Template talk:Citations broken from PEIS limit

New template for pages that exceed PEIS limit and have references displaying improperly

– Copied this discussion from here. I removed the template at the top of the section. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 01:10, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I just now created a template for citations where the references display incorrectly because of the size limit. I think it would be a good idea to put it on the article so the many people who read this at least understand the reason why some of the references are missing and how they can find them. I'm just posting this here to get consensus to add it in such a heavily trafficked article. Zoozaz1 (talk) 21:02, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is great! It would definitely help draw editor attention to the issue whenever it arises. It would also raise general awareness of the limitation. I'd change the wording of the first sentence from "This article exceeds the size limit." to something like "This article exceeds Wikipedia's page size limit." Perhaps the edit source sentence can be shortened. Hopefully, this is the type of thing where the warning generally does not persist for more than a day or two before the issue is resolved. - Wikmoz (talk) 21:14, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the advice on the template. I was also wondering if it would be possible to link directly to viewing or editing the source of the page from the template itself, similar to how it directly links to the talk page. There do seem to be a few other articles were this issue is happening as well. Zoozaz1 (talk) 21:46, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Directing users to view the page source and navigate the appropriate section may be hopeless, especially in the longer articles with PEIS issues. Perhaps just something like: "To view the missing references, view the article in edit mode." with a link to the visual editor veaction=edit? - Wikmoz (talk) 22:42, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's a fair point, I changed the template to link to the visual editor. The only problem is as of now I just linked to the section of this article rather than the general link to any article this template is on, but for now this article is the most pressing. Zoozaz1 (talk) 23:04, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Zoozaz1 and Wikmoz:, if you use the code [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|veaction=edit}} link text], you can bring up the visual editor when the link is clicked; I'll add it to the template. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:46, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Tenryuu: Thanks for the edit; do you know if there is any way to automatically jump to the section entitled references across all pages when clicking the link? Zoozaz1 (talk) 00:03, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Zoozaz1,

On hold. This is out of my technical expertise but I've asked a question over at VPT to get input from the experts. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:18, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is it necessary to link to the References section though? May actually be preferable to let the user find the section they were reading and click on the reference number there. - Wikmoz (talk) 01:09, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikmoz, I think it would be more useful to the reader looking for a reference, assuming they remember the number, to go straight to the reference section. Either way, they could scroll up instead (and likely based on where the references are not working the section will be closer to the references than the top). Regardless, this might be moot if there isn't a way to uniformly link to the reference section. Zoozaz1 (talk) 01:49, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think it's ready to put into the article? Zoozaz1 (talk) 23:07, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Any way to link to a specific talk page discussion? Also maybe unlink "references" as that's self explanatory. I'd run with it but maybe we should give other editors another hour or two to chime in. - Wikmoz (talk) 23:12, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good suggestion for the template. I've changed the template, although the problem is in the future linking to a discussion on this specific talk page means other articles won't have a link to their talk page; for now, however, it's fine. Zoozaz1 (talk) 23:46, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Disregard then. I was just thinking it could be an optional parameter that links the word "discuss" when the parameter is filled. I can't seem to find an example though. - Wikmoz (talk) 01:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikmoz, I was able to add the ability to go straight to a specific discussion as a parameter through copying the discuss template. Zoozaz1 (talk) 03:30, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nice! This definitely helps. - Wikmoz (talk) 04:21, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea of a maintenance tag being placed at the top of the article. However, I think it's important to remember that its use should be temporary, as the problem should be resolved as soon as possible; it'd be a disservice to require interested readers to use one of the editors when they have no interest of editing the article for longer than needed. Would you two mind if I copied this discussion over to the template's talk page? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:04, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the template talk might be more appropriate for this discussion. The ultimate goal is definitely to get rid of the template and inform editors of the problen, but in the meantime the only way to the reader to view the missing references would be in edit mode. Zoozaz1 (talk) 00:20, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Categorisation

Currently, this template categorises undated articles into Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, which pages are automatically added to if they exceed the size limit. Dated templates will get placed into monthly subcategories of this category, e.g. Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded from July 2020. I feel that a separate category would be more appropriate for this purpose, as it allows us to tell more easily where this template is needed, by keeping the automatic category sepereate from the category applied by this template. Sorry if I make no sense, I will see if I can do better in the morning, bu tl;dr, the |cat= parameter should be changed to something like Articles where template include size is exceeded. --Danski454 (talk) 01:40, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Danski454, the technical details escape me, but I believe you want this template to emulate {{copy edit}}, where articles are categorised according to the month and year the tag is placed on them? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:25, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

With the current configuration of the template, pages are placed into monthly categories (although these have not been created), these categories are in the format Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded from MONTH YEAR. Undated templates are placed into Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, which is also the parent category of the monthly categories. However, the parent category is automatically applied by software, so it could be confusing if pages are added to this category by the template. Using a different category would make it possible to tell whether a page is categorised by software or by this template. Danski454 (talk) 12:16, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It may be easiest to just remove the categories and just use the automatic categorisation. Danski454 (talk) 12:19, 19 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This really should be a bot-managed template

Thank you for making this template.

However, the main value of this template is to alert users that there is a problem with the page.

It really should be added and removed from pages - or perhaps just "article" pages - which are in the automatically-applied tracking category Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. I don't see any value to having pages that use this template being in a date-category, as we already have https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=categorymembers&cmtitle=Category:Pages_where_template_include_size_is_exceeded&cmprop=title%7Ctimestamp&cmlimit=500&cmnamespace=0&format=xml&cmsort=timestamp&cmdir=desc which is a newest-first list of article pages in that category.

Come to think of it, an even better idea would be to change the underlying Wikimedia code so that if a page was in certain categories, there would be a message at the very top of the page saying "this page may not display correctly, click here for more information" or something like that. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:00, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Davidwr, That's a good point. This is the first template I've made, so I'm not really experienced with all of this category stuff, but would it be possible to automatically add the template to any page in the link you provided and then automatically take it off when the page is fixed? Zoozaz1 (talk) 19:40, 11 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Zoozaz1 That's what bots are for. It's much easier to create a bot than it is to change the underlying Wikimedia code. I'm not a bot-writer but WP:BOTS is a good place to start learning about them and their functions on Wikipedia. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:41, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]