![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
The first line of the documentation of this template says,
{{ ltm}} is a subst: only version of this template. To use it type, for example: {{subst:ltm|1901|1983|Bloggs, Fred}}
One would expect from that the substitution would create a line on the page
and at the bottom of the article would be the categories "1901 births" and "1983 deaths". One would be wrong. What it creates are three lines
That is completely against the desires of the users of this template. If they (we) wanted three lines this template would not be used. I have deleted that section from the documentation.
This template is exactly what is says. Lifetime can be substituted. (This means it produces DEFAULTSORT and the categories) Check discussions above and its code. Lfm is a subst only version. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 22:14, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
The guidelines clearly state that this template should not be used to replace ((tl|DEFAULTSORT}} and vice versa [emphasis mine]. {{ ltm}} has nothing to do with {{ lifetime}}. JimCubb ( talk) 00:23, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
My watchlist this morning is full of edits by Yobot replacing {{Lifetime}} templates I'd added with DEFAULTSORT and birth/death categories. Is {{Lifetime}} now considered deprecated? Should I stop using it altogether (and what should I use instead)? Or had I specifically misapplied it in the cases that Yobot changed? Gonzonoir ( talk) 08:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
It appears that apart from {{ ltm}} we have {{ L}} that was created in August. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Last 6 revisions of Barbara Graham:
How much longer is this going to go on? Gurch ( talk) 09:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
Someone has to talk to FredR. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:05, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
I did. I used {{ Nolifetime}}. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:07, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
|living=
yes. The |listas=
value serves as the sort value for the page.Most of the discussion seems to based on what the template currently does without looking forward and considering some of its future benefits. By simple changes to the template, an entire set of new categories could be automatically created if desired, which might enhance our users' experience. Some examples:
Without the template, it would take a superhuman effort to add the appropriate (future) category to every article it applies to.
Another advantage of the template is that it decreases the size of the article (compared to using DEFAULTSORT and birth/death categories), which means less storage space used on Wikipedia's servers, and faster download times for users (because there is less data to transfer).
I consider the template to be very useful and encourage its continued use. Truthanado ( talk) 00:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
"An entire set of new categories" - category:20th-century births category:Supercentenarians and Category:Vanderbilt family are probably as far as we want to go. Or should we have a category " people called Smith"? Also how would we deal with name changes, spelling variations and hyphenation? I actually think these are basically sound ideas, just not suited for the current state of the Wiki. When the software has progressed a little, much of this will be easy in fact a lot of the metadata is already in micro-card format. Rich Farmbrough, 23:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC).s
|living=
yes, the page gets the Biography of living persons banner and is placed in the category of Biographis of living persons. (If there is a shell, the |blp=
yes parameter does the same thing. There is a {{
blp}} but there is no need to use it.) There is no legitimate way to mark a page for the category of living persons except through templates.As an enthusiast for using {{ lifetime}} when rapidly upgrading a stub article, as a fast way to generate birth and death/"living person" categories and a sort key from minimal input, I declare that I don't care at all whether it's later substituted to generate those categories visibly in the article code! In the light of the discussions above I've now started to use "{{subst:L|" instead of "{{lifetime|" - it's actually a key stroke less to type (given that you need "shift" to get the "|", so might as well type it earlier and hold it down for ":L|"!) So if that keeps everyone happy, I'm happy to carry on using it. I just want a fast input route while adding this info from any biographical stub I'm stub-sorting, to make good use of my time while I've got the article open for editing. PamD ( talk) 22:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
I will no longer care what happens to a page after I add either {{
lifetime}}, where it is applicable, or {{
DEFAULTSORT}}, all other times. All I really care about is that the sort value is correct and that the value also appears as the value for |listas=
on the talk page. If there is a sort value on the main space I use it. If there is not I create one.
If the other categories that {{ lifetime}} populates are absent I will use {{ lifetime}} if it is applicable. I will not use the subst form because I prefer to repair my errors before saving and a substituted template must be saved before its effects can be seen. (Yes, I see the irony in preferring the subst version to this template because this template is so difficult to use correctly.) If lifetime is not applicable, the article is about more than one person, I will use DEFAULTSORT but will not worry about the other category tags. I will put the information on the project banner, however, so that the {{ blp}} banner will be generated if that is appropriate.
Feel free to carry on with the fight to eliminate {{ lifetime}} with no further interference from me. There are 29,178 pages in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter that have resisted all bots and I fear that I am the only person who is willing to work on them manually. (One of the bots was designed specifically so that the editor would not have to do the task manually.) There are also about 600 pages in Category:Biography articles with listas parameter whose value is incorrect as they are listed after "Z".
Please remember two things when using either {{ lifetime}} or the other version.
Happy editing! JimCubb ( talk) 00:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
While the Wikipedia article search feature has some negative issues, one of its cooler features is that it allows category based searches, but IF AND ONLY IF those categories are directly included in the article. As the search documentation notes: "incategory: - using this returns results in a given category (as long as pages are directly categorized, and not transcluded through templates)". In other words, if we were to use the Lifetime template on the Sandy Koufax article, then the article would NOT appear in the results of a search on incategory:"Cy Young Award winners" incategory:"1935 births". This is obviously a deficiency in the search system; it exists for very real technical reasons that may in the longer term be resolvable, but in the current system categories buried in templates are not searchable in this way. Making vital statistics categories such as year of birth and death unsearchable lessens the utility of the encyclopedia. Studerby ( talk) 21:23, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Template:Birthdeath ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been proposed to be merged into this template, please see Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_22#Template:Birthdeath
70.24.248.23 ( talk) 14:07, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Could someone please update this template so it doesn't add article categories when used in userspace, per WP:USERNOCAT? (e.g. User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )/James Francis Jewell Archibald) Maybe add a few well-placed {{ main other}} templates? Thanks! GoingBatty ( talk) 04:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
The first line of the documentation of this template says,
{{ ltm}} is a subst: only version of this template. To use it type, for example: {{subst:ltm|1901|1983|Bloggs, Fred}}
One would expect from that the substitution would create a line on the page
and at the bottom of the article would be the categories "1901 births" and "1983 deaths". One would be wrong. What it creates are three lines
That is completely against the desires of the users of this template. If they (we) wanted three lines this template would not be used. I have deleted that section from the documentation.
This template is exactly what is says. Lifetime can be substituted. (This means it produces DEFAULTSORT and the categories) Check discussions above and its code. Lfm is a subst only version. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 22:14, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
The guidelines clearly state that this template should not be used to replace ((tl|DEFAULTSORT}} and vice versa [emphasis mine]. {{ ltm}} has nothing to do with {{ lifetime}}. JimCubb ( talk) 00:23, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
My watchlist this morning is full of edits by Yobot replacing {{Lifetime}} templates I'd added with DEFAULTSORT and birth/death categories. Is {{Lifetime}} now considered deprecated? Should I stop using it altogether (and what should I use instead)? Or had I specifically misapplied it in the cases that Yobot changed? Gonzonoir ( talk) 08:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
It appears that apart from {{ ltm}} we have {{ L}} that was created in August. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
Last 6 revisions of Barbara Graham:
How much longer is this going to go on? Gurch ( talk) 09:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
Someone has to talk to FredR. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:05, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
I did. I used {{ Nolifetime}}. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 10:07, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
|living=
yes. The |listas=
value serves as the sort value for the page.Most of the discussion seems to based on what the template currently does without looking forward and considering some of its future benefits. By simple changes to the template, an entire set of new categories could be automatically created if desired, which might enhance our users' experience. Some examples:
Without the template, it would take a superhuman effort to add the appropriate (future) category to every article it applies to.
Another advantage of the template is that it decreases the size of the article (compared to using DEFAULTSORT and birth/death categories), which means less storage space used on Wikipedia's servers, and faster download times for users (because there is less data to transfer).
I consider the template to be very useful and encourage its continued use. Truthanado ( talk) 00:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
"An entire set of new categories" - category:20th-century births category:Supercentenarians and Category:Vanderbilt family are probably as far as we want to go. Or should we have a category " people called Smith"? Also how would we deal with name changes, spelling variations and hyphenation? I actually think these are basically sound ideas, just not suited for the current state of the Wiki. When the software has progressed a little, much of this will be easy in fact a lot of the metadata is already in micro-card format. Rich Farmbrough, 23:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC).s
|living=
yes, the page gets the Biography of living persons banner and is placed in the category of Biographis of living persons. (If there is a shell, the |blp=
yes parameter does the same thing. There is a {{
blp}} but there is no need to use it.) There is no legitimate way to mark a page for the category of living persons except through templates.As an enthusiast for using {{ lifetime}} when rapidly upgrading a stub article, as a fast way to generate birth and death/"living person" categories and a sort key from minimal input, I declare that I don't care at all whether it's later substituted to generate those categories visibly in the article code! In the light of the discussions above I've now started to use "{{subst:L|" instead of "{{lifetime|" - it's actually a key stroke less to type (given that you need "shift" to get the "|", so might as well type it earlier and hold it down for ":L|"!) So if that keeps everyone happy, I'm happy to carry on using it. I just want a fast input route while adding this info from any biographical stub I'm stub-sorting, to make good use of my time while I've got the article open for editing. PamD ( talk) 22:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
I will no longer care what happens to a page after I add either {{
lifetime}}, where it is applicable, or {{
DEFAULTSORT}}, all other times. All I really care about is that the sort value is correct and that the value also appears as the value for |listas=
on the talk page. If there is a sort value on the main space I use it. If there is not I create one.
If the other categories that {{ lifetime}} populates are absent I will use {{ lifetime}} if it is applicable. I will not use the subst form because I prefer to repair my errors before saving and a substituted template must be saved before its effects can be seen. (Yes, I see the irony in preferring the subst version to this template because this template is so difficult to use correctly.) If lifetime is not applicable, the article is about more than one person, I will use DEFAULTSORT but will not worry about the other category tags. I will put the information on the project banner, however, so that the {{ blp}} banner will be generated if that is appropriate.
Feel free to carry on with the fight to eliminate {{ lifetime}} with no further interference from me. There are 29,178 pages in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter that have resisted all bots and I fear that I am the only person who is willing to work on them manually. (One of the bots was designed specifically so that the editor would not have to do the task manually.) There are also about 600 pages in Category:Biography articles with listas parameter whose value is incorrect as they are listed after "Z".
Please remember two things when using either {{ lifetime}} or the other version.
Happy editing! JimCubb ( talk) 00:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
While the Wikipedia article search feature has some negative issues, one of its cooler features is that it allows category based searches, but IF AND ONLY IF those categories are directly included in the article. As the search documentation notes: "incategory: - using this returns results in a given category (as long as pages are directly categorized, and not transcluded through templates)". In other words, if we were to use the Lifetime template on the Sandy Koufax article, then the article would NOT appear in the results of a search on incategory:"Cy Young Award winners" incategory:"1935 births". This is obviously a deficiency in the search system; it exists for very real technical reasons that may in the longer term be resolvable, but in the current system categories buried in templates are not searchable in this way. Making vital statistics categories such as year of birth and death unsearchable lessens the utility of the encyclopedia. Studerby ( talk) 21:23, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Template:Birthdeath ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been proposed to be merged into this template, please see Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_22#Template:Birthdeath
70.24.248.23 ( talk) 14:07, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Could someone please update this template so it doesn't add article categories when used in userspace, per WP:USERNOCAT? (e.g. User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )/James Francis Jewell Archibald) Maybe add a few well-placed {{ main other}} templates? Thanks! GoingBatty ( talk) 04:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)