Template talk:Essay/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Reading time

Added a reading time indicator to the sandbox, see Template:Essay/sandbox. Got the idea from stumbling across Wikipedia:Advice for RfA voters and thought including reading time on some pages might be a good idea; essays seem like good initial candidates. Unfortunately, no function exists to get the readable prose (in characters or words), so this can't be calculated automatically, although a bot could perhaps do it and update templates periodically. Medium uses 265 WPM as their default when showing read time. Especially helpful for newer editors imo. Thoughts? (ping Sdkb, as you've done work elsewhere for new editors' accessibility) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:41, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, that's an interesting thought. I think it'd be more useful if we figured out how to write the function to calculate it automatically, since otherwise the values will vary widely depending on what individual editors think. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:18, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Moxy making unilateral undiscussed changes

@Moxy: Where is the consensus for this edit? Per WP:TPECON, you should know better than to make substantive changes without discussion, let alone to do so without using an edit summary. The change is not an improvement in my view — it messes up the formatting, makes the line you changed redundant to the last line, and introduces a second link to WP:CONSENSUS which is unneeded. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:04, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

So funny you are ...have no problem going back to my original wording..but will wait for a second opinion Template talk:Information page# "It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.".--Moxy 🍁 11:06, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@Moxy: If you have no problem reverting yourself, then go ahead and revert yourself — BRD doesn't require waiting for a second editor to ask. Your discussion on an entirely different template with one other editor who you didn't even agree with is a pitiful justification. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:43, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@Moxy: Following up, you have continued to ignore WP:TPECON, which is grounds for WP:TPEREVOKE. There is a reasonable argument to be made that we should modify the wording, but the way you did it has issues, and a change of this scale (this template has more than 4700 transclusions) requires discussion. I should not have to ask you twice — please revert yourself. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:14, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Was waiting on a second opinion...I dont do well with demands by someone who has a reputation of gaming the system and lies. But for now I will revert back to my old wording. --Moxy 🍁 11:20, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Not an encyclopedia article

Should the template also clearly note, "This is not an encyclopedia article," similarly to what Template:User page does? Some essays receive incoming traffic from search engines (probably due to the lack of standalone articles covering the topics in Mainspace), and this appears to cause some confusion. (I noticed this from WP:Chesterton's fence. I've added a hatnote there, but maybe a general warning is warranted.) --Paul_012 (talk) 02:08, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I'd support this. There's a lot more potential for Wikipedia essays to be confused with articles than there is for user pages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:17, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@Paul 012: I added the note. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:27, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! --Paul_012 (talk) 00:14, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Making clearer that essays are not policies or guidelines

I think the fact that essays are not guidance is something that newer editors often miss, since they don't bother to read the fine print in this template, just the bolded part. Any idea on how we might remedy that? We have room to make the bolded part a little bit longer if we can find a concise way to communicate there what essays are and are not. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:24, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

contributor=editor - improving consistency - join the discussion on WP_talk:Wikipedians

Please could you update: "It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors." > "It contains the advice or opinions of one or more editors."

"editors" versus "contributors" score (to make realize overwhelming "editor" usage, and thus that "editor" must be privileged). Some examples:

Wikipedia:Essays: 8 x "editors" versus 0 x "contributors" (I edited the page to add 1 x "contributor"; to state "contributor=editor")
Category:Wikipedia_essays: 141 x "editors" versus 2 x "contributors"
Wikipedia:Wikipedia_essays: 6 x "editors" versus 2 x "contributors"
Wikipedia:The value of essays: 5 x "editors" versus 0 x "contributors"
Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays: 9 x "editors" versus 0 x "contributors"
Wikipedia:Don't cite essays or proposals as if they were policy: 5 x "editors" versus 0 x "contributors" + Template:Essay 1 x "contributor"

So there are over 2000 essays. Most of them showing only 1 occurence of "contributor" on their page (because of Template:Essay transclusion). This can "confuse" newcomers, readers, non-native English speaking people if they don't know that "contributor=editor". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Antoine Legrand (talk • contribs) 11:09, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Antoine Legrand: Please remember to sign your comments with ~~~~ and in general to communicate clearly. On the question of "contributor" vs. "editor" in this template, I don't have a strong preference, but I think "editor" might be mildly better than "contributor". However, given that this is a mass change and that you've been getting some pushback (or at least queries) from doing it elsewhere, I'd like to see evidence of consensus before implementing. Also, despite the link to the centralized discussion, this is still somewhat a WP:TALKFORK, and it might've been better to bring it up at the other page and just put a {{Please see}} here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:36, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians § Template:Essay

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians § Template:Essay. Antoine Legrand (talk) 10:39, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Automatic short description?

I'd like to have this template add the automatic short description "Essay on editing Wikipedia". The specific code would be {{Project other|{{short description|Essay on editing Wikipedia|noreplace}}}}. Are there any concerns? I'll implement in a little while if not. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:29, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:04, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Edit request

Please change

[[File:Essay.svg|30px]]

to

[[File:Essay.svg|30px|link=|alt=]]

per MOS:BLANKALT. Thanks! HouseBlaster^talk 18:49, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done SWinxy (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Categorisation and DEFAULTSORT

Is there any way that this template can be modified to recognise the use of {{DEFAULTSORT}}, and to sort essays into the relevant category appropriately? To take this userspace essay as an example, I added the defaultsort magic word to negate the impact of the quotation mark at the start of the title on sorting; but (I’m guessing) as this template uses {{SUBPAGENAME}}, the default sort key seems to be being overridden when I look in Category:User essays.

Apologies if I’m missing something! Best, ^user:A smart kitten_meow 13:41, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Probably not technically feasible. But see next subtopic.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:27, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Alternative: category sort string

The way to fix this is to support adding a category sort string. In bare category markup, this looks like [[Category:Books about foobar|Bazquux, The]].

• Using a {{!}} escape trick should work, as it does in, e.g., {{Distinguish|Plus and minus signs#Minus sign{{!}}Minus sign}} to produce link output of [[Plus and minus signs#Minus sign|Minus sign]].  But when you do {{Essay|cat=Category:User essays on categorization{{!}}Over-categorisation}} to produce cat. link output of [[Category:User essays on categorization|Over-categorisation]],  this fails for some reason, and the literal string Category:User essays on categorization|Over-categorisation appears in the rendered page text instead. I'm not sure why this is happening or what the fix is.
• If for some reason the above problem is not soluble, then the next best thing would be to add a |sort= parameter that would take a value like |sort=Over-categorisation.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC)