Template talk:wikisource1911Enc

Combine with template:wikipedia?

Can we combine this with {{wikipedia}} so that not so much screen real estate is taken up by having both? Perhaps have a {{{wp}}} parameter that say, oh, yeah, and WP has an article, too, and then the text will read "WS has an EB1911 article, and WP has an article".—msh210℠ 23:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I tend to think we should just get rid of it. The Wikipedia-links are our nod to our readers' encyclopedic needs, just as Wikipedia's Wiktionary-links are its nod to its readers' dictionaric needs. —Ruakh_TALK 01:26, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Hm, actually, I agree; strike my earlier comment. Perhaps if there's no WP article on something in the EB1911, we can include a link to WS's EB1911, but that seems exceedingly (and increasingly) unlikely to happen.—msh210℠ 17:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The two link templates, for Wikipedia and Wikisource/EB1911, cater to different interests: the Wikipedia link is for more depth; the Wikisource/EB1911 is for a historical view. EB1911 tried to be both a dictionary and an encyclopaedia, so it seems reasonable to refer the Wiktionary users to EB1911 dictionary entries just as Wikipedia users are referred to EB1911 encyclopaedic entries. Sometimes words and their connotations change a lot over the years, and I have certainly seen this in comparisons I have done. And there seems to be plenty of screen real estate available for these templates in Wiktionary. Bob Burkhardt 16:37, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

The word I did today -- rung -- is an interesting example. I think EB1911 is worthwhile reading for people in Wiktionary and the Wikipedia page has some interesting things for Wiktionarians as well. Bob Burkhardt 17:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Synchronization with Wikipedia

I'm not sure what motivated the reversion of recent changes. I was trying to bring this into line with what is used for Wikipedia though the different environment made it difficult. In my tests I thought I had succeeded. I had also added documentation, which has been requested above. Bob Burkhardt 16:37, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I really should have left you a note explaining why I reverted. I'm a lazy admin, I find it easier to just wait and see if someone sticks around long enough to care, and explain if and only if they do. :-P

Your edits seemed to have two purposes:

• making our template match Wikipedia's — which isn't a good thing. I mean, there's nothing specifically wrong with our templates matching Wikipedia's, but that's not a goal in and of itself, and a statement like the one you added, "This template should work in a manner similar to Wikipedia:Template:Wikisource1911Enc", is simply wrong. (Or, maybe not. I had taken that statement to be normative — "If the Wikipedia template changes, please change this one to work the same way" — but it now occurs to me that you might have meant it as informative but modest — "Hopefully this template matches Wikipedia's; that's what I was going for". But either way, I don't think it's something to be going for.) BTW, Wiktionarian attitudes vary greatly toward Wikipedia. I think you'll find that if you give the impression of trying to Wikipedify Wiktionary, you're likely to raise some editors' hackles.
• adding documentation to the template page — which is a nice idea, but not how we do it here. We prefer to put documentation on the talk-page, so that editors can edit it (in true wiki form) without having to modify the actual template (which, because of the way the software works, puts unnecessary strain on the servers — they re-compute all the pages that include the template, even if what changed was entirely within <noinclude> tags). For widely transcluded templates, Wikipedia works around this problem by putting the documentation on a subpage, that then gets transcluded onto the template page within <noinclude> tags (which does work), but Wiktionary doesn't use that approach. (I don't think we have a good reason for not using it — I think it's just "Not Invented Here" syndrome — but yeah.) Instead, we just put {{seeTalk}} on the template page (within <noinclude> tags).

Also, for some reason your edits hid the output of the template, but they did not give nearly enough documentation to make up for that. From the information on the page, I'd have no idea whether the template produced something like {{wikipedia}}, or something like {{pedialite}} or {{R:DRAE 2001}}, or something else entirely; and therefore, I'd have no idea how I should use this template — what part of the entry it goes in, whether it goes in a list, how it's combined with other templates, etc.

But if I'm wrong about any of this, or if there were other reasons for your edits, let me know.

—Ruakh_TALK 01:18, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Wiktionary definitely seems a different space. This is obvious looking at the pages. My documentation was not complete, but enough to get it to work for anyone who wanted to use it, and did not go beyond what I understood. I really don't understand the ins and outs of the template, and I have not studied a lot of details about templates in general, and I figured someone who did have a better understanding could expand on my documentation or disable a feature that shouldn't be used in Wiktionary. The Wiktionary and Wikipedia templates both originally matched and I imagine were originated by someone working on the Wikisource EB1911 project. I think that whoever updated the Wikipedia template didn't think of the Wiktionary template, or they would have updated that one as well, and I think both should be considered together. Maybe you can think of better wording to express the connection. I do not mean to say Wiktionary should look like Wikipedia, but an update to the Wikipedia template could be relevant to the Wiktionary template, and vice versa, and a mutual reference will help editors to remember this. I don't expect people to like all the details of my edits. I appreciate those who can deal with them constructively and keep the useful features and change the things they know more about. The latest Wikipedia template is more succinct (takes up less screen real estate) than the Wiktionary template. This was my main reason for making the change. It looked to me like the latest Wikipedia template has more bells and whistles as well, but I can't say I understand all of them. But I thought it was worth moving them over, and some wiser soul could document the useful ones and disable the ones that weren't. A picture is worth a thousand words only if you understand templates, and I can imagine there are some editors who don't want to muck with them, and for someone who does, it is easy enough to look at the source. I am enough of a newbee I can remember my disappointment at going to template pages and finding no information on how to use it. I can live with the old version, although it looks too wordy to me, so I'll leave the template alone. Bob Burkhardt 16:42, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

To me, it seems that the "Wikisource" part of the text is irrelevant, its only purpose is to advertise Wikimedia, which, while worthy, is just noise. I'd prefer a wording more along the lines of "{{{1}}} in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica contains more detail" or "For more detail, see {{{1}}} in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica". (Or, we should abolish all these horrid right-floating-boxes, and have a template like {{pedia}} which, under a ===See also=== heading reads more succinctly as "{{{1}}} in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica". Conrad.Irwin 18:51, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with all that, assuming this template is to be used at all.—msh210℠ 18:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Putting Wikipedia and Wikisource in a "see also" or "external links" or "sister projects" section sounds like a good solution. Using "inline" versions of the templates (along the lines of "commons-inline" and "Wikisource1911Enc Citation" in Wikipedia) would probably work better in Wiktionary. Regarding the mention of Wikisource in the template: there are all sorts of 1911 Britannica sites around; the mention of Wikisource lets people know it is a sister project link. But the word "Wikisource" isn't necessary: the "Wikisource1911Enc Citation" just uses an icon at the beginning of the line. For example, I just put one in the external links section of w:Winfield Scott. Bob Burkhardt 13:34, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I've updated the wording, and left the Wikisource logo. Conrad.Irwin 13:58, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I put an example of a "see also" style of link to EB1911 in scoundrel. Bob Burkhardt 14:01, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

And an example of a "see also" with links to both Wikipedia and EB1911 in scourge. Bob Burkhardt 14:38, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

And scout where the Wikipedia-inline link replaces the old Wikipedia link. Bob Burkhardt 14:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)