help out with implementation if you want to. --Trialpears (talk) 23:59, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Starting with Wingedserif's comment and fix, I started to look at the doc, and realized it was inscrutable and incomplete. The most basic feature of the template, namely that it has two rather different purposes, for which only some parameters are used in each case, was completely ignored. (Not that any of the parameters were described before. I start chipping away, and in the end, all the little chips ended up amounting to a rewrite. Because of the double purpose, the standard set of template doc sections didn't really work well, so I came up with something different, which I think works; see what you think. I'm not done yet (categorization isn't completely described, and there are other problems) but I'm stopping for now. Jump in and lend a hand, if you feel like. Mathglot (talk) 00:52, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm switching to the /howto now, and expanding it, adding some doc for stuff that isn't available for all languages, like |fa= and |topic=, and I'm trying a couple of ways of handling it. Mathglot (talk) 05:50, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Comprehensive category ifexist checking

Hi, Trialpears, can you explain what you were going for in this edit? What functionality or fix do we have now, that we didn't have before? Also, if you meant to include all categories, what about the topic-defined subcats? Mathglot (talk) 11:07, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot, it prevents the template from adding articles to nonexistent categories. Not all categories were checked to exist before this edit. I think I took care of the topic categories? --Trialpears (talk) 13:34, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Ah okay, thanks. Because of the use of expensive parser function calls, this should probably be mentioned in the /doc somewhere. See the row template doc for an example of how I did it. Mathglot (talk) 19:39, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Sorry kind of forgot about this. I've added a bit about the expensive parser functions. Shouldn't be a problem anywhere since this template is only used once and doesn't use a ridiculous number of them, but might as well mention it. --Trialpears (talk) 11:03, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Recommendation of third resource tip for "machine translator" basis

The template already recommends DeepL and Google Translate. As a third starting-point, I believe the template should also mention Yandex Translate which is both notable and reliable in both my and others' experience. The quality for common languages such as e.g. German, French seems to, on average, range somewhere between DeepL and GT. YT does seem to have a higher rate of explicit mistakes like not translating certain terms; however I've had many cases where Yandex had the best tone overall. So, I believe "third time's the charm" here.--~Sıgehelmus♗_(Tøk) 03:15, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Improving documentation of daughter templates

The daughter template documentation has been expanded, in the sections on Parameters, Categorization, and especially in connection with the table of valid topics, and their associated subcategories. I've updated the /howto to include sections on Topics map to subcategories. The the rows in the the topic table are dynamically generated based on whether the category for the topic code exists. The |geo= code (Geography topic) is by far the most common subcategory and the most highly populated, so its associated subcat is used as a proxy for whether to mention topics at all for a given Expand <language> daughter template. Details at {{Expand language table row}}. Mathglot (talk) 10:17, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Trialpears, I've completed the documentation upgrade for the daughter templates. Can you give it a once-over? Also, there's a white-space issue I haven't been able to fully resolve, although I can live with the current version. Contrast, for example, the "topic table" in the #Categorization section of the doc, as seen in Expand FOO templates that have many table rows and subcategories (such as {{Expand French}}, {{Expand German}}, and {{Expand Italian}}) with templates that have just a few rows/subcats ({{Expand Catalan}}, {{Expand Czech}}, {{Expand Estonian}}), and notice the white space above in each case. In the shorter tables, the extra white space above is rendered as one or more sets of paired <p></p> tags, each pair generating another blank line above. There's a strong correlation between the number of p-tag pairs, and the number of "missing" rows in the table, based on subcats that don't exist; thus, the shorter the table, the more white space above. The rendered topic table html structure in the generated page html looks correct to me, and I don't see how a "missing" row would generate a pair of p-tags above the whole table, because that would impl a two-pass compiler, I think, and I always assumed it was one-pass, but who knows.

In any case, like I said, I can live with the extra white space, and I wouldn't spend much time on this, but I admit to being curious what's going on here, as I'd like to understand what mediawiki is doing in this case. I should also probably mention that the use of direct html for the table was my second choice, and I first tried it with wiki table markup. I switched to an Html table after multiple attempts to fix an earlier white space problem were unsuccessful, and corrupted rows in the table itself. I finally abandoned the wiki table, and switched to html. You can find the evidence of my attempts to fix the earlier problem in the history of the table row generating template if you're curious.

I also gave a bit of thought to thinking how one could unite the main table at {{Expand French}} with the single-row table below it (for pacommune) but then decided fairly quickly it wasn't worth it, especially, because the French template may be the *only* template that uses a non-standard topic and subcat like this, although theoretically, any of the daughter templates could. If you think of a clever way to fuse the two tables, though, let me know. But the main thing is if you can just give the doc on the daughter templates an overall, global look, and see what you think. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:37, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears:, managed to unify the table; was easier than I thought. It simply involves a /topics subpage of the daughter template, containing any supplementary rows that are needed. In the case of French, this is in Template:Expand French/topics. I also added another topics table column for cat counts, which I find useful. See {{Expand French}} as an example. Mathglot (talk) 09:30, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

That looks good! The French commune tree looks like a right mess though with direct in article cleanup categories and such. Not gonna bother with it though. --Trialpears (talk) 10:55, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Indeed; I was hoping that exposing the numbers right in the doc, might serve both as a reminder to use the topic param, as well as spur someone perhaps to work on the categories. I have in mind another change that might catch editors right when they are adding the template, which is either something in preview mode, or something in the expanded banner (i.e., after they click 'show') which would list the ten topic codes, possibly with the article counts, and gently suggest they use the topic param if relevant to the article that has the banner. Mathglot (talk) 11:37, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears:, I ended up implementing something for the expanded banner, but cut it way back to just a suggestion to use 'topic' for cases where it's not already being used, and where the main category contains over 200 articles. There's a link in the prompt to the topic table for the language, so they can choose a topic from the ones already in use. Examples: Chamber of Deputies (Mexico) (shows the prompt); Province of Barcelona (no prompt: already uses 'topic'); Seget, Croatia (no prompt: doesn't use 'topic', but <200 articles in the main category). Mathglot (talk) 19:44, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot That looks quite nice! If it wasn't already collapsed I would consider placing it as a preview notice instead, but only people deliberately expanding the banner would see it so that isn't a problem. Do you know if all major languages support the topic parameter? If not that should probably be ensured to avoid non applicable messages. --Trialpears (talk) 19:55, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Not sure I understand the question 100%, but the way I read you, "yes", but also, "it doesn't matter", because I believe the current code will avoid displaying any non-applicable messages whether they support 'topic' or not. If you can think of some test cases that would produce the failure (or that would produce it if future changes break the conditionals that currently avoid that problem), can you please add them to the test cases page?

I'm agnostic about whether it should be a Preview message or not; I guess the reason I went with the expanded banner, is that for 99% of page visitors it doesn't matter, since they won't expand the banner (is there a way to get statistics on that?), and for the 1%, the banner is already pretty long, and if that scares them they'll back off, and if it doesn't we've lengthened the banner by 10% or so, and I thought that was pretty insignificant. Maybe we should do both, and add it to Preview mode as well, because that is seen by a different set of editors (and by "seen", I mean the 1% of non-banner blinded users that are really looking at the Preview). Mathglot (talk) 20:13, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Add missing ping @Trialpears:. Mathglot (talk) 20:15, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

The case I was reffering to was the message being displayed on an instance of {{Expand Fooian}} but Fooian didn't have topic level subcategories. I don't see how that would be prevented in the current code but I think the best solution would just be to make sure all languages which may reasonably have 200 uses of the template also has topic categories. --Trialpears (talk) 20:42, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: Ah yes; I remember coding something for that case and thought it was in {{Expand language}}, but turns out it's in the template that generates the /doc pages for the specific languages. Note the difference, for example, in the topic tables at {{Expand Spanish}}, {{Expand Catalan}}, and {{Expand Basque}}. The key in skipping the table in the Basque case, is a fact I noted about topic geo in the hidden comment at Template:Expand language/howto—search the wikicode for 'proxy'.

To address the issue you posed, we should just import that same condition into the test for whether to generate the 'topic' prompt in the expanded banner. I probably won't get to that soon, but feel free if you're so inclined. That will add one expensive parser function, but that shouldn't be an issue for any page other than a vastly expanded testcases page, and probably not even there. P.S. It's conceivable that things could evolve, such that the "geo-proxy trick" won't work perfectly at some point in the future for some language, but things change slowly and I think the proxy trick is good enough for now. I believe it works for all major languages, and possibly for all languages at present. If you find a counterexample, please add it to the comments. Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Merging all Expand language family templates

By dint of some changes I've made to the doc recently and several months ago, I've now persuaded myself that it is possible to merge all of the Expand language family of templates into one main template. The main differences between specific "Expand LanguageName" templates involve differences in the use of topic codes, topic names, and subcategorization, and a single suite of doc pages already handles this for all languages. Further changes of this nature, along with some config data in the right place (which could just be a few parallel subtemplates amounting to a long #switch statement with one case statement per language, and one subtemplate per field, or perhaps an {{Item}} data structure for everything, or even new properties at d:Q34770) to store and isolate the language differences, with a single top-level template replacing all of the Expand French, Expand Spanish, and other templates. (Besides making a merger feasible and fairly straightforward, if done correctly this would also facilitate porting the merged template to other Wikipedias, since all of the items needing translation would be isolated in one place, with the core template code ideally remaining identical across Wikipedias.)

There are some minor discrepancies in topics, such as Italian topic code 'transport' equating to topic name 'Transportation', whereas French 'transport' equates to 'Transport', but those can be dealt with via Category redirects at the outset. There will probably be various other little glitches of that nature in a merger this big, and I could be mistaken, but at this point I don't foresee anything that would be a deal-breaker to performing a merge. If designed correctly, I anticipate that this merger will be tedious, long, and somewhat involved, but not complex as far as design, construction, or code-reading issues. I expect it to be simpler than the current {{Expand language}} template, with a suite of supporting helper-subtemplates.

The current {{Expand language}} template has separate functionality which includes multiple languages, and that would not merge well with the others, at least not at the outset, and would probably have to continue as "Expand language multi" for a while, until after the dust settled from the first mega-merge, and it might not be practical to merge it with the unified single-language version.

I'm not going to get to this right away, or anytime soon probably, and I'm not even sure if it's worth doing, but I know it's possible, now. User:Primefac recently did something analogous to this, with the merger of the Template:Family name hatnote suite of templates (except for a couple of stragglers) all united in one template. Mathglot (talk) 08:10, 5 November 2021 (UTC) updated by Mathglot (talk) 20:27, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea! I started attempting this ages ago and gave up because it was too hard. Calliopejen1 (talk) 02:51, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 6 March 2022

It seems that there is a bug in the code that generates links to Google Translate.

Problem: At Pinuccio Sciola, the "View" link leads to [1] which says "Can't translate this page". It seems that it has to do with the space between the words, and if you replace "+" there with "_", it works: [2].

Suggested fix: Replace {{urlencode:{{{otherarticle}}}}} with {{urlencode:{{{otherarticle}}}|WIKI}}. Whym (talk) 12:23, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 20:57, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 4 March 2022

I propose editing the bullet points that talk about copyright attribution so that the otherarticle parameter is no longer required. Here is the new code for that, commented out so as not to break the page:

* You '''must''' provide [[Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia|copyright attribution]] in the [[Help:Edit summary|edit summary]] accompanying your translation by providing an [[Help:Interlanguage links|interlanguage link]] to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is {{#if: {{Mw lang|fn=is_code|{{{langcode}}}}} | <code>Content in this edit is translated from the existing {{#language:{{{langcode|}}}|en}} Wikipedia article at <nowiki>[[:</nowiki>{{{langcode}}}<nowiki>:</nowiki>{{#if:{{{otherarticle|}}}|{{{otherarticle}}}|{{#if:{{Wikidata sitelink|lang={{{langcode|}}}}}|{{Wikidata sitelink|lang={{{langcode|}}}}}|Exact name of the article}}}}<nowiki>]]</nowiki>; see its history for attribution.</code> | (using German): <code>Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at <nowiki>[[:de:Exact name of German article]]</nowiki>; see its history for attribution.</code> }}
* You should also add the template {{#if:{{{otherarticle|}}}|<code><nowiki>{{Translated|</nowiki>{{{langcode|}}}<nowiki>|</nowiki>{{{otherarticle}}}<nowiki>}}</nowiki></code>|{{#if:{{Wikidata sitelink|lang={{{langcode|}}}}}|{{Wikidata sitelink|lang={{{langcode|}}}}}|{{tl|Translated page}}}}}} to the [[{{TALKPAGENAME}}|talk page]].

-- Numberguy6 (talk) 18:07, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:12, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Expand Bashkir

Template:Expand Bashkir has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. -- 65.92.246.142 (talk) 02:40, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Maintenance categorization

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should the {{Expand language}} template (and as a consequence its 170 language-specific wrapper templates)...

• keep categorizing articles in the general "Articles to be expanded" maintenance hierarchy or
• remove the "to be expanded" categories leaving only language-specific maintenance categories?

20:13, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Background

{{Expand language}} and its 170 language-specific wrapper templates place two types of hidden categories on articles when they're transcluded. The first is a general "to be expanded" category that falls somewhere within Category:Articles to be expanded and is typically dated such as Category:Articles to be expanded from July 2010. The catch-all Category:All articles to be expanded also falls under this hierarchy and is added to every page. The second type is a language-specific category somewhere within Category:Articles needing translation from foreign-language Wikipedias such as Category:Articles needing translation from German Wikipedia. Where specified, a topical sub-category may be used as the language-specific category yielding examples such as Category:Geography articles needing translation from German Wikipedia. Topical sub-categories are not part of the general "to be expanded" category hierarchy. --N8_wilson 20:13, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

The "remove" option will impact at least the 28,000 articles. --N8_wilson 11:41, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Survey

• remove - The Category:Articles to be expanded has over 144,000 articles. By rough estimate it appears that approximately 1 in 7 of these pages were added by {{Expand language}} or a language wrapper of it. For editors working exclusively in English and unable to translate between WP sites the addition of these foreign-language expansion articles amounts to maintenance clutter in the general "expand" categories. For multi-lingual editors that categorization is not an effective way to locate articles where their language skills may be applied; the language-specific maintenance categories do this much more effectively. For cases where both types of categories are really intended, {{Expand section}}, {{Missing information}} or {{Incomplete list}} can be added (hopefully when English-language source material is presumed to be available) alongside {{Expand language}} so that the article will be included in both hierarchies. --N8_wilson 20:13, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
• remove - I see no reason to disagree with the nom. I note that the Category:Articles to be expanded page does not even say that {{Expand language}} populates the category. -- asilvering (talk) 18:44, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
• remove - As the nom describes: no additional help by this repetition for anyone doing maintenance. (I did not check the technical details, does the change do as described). -DePiep (talk) 19:38, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Informal closure

Withdrawing formal RfC per #1, and #5 at WP:RFCEND and per DePiep's suggestion in the related edit request section. Moving forward per consensus here with the reversible edit request that has no visible impact on article space. --N8_wilson 17:46, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Template edit request June 11, 2022

Pending closure and per consensus in the above RfC (Maintenance categorization) (opened 897 days ago) to remove the "to be expanded" maintenance categorization, please implement this edit from the template sandbox. The edit removes the following wikitext string and makes no other changes.

{{DMCA|Articles to be expanded|from|{{{date|}}}|All articles to be expanded}}

This is beingwas submitted before the closure of the related discussion in part to draw some more attention to that discussion which has received limited participation. (Though by a very technical reading, the change proposed here has been shown to be both uncontroversial and supported by consensus if only through WP:WEAKSILENCE.) --N8_wilson 17:21, 11 June 2022 (UTC) Updated 20:52, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I propose you close the RfC first, informally if I understand WP:RFC well. Since the edit reqeuested is simply reversable, this ER being bold is within good Wiki editing. -DePiep (talk) 19:46, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. I anticipated this being fairly non-controversial but given the scope of impact (28,000 - 69,000 articles) I thought it preferable to invite comments in case I was overlooking anything. The low participation above and minimal impact on visible article space pages gives me more confidence in the edit request. Thanks for the push. --N8_wilson 17:49, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Support. I see no tresholds for this Requested Edit. -DePiep (talk) 11:09, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:57, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Improving wording/usability

The Click [show] for important translation instructions. is rather awkward. Wouldn't it be better for the button itself to explain what it does intuitively, rather than having that information elsewhere in the tag? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:07, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Bumping thread. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:58, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Edit request 23 November 2022

Description of suggested change: Add a comma to the lines relating to Machine translation to the other languages (doesn't seem to appear on this template?) before "like" and after "Translate" for grammatical reasons. Currently it feels a bit awkward as it feels like "is" should be "are" since it mentions 2 machine translations, however it's just providing examples and excluding the examples it reads "Machine translation is a useful starting point for translations"

Diff:

−

Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations

+

Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations

― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 19:09, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

 Completed. To editor Blaze Wolf: certain language codes must be used to make the text appear when [show] is clicked. See below where "hu" is the langcode used, as in {{expand language|langcode=hu}}:

P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^put'r there 22:18, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Ah alright. THanks! ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 23:07, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

my pleasure! Paine  02:35, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 8 June 2023

Hello! Please edit this template so that the chunk that corresponds to this:

{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Template

  | <!-- {{NAMESPACE}} === "Template" -->

    {{Sandbox other||[[Category:Expand by language Wikipedia templates|{{#language:{{{langcode|}}}|en}}]]}}{{#if:{{{nodoc|}}}||{{documentation}}}}

  | <!-- {{NAMESPACE}} !== "Template" -->

    {{{category|

      ...remaining article categorization logic...

    }}}<!-- category -->

}}<!-- #ifeq -->

…is changed to this:

{{{category|

  {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Template

    | <!-- {{NAMESPACE}} === "Template" -->

      {{Sandbox other||[[Category:Expand by language Wikipedia templates|{{#language:{{{langcode|}}}|en}}]]}}{{#if:{{{nodoc|}}}|| {{documentation}}}}

    | <!-- {{NAMESPACE}} !== "Template" -->

      ...remaining article categorization logic...

  }}<!-- #ifeq -->

}}}<!-- category -->

I wrote out the chunks for clarity. In reality, all that’s required is that the string {{{category| be moved from its current location to exactly right before the string {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Template , and that lines 35 and 36 be swapped, so that this:

}}}
}}

becomes this:

}}
}}}

, and nothing more.

The rationale is that currently, it’s possible to suppress categorization when this template is used in main space (and all other spaces except Template) by doing this: {{Expand language|category=}}, but it’s not possible to do so when it’s used in Template space. This results in Template:Expand language/template preload being categorized into Category:Expand by language Wikipedia templates, which, as I understand things, is not correct. I’ve set up Template:Expand language/template preload/sandbox to use Template:Expand language/sandbox, both of which I’ve updated for the desired effect.

Thanks! Mifield 00:43, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: I don't see this as necessary. Preloads being in template categories is entirely fine in the general case. Izno (talk) 00:35, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Bullet instruction suggestions updated

Fixed one problem, and made one improvement to the expanded instructions that appear in bullets when you click 'show':

• At the top of the {{Expand language}} page itself, the default banner formerly displayed in 'show' mode: "Error: no language code specified" in the attempted transclusion of {{Translated}}. In a way, this was a minor issue, as it would never occur *except* on this page, but this whole suite of "Expand <LanguageName>" templates is complicated enough for prospective template page viewers (or editors) without starting off with an error visible at the top of the page. That's fixed now.
• In the individual templates which transclude this one, such as, say, {{Expand Italian}}, the instruction bullet which suggested "You should also add the template {{Translated page}}..." did not reflect the actual language of the page on which it appeared. This now displays, "You should also add the template {{Translated page|it|Exact name of Italian article}}..." at {{Expand Italian}}, and likewise for other language templates.

These passed all testcases at the main template, and I spot-checked cases at French, Italian, and Spanish, and all looks good. Please reply if you see anything that looks off, and/or revert as appropriate. Mathglot (talk) 20:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

"may be" phrasing change

Hi, I'd like to re-propose changing the phrasing. The issue is that the words "may be expanded" can plausibly mean either "someone could expand this" or "it is possible that this has already been expanded", and as a new reader I was perpetually confused about which the note was trying to say. "can be expanded" would be the simplest change, or if there are substantial concerns with that, I'd suggest "you can help expand" or similar. The last time I looked into this, there was already an open thread -- but it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere since and sadly I'm not allowed to be bold on this myself. Is there support for this change? Andaphantie (talk) 19:12, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I like "you can help expand this article with text..." best of those two options. I think it's better to phrase it as an invitation. -- asilvering (talk) 22:18, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I came here with the same issue, but I'd put it more simply. "May be expanded" means permission, which isn't what the template is trying to say. "Could be" or "can be" is correct. I'd go ahead and submit a change (via sandbox, of course), but that requires more understanding of template editing than I possess. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 13:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I entirely support such a change. When I first read it, I couldn't understand what 'may be expanded' meant. 'can be' or preferably 'could be' would be much clearer. Who knows how to do this? Could it be done once for all languages, or must every single language template be changed? Masato.harada (talk) 15:17, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Please edit this Template:Expand language so that the resulting text reads "You can help expand this article with text translated from a corresponding article in another language." The current text "This article may be expanded with text translated from a corresponding article in another language." can mean either "permission is granted for someone to expand this article" or "it is possible that this article has already been expanded", which causes confusion. This request results from consensus of discussion on the talk page. Thanks Masato.harada (talk) 08:57, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

 Completed. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 17:44, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Updated, to use the definite article ("..from the corresponding article.."). Technical considerations (at Wikidata) prevent an article from being linked to two different pages at a given Wikipedia, so if it's linked to an article in French, it's linked to the article in French. If the language param is not provided with the transclusion, and the "another language" default text is displayed, I suppose you could use the indefinite article in that case, but I'd say that the template serves no useful purpose without the language name provided. Mathglot (talk) 18:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

You're quite right. Thanks. Masato.harada (talk) 08:30, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to merge "Science" and "Technology" topic categories

For most languages, the "Technology" topic category is the least populous topic category. The category has 0–5 pages for all languages except Chinese, where it has 25 pages.

This action is NOT a request to edit this template. Instead, I am opening this topic for discussion. If the change is implemented, it would require fixing the templates and categories for every individual language.

Numberguy6 (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Not opposed. Mathglot (talk) 04:17, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

A music subcat

Hi, ImStevan. I've reverted your edit of 03:33, 5 March 2023 to Template:Expand language/howto which added a new 'music' row to the #Topics_and_categorization table regardless whether a 'music' subcat existed for the language, and generating a red "unknown topic code" error in the middle cell of the row in every Expand_LangName template that had at least one subcat, such as for example, at {{Expand Serbian}}, {{Expand Lithuanian}}, {{Expand Quechua}}, {{Expand Western Frisian}}, and at a couple hundred others. The reason is, because that type of change requires additional groundwork to make it work, if your goal is to make 'music' into a new, standard subcat for every one of them. But there are other approaches for adding it if it's only for a few of the languages, for example. These are explained in the "Adding a new topic and subcategory" section on every one of the template doc pages, for example, at Template:Expand Serbian#Adding a new topic and subcategory. Some of it may be intricate, may involve coding at the page you touched, the doc pages, code at individual templates like {{Expand Serbian}}, creation of categories, and other places, and sometimes there is more than one way to approach it. So why don't you have a look at the linked doc section first, and then let's discuss what your use case is, and figure out the best way to proceed. Mathglot (talk) 04:38, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Broken anchors in "Adding a new topic"

PK2, this edit of yours at 03:30, 11 July 2023 doesn't appear to do what you intended. It results in the display of visible wikicode in section "Adding a new topic and subcategory" on the doc pages of a couple hundred Expand_language templates. You can see the effect by going to Template:Expand French#Adding a new topic and subcategory, expanding the collapsed "view details" bar: notice the wikicode by searching for "subst:anchor" in plaintext. I don't have time to delve into this right now, can you please have a look? If the previous version was broken before you got there, please leave details about what you are seeing. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 07:41, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I just manually transcluded {{anchor}} to fix the problem that my previous edit to this template by automatically transcluding the previous template, caused for some reason. Thank you for notifying me about that problem. PK2 (talk) 11:08, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

 Done. Yes, that solved it. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

More than three languages

I wonder why this template is limited to three languages (specified via langcode, langcode2 and langcode3). For José María Bermúdez de Castro, I identified four languages from which translation might be useful, but I can't specify them in a single {{Expand language}} template. I don't see a good reason for this – a couple more languages in the list wouldn't clutter the page; in fact, quite the opposite, if people instead add separate templates because they can't do it in one, that clutters the page. So I'd suggest to add some more numbered langcode and otherarticle parameters. Joriki (talk) 12:55, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Who would benefit from that? And do you have an actual use case for this? Some users question whether this template should exist at all, because they believe that nobody ever expands an article based on even one language (I'm not one of them). I'd be opposed to adding more langcodes, however. Instead, why not just add multiple expand templates, and enclose them in a collapsed {{Multiple issues}} template? Then they'll be compact, and you can specify a dozen languages, if you wish to. Mathglot (talk) 02:19, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Guidelines for this template's use

We should establish a list of guidelines for articles where expand-language should be used, and where it shouldn't. See User talk:Numberguy6#Overuse of Expand language template. For all of my additions in the past few months, my guideline has been that the other-language article is at least three times the size of the English article. Numberguy6 (talk) 15:51, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I would also beg that the template is only added when there are reasonably good footnotes or inline references on the non-English article. It's a huge waste of everyone's time for someone to translate from another wiki only for another editor to remove the additions as unverifiable. -- asilvering (talk) 22:19, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

As long as it would be informational only, I wouldn't object, but I'd disagree with making it part of any instruction or guideline. The reason is, that anyone doing good-faith translation (by which I mean, they understand both languages, and are not just blindly passing stuff through a translator program) will understand the other language article sufficiently as well as sources in the other language to make the right calls. Sourced or not, every editor is still subject to the sourcing requirements on en-wiki, and responsible for very edit they publish, regardless how broken the original might have been; if you publish it and it's wrong or unsourced, then that's on you. I translate from fr-wiki all the time, and I don't want anyone telling me not to translate something just because the original is crap, or because it's unsourced. (Fr-wiki stuff is often badly sourced.) I will make sure when translating, that what I publish is properly sourced, or I won't publish it. That's on me.

The way you phrased it, if you think about the flip side, it kind of sounds like you're saying that if there are good footnotes and inline references in the original, then it is okay to translate it. But that's not sufficient, and it isn't okay. Once again, in the case of fr-wiki, the sources can be good, but not verify the content. So, just because the original has seemingly good references, that is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for you to just translate it, keeping the original references, and publish it here without ever checking whether they really verify the content or not (or if they even exist anymore).

The translators I am familiar with at en-wiki are serious editors with a good command of policy, and understand how to create new articles here responsibly based on translated content. They don't need additional verbiage in a template to tell them how or when to translate. I'm not opposed to having "rules of thumb" like, say, "triple the English article size", analogous to the way that WP:SIZESPLIT has a table suggesting when an article should or shouldn't be split based on the size of the article. But importantly, WP:SIZESPLIT is part of an information page, and is neither policy, nor guideline. In other words, you are free to ignore it. If the kind of rules that are being proposed here are of an "Information page"-nature, like SIZESPLIT is, then I think it's fine to create something like that. But putting it in anything like an actual guideline would be WP:INSTRUCTIONCREEP, imho. Mathglot (talk) 01:52, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

I think you might be experiencing something a bit like survivorship bias about the translators you're familiar with - ie, that you're a good one, therefore you mostly only know and work with other good ones. On the flip side, at AfC and when going through maintenance tags I see approximately zero of those translators. I have no doubt whatsoever that the "translated the text, didn't think about anything else" type of translations far outnumber the type you describe. Very many of these are newbies who could become excellent editors who think they are helpfully addressing a maintenance tag and are unaware they've stepped onto a verifiability landmine; having their contributions removed isn't a welcoming start. -- asilvering (talk) 18:56, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Lol; that's fair criticism, you're right, I probably have a kind of tunnel vision in this regard. I'm uncertain if you are implying that just having the template there at all is encouraging the "translated, didn't think" group to undertake a translation that they otherwise wouldn't have, had the template not been there in the first place? I hadn't considered that possibility before, and if that's what you meant and there's support for the idea, there's an approach that would certainly be a bit unusual but might work if we got consensus for it: namely, don't show the template to newer editors (using parser conditionals testing for extended confirmed, and css display:none). (Such things are unusual, but not unprecedented; for example, template {{orphan}} turns itself off and becomes invisible after a several-month timeout, iirc.)

Leaving that idea aside for the moment, and getting back to considering more normal approaches, I fear that wording changes in guidelines would only hamper the long-term, senior editors who are serious about following P&G, without affecting the "didn't think" group who won't care a fig about any of that. I think a size recommendation of the type mentioned in the OP by User:Numberguy6 are okay, as far as including them here in the template, (or at WP:TRANSLATION) if there's consensus for it, and it would be good to get more opinions here about that. Or, is there a better way? Mathglot (talk) 19:26, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Size increased to 100% per MOS and accessibility guidelines

In case there is any need for discussion here, this is a note that I have increased the size of the text in this template to 100% of normal (from 95%). My edit summary was: "Fix too small font per MOS:FONTSIZE. The hidden-begin class normally sets font-size to 95%, and this template contains small tags, which makes the font-size too small. Also, when used in Template:multiple issues, indenting and shrinking this text makes it inconsistent with the other messages." The last bit was what brought me here initially; the indenting combined with the smaller size and then the tiny size looked pretty bad. Discussion is welcome. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Slovene Wikipedia, not Slovenian

The language code sl is still given the name Slovenian at Module:Language/data/ISO_639-2 per https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php.

However, Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_September_25#Slovenian_Wikipedia_categories ended a unanimous consensus to use the name Slovene Wikipedia. The categories have been moved to Category:Articles needing translation from Slovene Wikipedia & subcats, but are empty.

I have updated {{Expand Slovene}} with |name=Slovene, which seems to be correct according to the /doc here, but this does not seem to make any difference. The template still displays "Slovenian" and looks for e.g. Special:WhatLinksHere/Category:Articles needing translation from Slovenian Wikipedia / Special:WhatLinksHere/Category:Biography articles needing translation from Slovenian Wikipedia rather than "Slovene Wikipedia".

Do we need to revert the category moves, or can the template be modified to generate categories using "Slovene", please? – Fayenatic London 08:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:18, 19 October 2023 (UTC)