Template talk:en

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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This has been speedily deleted without any discussion. Seems wrong. It's not longer used because instead templates look up what en refers to in Module:languages, and {{en}} no longer occurs (just once on a user page; user is entitled to keep the red link if he wants to). So I support the deletion and the eventual full conversion of language names and codes to Lua; having separate templates for every single language is not the way to go because they need to all function in harmony. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Every template deletion increases the time it takes to make good use of entry history. Now <red>Script error</red> joins template redlinks as a common occurrence in many entry histories. DCDuring TALK 13:49, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Do you suggest we just let all the old cruft accumulate? —CodeCat 14:29, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

No, I'm suggesting more awareness of consequences. I'd be perfectly happy if deprecated templates only operated in history, if that were possible. I am not at all sure that the benefits of eliminating this particular template are worth the degradation and regression that deletion causes. DCDuring TALK 14:57, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

But what about changes to templates that don't result in deletion? If we are going to keep all of our history viewable, then we must see changes to templates in the same light as deleting them, because they both have the potential to make the history appear different from how it originally did. It's not feasible at all to keep all of our templates backwards compatible. —CodeCat 15:10, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

You seem always to make strawmen of the viewpoints of others about items under discussion.

Might it be feasible for things to fail like the red-linked templates, whose names often indicate what the intent was? Even better would be showing the template and all its arguments "nowiki" style. If the script error message problem were solved, maybe other knock-on problems would never be noticed. DCDuring TALK 19:25, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Keep, as deprecated. It is much too soon to delete this template, as there are probably still some bots and scripts that rely on it. The number of things broken by deletion will likely decrease if the language templates are left around for a few more years before being deleted. (Also, maybe by that point there will be a way to have the history pages show things properly, even after templates are deleted...) --Yair rand (talk) 15:16, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

How do we know what still needs this template, unless we delete it? If things break, then that just tells us what to fix first. Nobody is going to fix things if there is no incentive. —CodeCat 15:20, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

The burden of fixing things is on the coder who is coding for a world that does not exist: the one in which there are only insignificant departures from the strict requirements put in new code. If you would like to ignore all the limitations of the legacy, then you ought to start with a nice new wiki where you can impose your will without pushback. One without users might be even more helpful.

One thing that could be done is to have a large sandbox with a large subset of Wiktionary thereon. That would not help with problems like race conditions etc., but would with more static problems, which are a large fraction of what is under discussion.

If problems don't get fixed or get worse in response to complaints or requests for fixes, no one has an incentive to bring problems up. I am both afraid to bring things up because my expectation is:

1. that the "solution" will be worse than the problem,
2. that by the time the "solution" appears, usually unannounced, the nature of the problem will have changed,
3. the "problem" will be reinterpreted as a reason to do something else entirely,
4. the problem is beyond the capability of the resources available, or
5. there will be no response or the response will waste plenty of my time.

These are not mutually exclusive. DCDuring TALK 19:25, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, deleting templates without RFDO seems wrong to me. I don't know whether the template should be kept. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:00, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Delete (or keep deleted), the red linked {{en}} is a de facto error message for anyone who use {{en}} on its own. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:en keeps track of all the uses, so restoring it and adding an error message and/or an error category does not seem productive. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:19, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Restore to keep at least a little bit of backwards compatibility with older revisions and bots (like mine!). There shouldn't be much maintenance needed (or any at all), so it's not like keeping the templates will take away any manpower. -- Liliana • 22:42, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Restore per DanP and Liliana-60. DCDuring TALK 23:39, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Mg says to not restore; Yair says to restore for a few years; PK says to restore (but says "a little bit of backwards compatibility" which I think means to restore temporarily); DCD says to restore per PK. Restored temporarily. Redelete (sans RFDO per this discussion) after we know nothing's using it, likely after a few years. I'd advise the original deleter not to redelete: let someone else judge, the second time, when the time is right.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)