This template ought to place articles into a category, for example, category:all articles needing copy edit. 38.100.34.2 22:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
This template used to be correct, but became confused following a 2011 merge. As a result, this template now lacks a single coherent topic (oh, irony!) as the banner says one thing, and the usage quite another, each one a legacy of a different source template. As it stands, it isn't really possible to use this template in a consistent way. Imho, the two templates never should have been merged in the first place, and the proper resolution now is to unmerge back to two templates (with a possible Template rename on one of them, to avoid confusion going forward).
There used to be two related templates with the word Incoherent in the name, one dealing with articles that had text that was incoherent in the normal sense of the word, i.e., incomprehensible, and a second template indicating that the article lacked a single topic, i.e., it didn't "cohere" in that sense. These two situations are not at all the same thing. These two templates were merged in 2011, with unfortunate results.
History
Template:Incoherent-topic was created in 2008 with the content This article may
lack a single coherent topic. (See
template history.) The content and banner remained substantially the same until 2011; articles containing {{Incoherent-topic}}
were categorized in
Category:Wikipedia articles without coherent topic. (
version of Oct 2010) It is now
a redirect.
Template:Incoherent was created in 2006 with usage note This template is used to signal that some of the sentences or the text as a whole in a section of an article do not relay an understandable message. By the end of day one the banner read It has been claimed that some or all of this section is incoherent and not understandable, and should possibly be reworded if the intended meaning can be determined.
At 13:21, 20 December 2011 Template:Incoherent-topic was merged ( diff) with Template:Incoherent (the former is now a redirect; see template history, user contribs from Dec 2011), with the result that Template:Incoherent is now, well, no longer about a single topic, or at least is self-contradictory. The banner now begins, This article or section lacks a single coherent topic..." but the usage begins, "This template is used to signal that some of the sentences in a section or the text as a whole in that section do not relay an understandable message. Categorization is into the category previously used by Template:Incoherent-topic.
Original merge motivation
Imho the 2011 merge was a mistake. The remaining template is a self-contradictory jumble, and there is a void now where the other template used to be (or rather, the void is the original meaning of this template, which now attempts to carry both meanings with the result that it carries neither one effectively).
I believe that the motivation for the merge may have been partly due to the fact that the word coherent has several meanings in English, but the antonym incoherent does not negate all of them: In particular, while "coherent" has (at least) two meanings, 1) "speaking clearly and logically", and 2) "united as or forming a whole", the antonym "incoherent" however, only negates the first sense, and not the second:
in.co.her.ent: adj. 1. (of spoken or written language) expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear (he screamed some incoherent threat)
(Of a person) Unable to speak intelligibly: I splutter several more times before becoming incoherent. (Of an ideology, policy, or system) internally inconsistent, illogical: the film is ideologically incoherent.
2. Physics (of waves) having no definite or stable wave relationship.
--New Oxford American Dictionary, 2001, Oxf. U. Press, NY, p. 859.
Note that (except for "ideology", etc., but not for speech) the definiton of incoherent does not include the antonym of the sense "united and forming a whole" of coherent . (NOAD, coherent, def. 3 p. 332).
Putting it another way: "lacking a single coherent topic" is not a valid meaning of "incoherent". And that is the crux of the problem here, and misunderstanding that point was likely the springboard for the original intent to merge.
Recommendation
But whatever the original motivation was, we now have a problem. As for a resolution, here's what I would recommend:
I'll have to rummage about and see if there's a particular place to signal an unmerge request. In the meanwhile, I'd like to hear others' opinions. Mathglot ( talk) 21:46, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Ambox|cat=
argument, and a sandbox test showed no categorization.
Mathglot (
talk)
00:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)Hello @
JJMC89,
PamD,
Jeraphine Gryphon, and
This, that and the other:: here's my first cut at template language for the two templates. If it makes it easier or faster for the template writer, I could add actual, draft /doc
pages either here as subpages or in my sandbox; let me know if that would help. What follows is more of a meta-description with comments attached. Double-angle bracket notation <<thus>> is my shorthand for a link to be supplied. I'd like to hear some feedback from other interested editors before we proceed with template creation.
Template Name: Incomprehensible? (Need feedback on this)
What this template is about: An article, or section, which contains incomprehensible text. This is the resurrection and improvement of old template Incoherent of 02:56, 26 August 2011.
Possible redirects: Incoherent (or is this too confusing, given the history? Or a disambig page?)
Banner text: As a starting point, return to version of 02:56, 26 August 2011, then upgrade it. Perhaps to:
The text in this article or section may be incomprehensible or very hard to understand, and should be reworded if the intended meaning can be determined. The <<talk page>> may have details.
The text in this article or section may be incomprehensible or very hard to understand, and should be reworded if the intended meaning can be determined. Sometimes this can be due to machine translation. The <<talk page>> may have details.
Usage notes: As a starting point, return usage notes to the version of
02:56, 26 August 2011 (except "do not convey (not relay) an understandable message") and then upgrade it on the model of
Template:Confusing including various banner examples, use of |reason=
param, a Template parameter table, and a See also similar to the one in {{
Confusing}}. There could be some text about possibly using
Template:Rough translation banner instead which labels articles or sections that may be machine-translated, if it seems more appropriate. The See also should include a link to
Template:Rough translation.
Auto-categorization: into Category:Wikipedia articles needing clarification (just like for {{ Clarify}}, {{ Confusing}}, and {{ Ambiguous}}).
Params: section, reason, date, small (maybe), 1, Talk, xlate-banner.
|talk=
pointing to the Talk section where the matter is discussed. Also, would like to see param |xlate-banner=yes|no
(default=no) whose only effect would be the selection of the banner with the appropriate wording. No picks the short banner, yes selects the long banner with mention of possible machine translation.Other:
Template name: Unfocused
What this template is about: Articles that lack a single topic of focus. This is the resurrection and improvement of old Template Incoherent-topic of 13:18 11 Oct 2010.
Possible Redirects: Unfocussed, Lacks focus, Incoherent-topic
Banner text:
This article may lack focus, or may be about one more than one topic. Please help improve this article, probably by splitting the article and/or by introducing a disambiguation page, or discuss this issue on the <<talk page>>. ( help)
Usage notes: This template will categorize tagged articles into Category:Wikipedia articles lacking focus. This template is a self-reference. This template is not useful for Subst.
Auto-categorization: Into category as noted in Usage notes above. Note: this requires a concomittant category move—see below.
Params: date, small (maybe), Talk.
Other:
|section=
param here, as lack of focus applies to the article as a whole. It makes even less sense to have an *-inline version of this template.Cordially, Mathglot ( talk) 06:14, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Please discuss Mathglot's suggestions below.
{{ Incomprehensible}}
Parameters
|
---|
{{Incomprehensible |reason = |date = |small = |sect = <!-- Changes 'article' to the value or sets it to 'section' if 'y', 'yes', '1', or 'true' --> |section = <!-- [alias for sect] --> |1 = <!-- [alias for sect] --> |talk = <!-- Talk page section --> |2 = <!-- [alias for talk] --> |machine = <!-- If 'y', 'yes', '1', or 'true' adds "Sometimes this can be due to machine translation." --> }} |
The first draft is ready. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 22:09, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
|machine
is better than |xlate-banner
, thanks for that.)
Mathglot (
talk)
04:48, 12 October 2015 (UTC)|talk=Template one 2
for
User talk:Mathglot/sandbox/Test pages/Valencian/step one#Template one 2). —
JJMC89 (
T·
C)
00:29, 13 October 2015 (UTC)@
JJMC89 and
PamD: So I added what I thought would be a simple example to the doc (modeled after an example at
Template:Confusing/doc) to the */doc page showing the code and the small banner it generates, but it omits the optional 'machine translation' boilerplate if params small
and machine
are both used simultaneously. You ought to be able to see it at the bottom of the Examples section in the live template.
[Note T 1] I've included a courtesy copy below:
{{
Incomprehensible|small=left|machine=yes}}
generates:
[Note T 2]
This article may be very hard to understand. Sometimes this can be due to
machine translation. |
Notes for T1 testing:
nocat=1
not shown in the didactic illustration, but I tried it without that param and it doesn't seem to be the cause of the problem.
Mathglot ( talk) 04:31, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
/doc
page itself; something similar happened before, which is now fixed, but here is the same problem back again from a different edit. I don't understand this, why doesn't the template view with the transcluded doc section render the changes I just made to the doc page?{{ Incomprehensible-inline}} is done and has been added to {{ Inline cleanup tags}}. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 22:16, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
{{ Unfocused}}
Parameters
|
---|
{{Unfocused |reason = |date = |talk = <!-- Talk page section --> |1 = <!-- [alias for talk] --> }} |
Template:Incoherent-topic has been moved and updated. I will add documentation later. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 15:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
@
JJMC89:What happens now with
Template:Incoherent and its associated talk page (this page)? I originally assumed that
Template:Incoherent would be renamed to
Template:Unfocused but both templates exist now. The former should be a
redirect to the latter. Perhaps this talk page could be simply renamed to
Template talk:Unfocused.
Mathglot (
talk)
23:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
I assume that at some point we "cut over" from use of the old templates, to using the new ones. Not sure how this happens exactly, is there a formal mechanism? Or is it simply the fact that the old names disappear, perhaps redirected to new ones, and categories get renamed?
However it all happens, there's an issue with a maintenance category to address.
The category for template two will be Category:Wikipedia articles lacking focus (as currently specified). There are currently 136 articles in existing Category:Wikipedia articles without coherent topic, and I was assuming that we would simply rename it to the new category name at cut-over.
Because of the confusion in the two templates, I wanted to get an idea how many of the articles in the existing category are correctly tagged, such that renaming the category would do right by the articles contained therein. To get a feel for this, I examined 10% (13) of them, and here's what I found: Correctly tagged: 2 (bc); probably correct: 5 (defjk); probably incorrect: 2 (gh); incorrect: 4 (ailm). Here are the ones I examined, and a brief comment about each:
If this is typical, only a minority would be incorrectly categorized by a category rename, so probably we should carry out the category name at cutover. (And that leaves 120, which is not too many to review one by one.) Mathglot ( talk) 10:11, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
section
optional param in the
Slovakia section of the
Hungarophobia article made me have some second thoughts about whether {{
Unfocused}} should allow an optional section
param or not. I still think it should not, as it would muddy the waters about what the template was primarily for—although expository writing instructors might and should insist that each section or even paragraph about an essay be clearly about one topic, how far do we want to take this in WP? I think the {{
Unfocused}} template would be clearer as an Article-level banner only, but I did want to raise the issue, in case anyone wanted to comment.
Mathglot (
talk)
10:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)This template ought to place articles into a category, for example, category:all articles needing copy edit. 38.100.34.2 22:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
This template used to be correct, but became confused following a 2011 merge. As a result, this template now lacks a single coherent topic (oh, irony!) as the banner says one thing, and the usage quite another, each one a legacy of a different source template. As it stands, it isn't really possible to use this template in a consistent way. Imho, the two templates never should have been merged in the first place, and the proper resolution now is to unmerge back to two templates (with a possible Template rename on one of them, to avoid confusion going forward).
There used to be two related templates with the word Incoherent in the name, one dealing with articles that had text that was incoherent in the normal sense of the word, i.e., incomprehensible, and a second template indicating that the article lacked a single topic, i.e., it didn't "cohere" in that sense. These two situations are not at all the same thing. These two templates were merged in 2011, with unfortunate results.
History
Template:Incoherent-topic was created in 2008 with the content This article may
lack a single coherent topic. (See
template history.) The content and banner remained substantially the same until 2011; articles containing {{Incoherent-topic}}
were categorized in
Category:Wikipedia articles without coherent topic. (
version of Oct 2010) It is now
a redirect.
Template:Incoherent was created in 2006 with usage note This template is used to signal that some of the sentences or the text as a whole in a section of an article do not relay an understandable message. By the end of day one the banner read It has been claimed that some or all of this section is incoherent and not understandable, and should possibly be reworded if the intended meaning can be determined.
At 13:21, 20 December 2011 Template:Incoherent-topic was merged ( diff) with Template:Incoherent (the former is now a redirect; see template history, user contribs from Dec 2011), with the result that Template:Incoherent is now, well, no longer about a single topic, or at least is self-contradictory. The banner now begins, This article or section lacks a single coherent topic..." but the usage begins, "This template is used to signal that some of the sentences in a section or the text as a whole in that section do not relay an understandable message. Categorization is into the category previously used by Template:Incoherent-topic.
Original merge motivation
Imho the 2011 merge was a mistake. The remaining template is a self-contradictory jumble, and there is a void now where the other template used to be (or rather, the void is the original meaning of this template, which now attempts to carry both meanings with the result that it carries neither one effectively).
I believe that the motivation for the merge may have been partly due to the fact that the word coherent has several meanings in English, but the antonym incoherent does not negate all of them: In particular, while "coherent" has (at least) two meanings, 1) "speaking clearly and logically", and 2) "united as or forming a whole", the antonym "incoherent" however, only negates the first sense, and not the second:
in.co.her.ent: adj. 1. (of spoken or written language) expressed in an incomprehensible or confusing way; unclear (he screamed some incoherent threat)
(Of a person) Unable to speak intelligibly: I splutter several more times before becoming incoherent. (Of an ideology, policy, or system) internally inconsistent, illogical: the film is ideologically incoherent.
2. Physics (of waves) having no definite or stable wave relationship.
--New Oxford American Dictionary, 2001, Oxf. U. Press, NY, p. 859.
Note that (except for "ideology", etc., but not for speech) the definiton of incoherent does not include the antonym of the sense "united and forming a whole" of coherent . (NOAD, coherent, def. 3 p. 332).
Putting it another way: "lacking a single coherent topic" is not a valid meaning of "incoherent". And that is the crux of the problem here, and misunderstanding that point was likely the springboard for the original intent to merge.
Recommendation
But whatever the original motivation was, we now have a problem. As for a resolution, here's what I would recommend:
I'll have to rummage about and see if there's a particular place to signal an unmerge request. In the meanwhile, I'd like to hear others' opinions. Mathglot ( talk) 21:46, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
Ambox|cat=
argument, and a sandbox test showed no categorization.
Mathglot (
talk)
00:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)Hello @
JJMC89,
PamD,
Jeraphine Gryphon, and
This, that and the other:: here's my first cut at template language for the two templates. If it makes it easier or faster for the template writer, I could add actual, draft /doc
pages either here as subpages or in my sandbox; let me know if that would help. What follows is more of a meta-description with comments attached. Double-angle bracket notation <<thus>> is my shorthand for a link to be supplied. I'd like to hear some feedback from other interested editors before we proceed with template creation.
Template Name: Incomprehensible? (Need feedback on this)
What this template is about: An article, or section, which contains incomprehensible text. This is the resurrection and improvement of old template Incoherent of 02:56, 26 August 2011.
Possible redirects: Incoherent (or is this too confusing, given the history? Or a disambig page?)
Banner text: As a starting point, return to version of 02:56, 26 August 2011, then upgrade it. Perhaps to:
The text in this article or section may be incomprehensible or very hard to understand, and should be reworded if the intended meaning can be determined. The <<talk page>> may have details.
The text in this article or section may be incomprehensible or very hard to understand, and should be reworded if the intended meaning can be determined. Sometimes this can be due to machine translation. The <<talk page>> may have details.
Usage notes: As a starting point, return usage notes to the version of
02:56, 26 August 2011 (except "do not convey (not relay) an understandable message") and then upgrade it on the model of
Template:Confusing including various banner examples, use of |reason=
param, a Template parameter table, and a See also similar to the one in {{
Confusing}}. There could be some text about possibly using
Template:Rough translation banner instead which labels articles or sections that may be machine-translated, if it seems more appropriate. The See also should include a link to
Template:Rough translation.
Auto-categorization: into Category:Wikipedia articles needing clarification (just like for {{ Clarify}}, {{ Confusing}}, and {{ Ambiguous}}).
Params: section, reason, date, small (maybe), 1, Talk, xlate-banner.
|talk=
pointing to the Talk section where the matter is discussed. Also, would like to see param |xlate-banner=yes|no
(default=no) whose only effect would be the selection of the banner with the appropriate wording. No picks the short banner, yes selects the long banner with mention of possible machine translation.Other:
Template name: Unfocused
What this template is about: Articles that lack a single topic of focus. This is the resurrection and improvement of old Template Incoherent-topic of 13:18 11 Oct 2010.
Possible Redirects: Unfocussed, Lacks focus, Incoherent-topic
Banner text:
This article may lack focus, or may be about one more than one topic. Please help improve this article, probably by splitting the article and/or by introducing a disambiguation page, or discuss this issue on the <<talk page>>. ( help)
Usage notes: This template will categorize tagged articles into Category:Wikipedia articles lacking focus. This template is a self-reference. This template is not useful for Subst.
Auto-categorization: Into category as noted in Usage notes above. Note: this requires a concomittant category move—see below.
Params: date, small (maybe), Talk.
Other:
|section=
param here, as lack of focus applies to the article as a whole. It makes even less sense to have an *-inline version of this template.Cordially, Mathglot ( talk) 06:14, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Please discuss Mathglot's suggestions below.
{{ Incomprehensible}}
Parameters
|
---|
{{Incomprehensible |reason = |date = |small = |sect = <!-- Changes 'article' to the value or sets it to 'section' if 'y', 'yes', '1', or 'true' --> |section = <!-- [alias for sect] --> |1 = <!-- [alias for sect] --> |talk = <!-- Talk page section --> |2 = <!-- [alias for talk] --> |machine = <!-- If 'y', 'yes', '1', or 'true' adds "Sometimes this can be due to machine translation." --> }} |
The first draft is ready. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 22:09, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
|machine
is better than |xlate-banner
, thanks for that.)
Mathglot (
talk)
04:48, 12 October 2015 (UTC)|talk=Template one 2
for
User talk:Mathglot/sandbox/Test pages/Valencian/step one#Template one 2). —
JJMC89 (
T·
C)
00:29, 13 October 2015 (UTC)@
JJMC89 and
PamD: So I added what I thought would be a simple example to the doc (modeled after an example at
Template:Confusing/doc) to the */doc page showing the code and the small banner it generates, but it omits the optional 'machine translation' boilerplate if params small
and machine
are both used simultaneously. You ought to be able to see it at the bottom of the Examples section in the live template.
[Note T 1] I've included a courtesy copy below:
{{
Incomprehensible|small=left|machine=yes}}
generates:
[Note T 2]
This article may be very hard to understand. Sometimes this can be due to
machine translation. |
Notes for T1 testing:
nocat=1
not shown in the didactic illustration, but I tried it without that param and it doesn't seem to be the cause of the problem.
Mathglot ( talk) 04:31, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
/doc
page itself; something similar happened before, which is now fixed, but here is the same problem back again from a different edit. I don't understand this, why doesn't the template view with the transcluded doc section render the changes I just made to the doc page?{{ Incomprehensible-inline}} is done and has been added to {{ Inline cleanup tags}}. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 22:16, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
{{ Unfocused}}
Parameters
|
---|
{{Unfocused |reason = |date = |talk = <!-- Talk page section --> |1 = <!-- [alias for talk] --> }} |
Template:Incoherent-topic has been moved and updated. I will add documentation later. — JJMC89 ( T· C) 15:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
@
JJMC89:What happens now with
Template:Incoherent and its associated talk page (this page)? I originally assumed that
Template:Incoherent would be renamed to
Template:Unfocused but both templates exist now. The former should be a
redirect to the latter. Perhaps this talk page could be simply renamed to
Template talk:Unfocused.
Mathglot (
talk)
23:49, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
I assume that at some point we "cut over" from use of the old templates, to using the new ones. Not sure how this happens exactly, is there a formal mechanism? Or is it simply the fact that the old names disappear, perhaps redirected to new ones, and categories get renamed?
However it all happens, there's an issue with a maintenance category to address.
The category for template two will be Category:Wikipedia articles lacking focus (as currently specified). There are currently 136 articles in existing Category:Wikipedia articles without coherent topic, and I was assuming that we would simply rename it to the new category name at cut-over.
Because of the confusion in the two templates, I wanted to get an idea how many of the articles in the existing category are correctly tagged, such that renaming the category would do right by the articles contained therein. To get a feel for this, I examined 10% (13) of them, and here's what I found: Correctly tagged: 2 (bc); probably correct: 5 (defjk); probably incorrect: 2 (gh); incorrect: 4 (ailm). Here are the ones I examined, and a brief comment about each:
If this is typical, only a minority would be incorrectly categorized by a category rename, so probably we should carry out the category name at cutover. (And that leaves 120, which is not too many to review one by one.) Mathglot ( talk) 10:11, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
section
optional param in the
Slovakia section of the
Hungarophobia article made me have some second thoughts about whether {{
Unfocused}} should allow an optional section
param or not. I still think it should not, as it would muddy the waters about what the template was primarily for—although expository writing instructors might and should insist that each section or even paragraph about an essay be clearly about one topic, how far do we want to take this in WP? I think the {{
Unfocused}} template would be clearer as an Article-level banner only, but I did want to raise the issue, in case anyone wanted to comment.
Mathglot (
talk)
10:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC)