Category talk:Translingual links with redundant alt parameters

How do items enter this category?

@User:Theknightwho If there are no action implications or no specific plans to eliminate the offense that need a category, why have it? DCDuring (talk) 16:08, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring I can't do everything at once. There are two reasons for it:

1. The primary reason is to catch instances where someone has put something like {{l|en|blah|blah}}, since it's annoying clutter. Now that the category exists, it's easier to eliminate them by bot.
2. The other (short term) reason is to catch modules which are causing this to be triggered when it shouldn't be, which is caused by them taking a term, finding there's no alt text, and then just copying it and telling the links module that the alt text is the same as the term. This is a code smell, because it tends to mean work ends up getting duplicated (for complicated reasons I won't go into here). These can be hard to pinpoint, so I'm making the most of eliminating them (which should empty out most of the entries from the categories, too). By far the biggest culprit was Module:affix, which has now been fixed. Theknightwho (talk) 16:16, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

You don't have to do everything at once. The need is to do one thing at a time in accordance with a principle of transparency, in this case, some kind of indication in the category text. I would be happy to use the offending instances in taxonomic entries as an opportunity to clean up such entries more widely since often one error is a sign of a few others. It also might be possible to find a contributor who is causing such things and get them to stop. DCDuring (talk) 16:41, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring I (mistakenly) thought this category was self-explanatory, but you're not the only person who's asked about it so I'll put a fuller explanation in the category description. The very basic version is that it's when you could delete the alt text from a link and it would make no difference to the output.

There's also a corresponding category called (e.g.) Category:Latin links with redundant target parameters, which is the other way around: it's when you should replace the link target with the alt text. For example, {{l|la|dictionarius|dictiōnārius}} could (should) be replaced with {{l|la|dictiōnārius}}, since the macrons are ignored for the purposes of the link automatically. Those categories already have an explanation on them, since it's slightly more subtle. Theknightwho (talk) 16:50, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you don't realize how opaque the operation of our module-operated structures are to most contributors. In these particular cases the causes may differ significantly by language. A start to documentation would be 1. a warning that a new set of categories may be created for a technical purpose, 2. documentation at the parent category, followed by 3. updates on the course of solution, including prevention, possibly with language-specific diagnoses. If this seems cumbersome, then maybe the reform effort is overambitious.

BTW, I would argue that the same principle of transparency should apply to filters and many module behavior changes. DCDuring (talk) 17:00, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho Can you explain what causes Translingual entries to appear in this category with one or more examples? DCDuring (talk) 17:06, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring All of the ones I can see are due to the fact they use one of the affix templates (so they were false positives). Given that's been fixed, they should slowly filter out. There will no doubt be other modules which also need to be modified, but that was the biggest one by far. Theknightwho (talk) 17:10, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho Kind of aggravating. DCDuring (talk) 17:18, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring Unfortunately, that's how just it is, but most contributors don't even know these categories exist. Theknightwho (talk) 17:25, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring I'm not seeing false positives with Category:Translingual links with redundant target parameters. There might be some, but there are plenty of real hits. Theknightwho (talk) 17:28, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho What do you mean by "false positive"? You said above ("so they were false positives"); now you say "plenty of real hits". Are any of the "real hits correctable at the level of the entry? If they are attributable to some module problem, you seem to be crying wolf. DCDuring (talk) 17:36, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring "False positive" = a module issue; "real hit" = something in the entry (or maybe a template, but still in conventional wikitext rather than a module). Note that I was referring to two different categories. Theknightwho (talk) 17:38, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho Can you show me one real example? DCDuring (talk) 17:40, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring Just picking the first five in that category:

1. {{desc|mul|Absinthium|alt=''Absinthium''|bor=1}}
   • {{desc|mul|''Absinthium''|bor=1}}
2. {{synonym of|mul|Melanogrammus aeglefinus|''Melanogrammus aeglefinus''}}
   • {{synonym of|mul|''Melanogrammus aeglefinus''}}
3. {{tl|desc|bor=1|mul|Aloe|alt=''Aloe''|Aloë|alt2=''Aloë''}}
   • {{desc|bor=1|mul|''Aloe''|''Aloë''}}
4. {{desc|mul|Anguilla|alt=''Anguilla''}}
   • {{desc|mul|''Anguilla''}}
5. {{af|en|Arachnida|-oid|lang1=mul|alt1=''Arachnida''}}
   • {{af|en|''Arachnida''|-oid|lang1=mul}}

Theknightwho (talk) 17:55, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho From what list are you working? What ENTRIES in this category are you referring to? DCDuring (talk) 18:02, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring As I already said: the first 5 entries of Category:Translingual links with redundant target parameters. They're absinthium, Aeglefinus linnei, aloe, anguilla and arachnoid, but you could have just clicked on the category. Theknightwho (talk) 18:05, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho The only terms that appeared in my (live) listing of the category are Translingual terms, ie, nothing without initial caps. For some reason that live listing (which still shows more than 1500 items) differs from the list I can see using your link. No wonder we were getting cranky with each other. The servers were giving us different material. I will look at and work from your view and try to get mine updated. DCDuring (talk) 18:20, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring I've mentioned two (similar) categories, and I think you're looking at the wrong one:

1. Category:Translingual links with redundant alt parameters has (to my view) 1,400 entries, and I suspect the vast majority are false positives that will be slowly filtering out.
2. Category:Translingual links with redundant target parameters has 72 entries, and most of them (i.e. all that I've seen so far) seem to be genuine.

Theknightwho (talk) 18:26, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho If you look at the title of this page, the page on which this discussion is taking place, I think you will find that it is you who have been looking at the wrong page. DCDuring (talk) 18:37, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring I know what the discussion page is, but we were clearly discussing more than just this category, and I linked it to you numerous times and explicitly pointed out there were two more than once... Theknightwho (talk) 18:42, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho I'm sorry I couldn't intuit what was going on in your head. I still haven't gotten answers to my questions about this category, but I assume there are all false positives. DCDuring (talk) 19:10, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@User:Theknightwho A good number of these were attributable to the use of {{ll}} instead of {{l}}, sometimes in taxonomic templates, sometimes in etymologies. I've gotten rid of them in taxonomic entries, mostly by replacement with {{l}}. You might want to consider either mass replacement of {{ll}} with {{l}}, a complete pass-through of all parameters in {{ll}} to {{l}}, or some other neutering of {{ll}}. Of course, I don't know how {{ll}} is handled in modules. DCDuring (talk) 21:57, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring Yes, it happens when {{ll}} is nested inside an affix template, which means it must be something that the affix module is doing. It's not immediately obvious what it is, and it might be tricky to debug, so mass-replacement is probably better.

I notice you'd used {{ll}} where the components weren't Translingual - a better solution is (for example) {{suffix|mul|en:some English term|la:some Latin suffix}}, which also has the advantage of saying what the source languages are. Theknightwho (talk) 22:07, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I haven't been using {{ll}} for a while. There was a time some years ago when I was having persistent display issues with {{l}} that no one could/would fix, so I just made {{ll}}, stripping out anything remotely complicated. The way things work now is fine with me, now that I understand that usually fewer keystrokes are required to achieve my desired results using {{l}} and other templates.

Thanks for the reminder about how to eliminate {{l}} (and {{w}}) within other templates. Now that I grasp the system, I will try to apply it wherever I can. DCDuring (talk) 22:18, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't trust myself to do cleanup for the non-taxonomic members of this category. DCDuring (talk) 22:20, 30 December 2023 (UTC)