Category talk:Fanlore Templates

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Webpage template?

There's a template for Archives, and another for Communities, but it might be useful to have a template specifically for webpages/homepages. There's sites like The Real Ghostbusters Fanpage that collect fic but include other features (episode reviews and such), and sites like character shrines, both of which have aspects of archives and communities, but are mostly the work of a particular fan or group of fans. Maybe such should be considered Fanworks? --Xparrot 19:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the general 'site' template might apply, and it should show up in the [[Category:Websites]] listing for both fan activities and fan communities. --rache 19:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Ahh, that's what I was looking for! I totally missed it, I was looking for a "Website" or a "Homepage" template. Oops! Thank you... --Xparrot 19:54, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Having changed to Site - on the template, in addition to dates= and such, might it not be useful to have a "Site Owner" listing? Since the owners of major sites are sometimes significant fannish types...
ETA: Also, the Site Template apparently doesn't automatically add any categories at all? --Xparrot 19:58, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Huh, right, the code needs an additional [[Category:Websites]] line after the table code. Could any sysop amend that? I'm...not entirely sure if site owner applies in more than 50% of the cases -- i.e., it's not clear who it is, or they change too fast, or it can't be found out...? But, hm, it's usually different for fannish pages, where the maintainer is usually known. *is unsure* Oh, yeah, what about maintainer instead of site owner? --lian 12:44, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't know anything about wiki coding - is it possible to have optional fields in tables? Fields that don't show if they're empty? Because some sites, yes, it's hard to say who's maintaining them, and it might be a big group, but other sites ("homepages", pretty much) are often the work of a single person. If the "site owner" or "site maintainer" field only showed on the page when it was filled, that would probably be the most convenient? --Xparrot 16:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I think I added the categories to the template. Let me know if there's a problem with it, as it now applies to every article using the site template. I didn't add an owner/maintainer slot, as I wasn't sure of the impact to already existing site template usage, but once there's consensus on what to add, it should be an easy mod--and then we can see if it breaks any existing ones, and roll it back if it does. --rache 14:57, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
IIRC from another template that was expanded with more fields in the infobox (the pairing template, I think) the effects were somewhat unfortunate on existing pages in that the extra fields showed up as empty on the displayed site, because the template formats them, but they didn't show in the code to edit, because the template was c&p'ed before it had those fields. So you had to manually c&p (parts of) the template anew. Unless you know that the template changed since the site was created that is very confusing, because you see things displayed that you don't see in the code.--Ratcreature 17:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Usenet Template has no categories?

Template:UsenetProfile doesn't appear to add any categories automatically (see rec.arts.anime.misc) - it should add the Communities category, shouldn't it? (And possibly a Usenet/Newsgroup category?) --Xparrot 13:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Looking at the Usenet template and the Community template, they're nearly identical (except the community one includes a Founder line). Do we actually need a separate Usenet one? And if we do need one (e.g., to add a Usenet category), should we split the Community profile into distinct ones for Messageboard, Mailing List, Journal, Forum, etc., to auto-include subcats for them as well? --Arduinna 15:55, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Recorded this as Bug #49. Hope it'll be picked up there. --lian 10:53, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

All set! See Category:Newsgroups.--æthel 03:44, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

-SOLVED- award templates?

The templates currently used for fan awards are an ill fit. Most award pages seem to use the Community Profile template, which has no easy way to indicate whether the award is given out by voting or by some jury type of setup for example. Or what type of fanwork is eligible (zines, fanfic, fanart, filks, vids, etc). Also "moderator" is somewhat odd, though I guess mostly the recent organizers are filled in. Some as the Golden Orgasms use the Fanwork template, which fits even worse. Others don't use a nifty info box at all. I realize that maybe there can't be templates for everything, but awards are a fairly common fanactivity, so having a template for them that fit better would be cool.--Ratcreature 18:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I've done a rough version at Template:AwardsProfile, if you want to check it out. This was straight off the top of my head, so I'm sure I'm missing things. --Arduinna 06:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

SOLVED by creation of Category:Awards. --lian 10:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

More Templates

So far there are no good templates for timelines and histories. For vids there is only the general fanwork template. Maybe something with a space for length and song would be good? --Doro 20:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

A vid template would be fairly easy to adapt from the fanwork template. I can create it later unless someone else wants to take a stab at it now. Timeline/history templates also sound good--what information do you want to have in them?--æthel 21:24, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
We actually have the EasyTimeline extension installed! It hasn't been documented well, so I'll fix that up right away. --awils1 05:45, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I thought Doro was asking for an infobox template for pages like Timeline of Star Trek Fandom? But how the timeline in Timeline of Slashed Sources was made was pretty mysterious to me as well. --æthel 06:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that. :) Or something like History of Scanlation and other pages that are about something in history. ---Doro 09:34, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Well, we could do both :). The timeline in Timeline of Slashed Sources is using the EasyTimeline extension, and has been set up as a template to be called on demand. I'm trying to set up one to be available as a generalisation of a timeline, while people can still create their own from scratch and make them templates for everybody to use. awils1 06:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Where are the page templates?

I can't find Glossary or Fandom or any of the other templates I'm used to. The templates linked from the side bar shortcuts section comes here, so I'm really confused. Help? --msilverstar 05:00ish, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

They're all in the subcategory "Infoboxes". The template category structure has been cleaned up to comply with the no-breadcrumb policy (and because the number of infobox templates is increasing rapidly), so templates in the subcategories no longer appear in the main category. There's a shortcut to get to them: type "infobox" into the search box and hit Enter/Return. Or just click on the subcategory from the Fanlore Templates category page.--æthel 05:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Ah, thank you, I think I clicked all the other links. Would it be OK for me to add a little clarifying text? --msilverstar 06:01, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I added another sentence, but feel free to add more if it's not enough.--æthel 14:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Added another explanatory sentence and links to what I think are the two most popular templates (Glossary and FandomByText). --msilverstar 17:50, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
PPOV and Stub templates? Have they been moved again?--MeeDee 15:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Nope. They're still under Category:Notices.--æþel 23:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Is there any way to make a ref template?

To make it easier for editors to follow the Help:Citing_sources#Online_Sources guidelines and at Fanlore:Citation, is there any way to code up a template for editors to copy-paste that would make adding refs with fewer coding errors (I've made plenty of them myself to understand any editor's frustration) just a little bit easier? (If I knew how to make code do things I would try, but must depend on kindness -- also opinion of feasability/lunacy of attempt/notion -- of others.)

e.g. where what the "<ref>" template, if you pasted it in, would give you, is something like:
"<ref>[(PASTE IN YOUR LINK HERE) WRITETEXTFORYOURLINKHERE], by (SOURCE OF REF/PERSON OR COMMUNITY OR OTHER INFO HERE PLEASE), (DATE YOUR REF/LINK/CITED SOURCE WAS POSTED OR "Date unknown" HERE PLEASE), (Accessed AUTOGENERATED TODAY'S DATE/MO/YEAR ACCORDING TO FANLORE SERVER TIME).</ref>"

(Maybe the first instance used on a page also autogenerates the ==References== section header and <references />section content, or maybe the importance of manually copypasting/adding that section/content is just boldly highlighted at the top of the template page?) ETA, oops, forgot to sign. Belatedly: --Sk 02:00, 8 February 2012

The citation help page was so unhelpful I had to split it up so I could grasp how to fix it and add some copy/paste material as you recommend. The problem is that we haven't reached any consensus on a standard way to format citations (that I know of), so while I can give examples/templates, it will reflect my own preferences. If people are interested in standardizing this stuff, please join me at Help:Formatting Guidelines for Citations.
I also added some wiki code to the Help:Footnotes page for ease of copy/pasting.--æþel 00:13, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, it turns out that my memory of how to do this is correct, but it's nice to have verification.--msilverstar (talk) 19:14, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Hatnotes category?

User:Pinky G Rocket, can you add a description/instructions for the Hatnotes subcat to the info in the header of this category page? I would do it myself but i'm not sure how to make it clear. Like "the italics disambiguation type messages" probably isn't the most helpful. -- Quaelegit (talk) 20:32, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Organizing new categories

Hi all, we have some new categories here and to tidy things up I'm wondering if we can group some of those into similar categories, so there are fewer subcats in Category:Fanlore Templates? I'm thinking Category:Wikipedia Templates to start as afaik many of these categories are coming to us from Wikipedia. To be honest. wikipedia template can require a good existing knowledge of wiki editing and can be a little intimidating for newish editors, so I kind of want to hide them away somewhere xD --Auntags (talk) 01:05, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Woah, I hadn't noticed the proliferation of categories in here! Definitley agreed -- the categories were much more helpful when it was just a few categories at the top and it was obvious what they meant -- infoboxes, hatnotes, timelines, etc. Now there's a bunch of stuff that most editors won't even want to be using --e.g. Category:Quotation templates doesn't even contain the templates for quotes that we want wiki editors to use! I'm assuming it got imported from Wikipedia and some of Wikipedia's category organizing got imported with it, but it doesn't really help us here on Fanlore. +1 the suggestion of hiding all of them in a "wikipedia template" parent category. -- Quaelegit (talk) 07:04, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! Done, and I've added all of our quotation templates to Category:Quotations Templates because that does seem like a useful category to have --Auntags (talk) 10:29, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

On similar templates, switches/conditional statements, and automatic categorization.

Requesting changes to locked and widely-used templates, broad category changes

From my time on Fanlore, I have observed that there are a lot of templates that are very similar to one another or duplicate each other's functionality. This includes all the infoboxes for fanfiction from specific fandoms (and even ships, in some instances), the separate Quotation templates, and so on. I believe that this way of approaching templates makes Fanlore harder to use and edit, as one has to memorize many different template calls.

In my opinion, these duplicate templates could be removed by replacing them with conditional statements. In programming parlance, conditional statements are parts of code that execute different things depending on the input given to the program. The most basic form is the if/else statement; in plain language, an if/else means that the program looks at an input and asks "does the input equal X value set by the programmer"? If the input equals X, the program does ABC; otherwise, the program does XYZ.

Conditional statements can be used in Mediawiki templates through the ParserFunctions extension, which is already present on Fanlore. Conditional statements can help with the following:

  • Controlling categorization. This entire writeup stemmed from a conversation with Elfwreck; Elf finds the Characters category too large to be easily navigated and wants to diffuse it. I told her that diffusion of the Characters category would be impossible as the Characters category is automatically added to every page using the {{CharacterProfile}} template. What could be implemented instead in the Characters template is a field using a conditional statement that adds the character page to a more specific character category if a parameter value is specified (e.g. Final Fantasy Characters), and adds the Characters category if no value is specified. This would allow for diffusing the categories while still making sure that character pages are always included in the Characters category or a subcatgory. This sort of functionality is already present in the {{Fanfiction}} and {{VideoGame}} templates in slightly different ways with the 'category' and 'fandom category' parameters.
    • A similar method can also be used to automatically add maintenance categories if an infobox is missing fields. The {{VideoGame}} template automatically adds Category:Fandom pages needing infobox image if there is no image present in the infobox.
  • Preventing empty fields from displaying. Not all fields in a template will be relevant or applicable to the subject of a given article. Controlling which fields appear by only making them appear when filled out will remove that the implication that information that doesn't exist needs to be added. This functionality is present in the {{VideoGame}} template.
  • Changing how a template appears. The only difference between {{Quotation}} and {{Quotation2}} is the color. A conditional statement could specify which color to use.

I would like to add conditional statements for many templates to perform actions details above, and suggest edits to locked templates, but since this would be a lot of changes to many different templates, I would feedback and consensus from gardeners and other editors before diving in headfirst. Pinky G Rocket (talk) 01:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with most of this, and I've already tried some auto-categorisation with the Template:PersonProfile following on from a discussion at Category_talk:People#Subcategories. That was an attempt to quick-add hundreds of pages to new categories - it ran into a lot of (what I'd call) data quality issues. Because the pages already existed, there was a lack of consistency in field values, and I wasn't able to handle fields with multiple values. So a pro author could be called an author, writer or novellist, and the code had to account for all those variations. But if someone's occupation was "actor, writer", I couldn't get the code to parse that into two categorizations. Also ran into a few typos. But I'm not an expert at wiki templates, and I'm sure someone else could do better!
I think wide use of similar auto-categorising templates or templates with new conditional fields will probably need a lot of promotion and education, to help editors use them. --Auntags (talk) 23:43, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't think this would be useful for adding two or more subcategories, so I would want to keep it focused to fandom subcategories for now.
More than happy to write documentation and FAQ pages to help educate users. Pinky G Rocket (talk) 01:22, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
Your plan sounds good to me, Pinky G Rocket!--aethel (talk) 22:12, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! Pinky G Rocket (talk) 01:22, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
(Hope it's okay to put responses to the intiial plan up here, if not i can move this message down later). Re: the characters category specifically, I actually like having them all in one place because about once a year I go through the list fixing DEFAULTSORT for characters that are misfiled. I suppose I could do that inside each fandom subcategory though.... As for the general paradigm, I'm not sure that IF/ELSE statements *inside* the template are easier than having multiple templates. Both require some memorization. It probably depends on the documentation (god we really need better documentation of our templates). Third point -- are we sure that we want to hide empty fields? Sometimes people don't fill things in because they are lazy, and then seeing the empty field is a nice prompt, e.g. "oh i could look up the wordcount of this fic and add it to the infobox". I'm not sure how to weight this usefulness against the empty fields that *shouldn't* be populated, though. -- Quaelegit (talk) 01:30, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Hey all, thank you for feedback on these ideas. Now that the TemplateStyles extension has been installed on Fanlore, many templates imported from Wikipedia, such as {{Infobox}} and {{Navbox}}, now properly work on Fanlore. These templates and others like them cover two of my basic points (preventing empty fields from displaying and changing how a template appears) much more gracefully than the bare switch statement, and if/else or switch statements can still handle controlling categorization. For an example of what I have in mind and how these templates work in action, see {{VideoGame}}.

With infoboxes now easier to design and edit, I'd like to go forward with suggesting more concrete changes. I'd like to do this in steps, so I'd like to request some changes to fanfiction infobox categories first.

Pinky G Rocket (talk) 02:47, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

I would definitely appreciate combining all of these listed fanfiction templates. -- Quaelegit (talk) 01:26, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
I agree. --MPH 19:33, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Point me in the direction?

I'm looking for the template for "needs examples" and similar templates. I can't locate them. --MPH 19:33, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Do you mean Template:ExamplesWanted? It's in the Notices category.--aethel (talk) 23:24, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
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