Template talk:By whom

Merge proposal

This should probably be merged into {{who}}, with an added flag | with a value of yes (use "by whom" form) or anything else/blank (go with {{who}}'s default wording). Would require a bot to replace the instances already deployed, which are all over the place. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

A straight replace seems ok to me. Some of the redirects were formerly redirects to "who" anyway. Rich Farmbrough, 20:38 27 September 2008 (UTC).

Template is broken.

See [1] for example. Caused by [2]. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:14, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Reverted by me, and Rich informed. Tonywalton ^Talk 17:40, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Resolved

Rich Farmbrough, 17:47 31 March 2009 (UTC).

Grammatical lack

When I write "{{says who}}" in the offending subjective text, I wish a verb in the template such as ^{[claimed by whome?]}, not a simple ^{[by whome?]}. "By whome?" doesn't explain what I'm after: I wish that this sentence is rewritten to a sourced citation. If a "claimed" is appended before the rest, I signal that I wish to know

"who claims? Please add the name, address, shoe number and hat number of the claimant, and also add a citation!"

If "claim" is missing in the template, there simply are to many verbs to choose between, such as "worn by whome", "eaten by whome", "rejected by whome", "hailed by whome". ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 13:26, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

BTW: shoe number reveals whether they're dwarves, the rest is obvious. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 13:29, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I altered {{says who}} to not redirect here. On the other hand the doc is unified between the two templates. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 17:07, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Editprotected request involving this template

This message is to inform people monitoring this talk page that there is an "editprotected" request involving this and several other templates at Template talk:! cymru.lass ^{(hit me up)}⁄_{(background check)} 20:10, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Edit request on 12 February 2012

The title parameter's text begins T he material, but it should begin The material; i.e. there is an extraneous space. Gorobay (talk) 16:32, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:21, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

By who?

Whenever this template seems to be commonly used, say like this: "It has been suggested [by whom]" it is grammatically incorrect, I believe. This is one of those less common cases where whom is used when who ought to be. Dissecting the sentence, "it" is the object, "suggested" is the "verb" and "who" is the subject. "Whom" is only used when it is on the receiving end of the verb (i.e. when it is the object, "whom did you call?"). Who is used when it is doing the action, which it seems to be. ("who called you?") Perhaps we can change this template OR make an alternate "by who?" template. Why am I drawing this distinction? Well, it seems to me that if you say "by whom" you are trying to follow the who/whom distinctions, but that is incorrect. Please, a grammarian help me! Correct me if I'm wrong! Sansveni (talk) 00:13, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I think you're wrong. "by whom" is a prepositional phrase, and in a prepositional phrase we use the object form (where that matters). A useful trick for "who" vs "whom" is to replace it with "he" or "him" and see if it makes sense, although you may have to take into account Wh-movement. Anomie⚔ 15:39, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 19 September 2013

Please | link = Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words to | link = Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words#Unsupported_attributions to avoid the redirect. -- Cheers, Riley 03:09, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:46, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Add 'Visual effect'

Per the who template i would suggest adding the same 'Visual effect' example under the usage header. Also, wouldn't it be better to also use {{By whom|{{subst:DATE}}}} instead of manually adding the date? Husky ^{(talk page)} 23:26, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

This second point I don't see. There is no way to add the date automatically. We simply copy the code from the documentation page, or yes, type it out. Debresser (talk) 01:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

In any case the template documentation is in a separate page, Template:By whom/doc, which is not protected. You don't need to ask other editors to edit the documentation for you. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:44, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Optional link to talk page section

There was a clear consensus to implement support for an optional link to an associated talk page section, which has been done. Cunard (talk) 21:46, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

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.

---

I've utilized the |post-text= parameter in {{Fix}} to implement support for an optional link to an associated talk page section - in the sandbox version.

The use of {{By whom|date=Today|talk=Foo bar}} ( or |section= or |discuss= ) would render if this feature were adopted as is.

I think it could be valuable to have this option, and would appreciate your consideration. fredgandt 02:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

• Support. Sounds fair, even though I don't see it used at all. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 16:10, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
• Support. I don't know if I would or would not use it but I think it would be valuable to have this and nothing would be broken by its inclution. Hungryce (talk) 17:24, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I just want to add that maybe there should be an optional parameter for what should be said (right now it is "Discuss" but it could be "Talk" or something simmilar if need comes up). Hungryce (talk) 20:39, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

For continuity and technical simplicity, I think the visible link text should be standardized. Personally I prefer "Discuss" in this context to "Talk". fredgandt 11:55, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree that "Discuss" is much better than "Talk". I don't really know much about templates right now but I see that a lot of them have extera parameters for situations that are not 'normal'. In that situation you could go with |post-text= parameter in {{Fix}} solution that you use now or write the wikitext yourself. This would probaby be ok for the sort of person who needs that as very few times would that be needed. On a side note, is this parameter you are thinking of optional (you said it would be)? If so then why did you decide to have an WP:RFC? I think you could have followed WP:BOLD (i hope that is the right link) because if there is a problem it would not effect much if you tested it already. Also I personly like the parameter to be called |section= because it tells you exacly what to put in. Hungryce (talk) 16:06, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Although we can be bold, we can also be humble :-) There's no deadline and the wisdom of crowds requires a crowd. If the sky were falling I might leap into the fray, but all the while I'm listening to The Kinks' Mr. Songbird I just can't be feisty ;-)

As for the technical stuff: The way I wrote the test implementation, to call the functionality, we can use |talk=, |section= or |discuss= to add the section heading. I'll document them all if the change goes live. But to change the displayed text, there'd have to be a little extra code that defaulted to something standard, but depending on what the user put in the template, changed to suit. As I say though, I think that's a bad idea. If it rolls out, and is used, imagine if every time you saw it, it said something different? That incontinuity would rub people the wrong way (it would me).

Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you ever want help with techy things like templates, scripts and such. fredgandt 16:38, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree that having it say somthing different every where would be bad and that if it really was important to have something different someone could do it maualy and not haveing that option would make it less likelly for people to have something different then everywhere else without a good reason. Hungryce (talk) 18:39, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

• Support; sounds like a great idea. APerson (talk!) 04:02, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

• Questions: Any concerns about the rendering; the "Discuss" link text or the dash? Should it render an error message if the section is incorrectly formatted and/or add the page to a maintenance category? fredgandt 05:32, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Done - I am satisfied that there are no objections, so have added the param and updated the documentation. Thanks for your feedback  fredgandt 23:15, 21 April 2016 (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.

Possibly useful off-label use case

This was recently found in the lead at Google Play:

Many applications can be targeted to specific users based on a particular hardware attribute of their device, such as a motion sensor (for motion-dependent games) or a front-facing camera (for online video calling).

The dubious grammatical structure set off my brochureware alarm, and I waded in with a sledge hammer. Then I started actually thinking.

Many applications can be targeted to specific users based on a particular hardware attribute of their device, such as a motion sensor (for motion-dependent games) or a front-facing camera (for online video calling).

What makes this come across as brochureware is that both "many" and "can be" are qualitative restrictions cooking in the same kitchen. Then "based on" wades into the conversation, and you don't know which chef to slay. It shouldn't be the reader's job to decide this (therefore brochureware rarely passes such a golden opportunity up).

Had I been in a blind hurry, I might have wanted to handle the problem like this:

Many applications can be targeted to specific users based on a particular hardware attribute of their device, such as a motion sensor (for motion-dependent games) or a front-facing camera (for online video calling).

Not only are there two chefs in the kitchen, but there are many other parties at the table holding knives, and looking vaguely chef-like.

Where this wants to go is something like this (but more gracefully worded):

Where appropriate, application developers may selectively target users of suitable devices based by feature requisite, as commonly practiced when an application depends on a particular hardware attribute of the device, such as a motion sensor (for motion-dependent games) or a front-facing camera (for online video calling).

I don't seem to be able to get the tone right on this sentence (for the audience of this page), so perhaps I would have been better off simply flagging the problem and moving along.

Then I realized that this is actually an unorthodox use case of "by whom", worthy of explicit mention.

• by whose authority
• by whose agency

If this template ought not cover the latter, what template should? And how will the average spot-checking diligence bunny such as myself find out? Most usefully, by direct mention in the article here. (A spot-checking diligence bunny RTFMs all the time, but never front to back, and thus relies immensely on prominent "see also"s link-farmed at the usual suspects.) — MaxEnt 19:37, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Parameter checking

Jonesey95, It looks like there is no parameter checking here, like in {{cn}}. I just ran across a {{by whom}} with "July 2020" instead of "date=July 2020"; there was no error and it was not put in the correct monthly category. MB 03:52, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

 Done. Please ping me if I messed anything up. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:22, 15 July 2020 (UTC)