Template talk:Infobox television/Short description

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Television

This template is within the scope of WikiProject Television, a collaborative effort to develop and improve Wikipedia articles about television programs. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page where you can join the discussion. For how to use this banner template, see its documentation.TelevisionWikipedia:WikiProject TelevisionTemplate:WikiProject Televisiontelevision articles

Template:Infobox television/Short description is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

Template-protected edit request on 23 February 2023

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Replace the Americanism "program" with the universally accepted "show." As I found out today, if a British series/show article doesn't have a short description, it will automatically display this. Danstarr69 (talk) 15:28, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not done as this will cascade and before we get in to an WP:ENGVAR discussion this should be more broadly discussed. Please invite attendees from Template talk:Infobox television to review this first. If after a reasonable time there are no participants, reactivate the edit request. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:57, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Line-break problem

A linebreak is sometimes showing up within the short desc somehow. If you have diplay of short desc turned on with user CSS, you can see this at Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, where the short desc renders as:

[Short description: American TV series or program
]

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:09, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps I don't have my user settings set to see this issue, but it looks fine for me on Vector 2010 skin plus when I search for the article on the mobile site. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 23:32, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

SMcCandlish, I adjusted some html comments to see if that fixes the white space. I ran {{infobox television}} through Expand Templates for that page, and I didn't see any extra line breaks. Is it fixed for you? If not, how are you seeing this extra line break? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:51, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that fixed it, thanks. For seeing short desc., see near the top of User:SMcCandlish/common.css. I recommend doing this for any/all editors, since you'd be surprised how often these normally unseen lines need editing. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:41, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request 5 June 2024

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Description of suggested change: Add "is Infobox in lead" template to the short description generator in order to prevent false positives for articles such as Call It Courage. -1ctinus📝🗨 14:07, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. SilverLocust 💬 20:11, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bad syntax when the country parameter has a plainlist template

The current code is producing bad syntax when the country parameter has a plainlist template. See St. Ives (1998 film) which has the short description "`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000006-QINU`"'? TV series or program Gonnym (talk) 16:39, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there parser code to detected if a parameter has more than one entry via plainlist, ublist, or breaks? If so, then perhaps it could simply omit the country parameter in that case and just be "<year> TV series or program/me", or "<year> multi-national TV series or program/me". - Favre1fan93 (talk) 22:47, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Would Module:Params be of help? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:19, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Gonnym: I added {{Pluralize from text}} to the sandbox and if |country= has multiple, I'm having it say "multi-national" (but that can obviously be changed or outright removed). Regardless, I tested it on St. Ives (1998 film) and it removed the plainlist code, so this is a path forward to resolve this. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:23, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good! Gonnym (talk) 19:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the change is causing problems when there is no specific year of release. A television series with a country list (or evil constructs such as Scotland, United Kindom) is generating a short description of multi-national TV series or program. This is currently flooding the Pages with lower-case short description error category.

If the infobox has {{{last_aired}}} set, then it should probably create a short description that uses that rather than omitting the year. That does create more complicated code – having a year range puts the years at the end: Television series, 1999–2000, but a single year leads with the year: 2002 television programme etc. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 06:37, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GhostInTheMachine: I just implemented a quick fix which should take care of all the pages added to that category. However, I'm not the most versed in modules but I think something isn't checking correctly. Take Llama Llama (TV series) for example, which was previously in the category. That SD should generate as 2018 multi-national TV series or program. Something in the code is not happening in the first part of the code is not pulling the year from either |released= or |first_aired=. I was trying to adjust the sandbox to fix this, but my limited knowledge of using the check code for Module:String halted my work. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 17:29, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95: as a recent (relatively) editor to this template, would you perhaps have a chance to see what's happening? The "year" part of the auto-generation isn't occurring. See Llama Llama (TV series) or The Flash (2014 TV series) as two examples. Each of theirs should be 2018 multi-national TV series or program and 2014 2018 American TV series or program, respectively, but both are missing the years though they have data in the |first_aired= parameters (using {{Start date}}. Perhaps that's the problem, the String module isn't looking at or accounting for that? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 17:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that was tricky, but I think I have fixed it. At some point, empty values of |released= and/or |first_aired= were being passed through, and that was causing the year to be left out. I think it was happening before the most recent changes. (ETA: My edits left a few hundred pages in the lower case short description category. I am clearing them out now.)– Jonesey95 (talk) 18:23, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95: Really appreciate you giving it a look over! I only got so far with my template/module knowledge, so really appreciate it. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 20:06, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]