This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Essay template.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

Archives: 1, 2Auto-archiving period: 365 days

Essays

This page is within the scope of WikiProject Wikipedia essays, a collaborative effort to organise and monitor the impact of Wikipedia essays. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion. For a listing of essays see the essay directory.EssaysWikipedia:WikiProject EssaysTemplate:WikiProject EssaysWikiProject Wikipedia essays pages The above rating was automatically assessed using data on pageviews, watchers, and incoming links.

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

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) reply

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

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) reply

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

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) reply

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please change

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

to

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

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

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

As of now, the shortcut index just says "SHO:RTCUT". That is a red link, and is not likely to redirect to this page as it is not relevant. Can someone help change this and make a proper list of shortcuts? Thank you! 2003 LN 6 06:35, 15 February 2024 (UTC) reply