Template talk:def

This template could also incorporate labels without needing a separate template. DTLHS (talk) 16:09, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Same for {{gloss}} --Z 12:54, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Now there are ways to stylize the definition in such a way that it begins with capital letter and ends with dot, if the user desires. --Z 12:54, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

RFD discussion: July 2017–August 2018

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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Template:def

Despite Wiktionary:Votes/2016-07/Placing English definitions in def template or similar, this template sees increasing use by its supported. Consistent with the result of the vote, I propose to delete or deprecate the template. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:46, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

The vote that failed was on using automated or semiautomated edits to put {{def}} everywhere. The manual insertion of it never failed any vote, so there are no grounds for deleting or deprecating it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:24, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, formally, we need a separate process, which is why I have created this RFDO. Nonetheless, the vote shows a widespread opposition to use of {{def}}. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, no it doesn't. It shows a widespread opposition to the use of bots to enforce its exceptionless use, which is quite different. Keep as a very helpful and desperately needed template (at least, as Ungoliant says below, until some other method is found of forcing links in definitions to point to the right target). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:48, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

It's pretty obvious that it does; one only has to read the posts in the vote. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:50, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Keep until another method of making sure links in definitions work correctly becomes established and enforced. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 15:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't understand the need for this template. I would delete it. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@SemperBlotto: See Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2017/July#Proposal: automatically link all links without a section to the English section for a discussion of why either this template or {{l}} needs to be used in at least some definitions, at least until there's some other way of making sure links in definitions always and only point to the English word. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't like it. Equinox ◑ 16:08, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

And I don't like clicking on a supposedly English word in a definition and being taken to something other than an English entry. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

How often does that happen to you?--Dixtosa (talk) 16:27, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Often enough that it pisses me off when it does. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:29, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

From the BP thread, I get the impression this issue only exists for people who use Tabbed Languages, and is due to that gadget taking people to the section for the language they most recently looked at. People who use the regular interface and click a bare link land at the top of the page, where the English section is (or, rarely, Translingual). IMO the solution is to fix Tabbed Languages' behaviour. Occasional use of {{l|en}} when the link-target is a page with multiple languages on it seems like the best interim solution, and also addresses cases where the link target is the English section of the same page. Delete this template. - -sche (discuss) 06:05, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Even without tabbed languages, half the time you end up in the table of contents rather the intended section unless you have configured it to float right. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 12:17, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV: That last problem could be addressed by using the right-hand table of contents gadget. DCDuring (talk) 04:59, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

• It is a bad way of achieving the desired result, but it should be deprecated rather than deleted so that page histories do not become unreadable. — Eru·tuon 06:20, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure how widely it's been used, so we may not need to. This may have started out as an anti-CodeCat grudge reflex- a rather annoying ethical blind spot in someone who takes great pains to be ethically correct- but in general I don't like the idea of wrapping large blocks of text in templates when it's not absolutely necessary. The more that you engineer things, the more you have that can go wrong, and everything has a cost, however small. Having patrolled Cat:E for many years, I get tired of all the ways a minor error can flood that category for days or even weeks (not to mention the out-of-memory and out-of-time problems). CodeCat is, by nature, an inventor, and so she looks for technological fixes first. There are plenty of times that we need that, but I don't think this is one of them. If we can find a way to deal with the language-section issue without making our wikicode more complex, I'm all for it, but I'd rather discontinue using this method- either delete or deprecate. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:57, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
    • I agree with what you say here, and I don't particularly like {{def}} either. But until there is an alternative that solves the problem {{def}} was supposed to solve, I don't think it should be deleted. My hope is that the dislike of the template will encourage people to come up with something else. Too often, less-than-ideal solutions hang around anyway because either nobody thinks of a better way, or because too many people opposite the alternatives that people propose. —CodeCat 14:04, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
    • @Chuck Entz: There are a fair amount more than 1000 uses of {{def}} (got this count by paging through the transclusion list), though I don't know how to get a transclusion count. (There's Jarry1250's transclusion count tool, but it doesn't work on Wiktionary right now.) — Eru·tuon 18:11, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
    • These speculations about motives are uncalled for. The point is, I want to see the template unused, I created a vote, the vote showed what editors at large want, yet some people continue as if the vote did not happen. So I have to do something like create this RFDO. Quite obviously, this RFDO was created with the same objective as the vote: push a personal preference that seems to coincide with general consensus; no other motive is required to explain this RFDO. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
• Keep until a better solution is found. —CodeCat 13:35, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
• Deprecate and Delete as long as the only benefit of having it is to have words link correctly.Dixtosa (talk) 06:33, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
• Delete DCDuring (talk) 04:59, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
• Delete. As I argued at the vote, it makes entries more difficult to edit, with only minor benefits for most readers. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:01, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
• Keep. Very useful template to have. I use it quite a lot. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:38, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
• I don't like it (I think that linking to English should be achieved using methods that do not clutter wikitext), but keep as a stopgap replacement for cluttering definitions with {{l|en}}. —Suzukaze-c◆◆ 00:38, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
• Delete already. DTLHS (talk) 00:17, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
• Keep A handy template. Alumnum (talk) 00:22, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

By the way, today I saw User:Alumnum wrap a single def around a whole block of definitions, thus: [1]. Is that legitimate? Won't it break if we later insert quotations, synonyms, etc. in that block? Equinox ◑ 00:19, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

It didn't break anything so far. It seems that templates inside it simply ignore it. - Alumnum (talk) 00:22, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

I am going to start removing this template with a script this week and then delete it. RFD failed. DTLHS (talk) 16:13, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

@DTLHS Is there any progress on this? Alumnum has started adding the template to entries again, so it would be nice if we could delete it and be done with the issue. —Granger (talk · contribs) 12:58, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

@Mx. Granger Deleted. DTLHS (talk) 00:52, 9 August 2018 (UTC)