Template talk:R to diacritic/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Template:R to diacritic. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Request

Can

<noinclude>[[Category:Disambiguation and Redirection templates|{{PAGENAME}}]]</noinclude>

be added? —Mark Adler (markles) 01:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Docu just put it in the correct category, but there's another problem, currently puts every thing in blank, should be:

<includeonly>
[[Category:Redirects from title without diacritics]]
[[Category:Unprintworthy redirects]]
<!-- This is because, IMHO, this type of redirect wouldn't be useful in a paper Wikipedia.-->
</includeonly>
<noinclude>
[[Category:Redirect templates|Diacritics]]
[[Category:Unprintworthy redirects| ]]
</noinclude>

Better description

Would it be possible to edit this template to include a better description of what a diacritic is, or at least link the word diacritic to it's article? As it stands, anyone brousing through Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages who does not know what a diacritic is would just see "This is a redirect to the article title with diacritics." and would probably end up using {{R from alternate language}} or {{R from ASCII}} when they should be using this template instead. I would have done it myself, but the redirect appears to be locked. Ae-a 14:00, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I've unprotected the template. Edit sparingly since it is in thousands of articles. -Splash^talk 01:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

In concert with the descriptions on related templates, I've added a short bit about what to do with the link, and a simple "For more information, follow the category link." That's where all the other templates keep the details, and avoids extensive churning edits on the template itself. (However, since the job queue has been implemented, template edits are not the concern that they were in the past.)

--William Allen Simpson 11:23, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've also Wikified the word diacritics so it links to the relevant artice, and also added "(such as accents, umlauts, etc.)" to the description. If we all agree that no further work needs to be done, the template can be protected again.

Incidentally, I've noticed that when browsing through Category:Redirects from titles with ASCII, most of the redirects that use {{R from ASCII}} should really use this template instead. Hopefully, the new descriptions will make it easier to notice when chosing a template. Ae-a 18:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to un-link the word diacritics. There's simply no need for the diacritic page to have thousands of "What Links Here" references to redirects that are not about diacritics (by definition). Anybody that's confused about the meaning of the word can easily look at the category page. Same for "See also".

--William Allen Simpson 11:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

"Unprintworthy"?

Given that there is no clear consensus on Wikipedia as to how we handle cases where a name has diacritics, but the name is usually written in English without diacritics, it's not appropriate for this category to be included in Category:Unprintworthy redirects. That category's description says: Redirects in this category have been deemed unsuitable for inclusion in a printed Paper Wikipedia. While they may help in online navigation, they wouldn't be of much use in a hard-copy book. With Wikipedia policy unclear on this issue, it's by no means certain that a printed Wikipedia would consistently include names with diacritics and leave out English spellings of those names with no diacritics. --Tkynerd (talk) 00:53, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It should not be in the category "Unprintworthy redirects". Gene Nygaard (talk) 11:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Any more comments on this one? — Hex (❝?!❞) 22:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

False statement "The correct spelling is given by the target of the redirect."

Somebody needs to clean up this description to remove the false statement that "The correct spelling is given by the target of the redirect."

There is no "correctness" implied in our naming conventions. Or, more importantly, there is no implication that any other spelling is incorrect. But this statement is implying that in a redirect in which the template appears, the spelling there is incorrect. That is totally false.

Consider, for example, Wikipedia:Naming conventions:

"The purpose of an article's title is to enable that article to be found by interested readers, and nothing more. In particular, the current title of a page does not imply either a preference for that name, or that any alternative name is discouraged in the text of articles. Generally, an article's title should not be used as a precedent for the naming of any other articles." (emphasis in original)

Consider also this specific example Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names):

"Meissen or Meißen? Meißen is the local (German) name; but Meissen is the single widely accepted English spelling. The argument that this is a "spelling mistake" has been proposed at the talk page; but has never been accepted."

No error. Nothing incorrect; it is not a spelling mistake as the text of this template page implies. Note that despite this, User:Charles has added this template with the false statement to that redirect. In an even broader sense, there is generally nothing whatsoever "incorrect" about using the English alphabet when writing in English. Our use of Romania in general, as well as its use as the article's name in Wikipedia, is absolutely correct. Notwithstanding the fact that in the Romanian language it is normally spelled România:

Would you argue that in the case of the redirect from România, "The correct spelling is given by the target of the redirect"? I have a real strong suspicion, without even looking to see who did it, that whoever added that statement to this template page would apply a double standard here.

There are also a great many cases on Wikipedia, of course, where what is involved are two different alphabets. Some of these redirects "from titles without diacritics" are, in fact, two different "official" names differing only in the presence or absence of some or all of the diacritics in two different languages, whether or not one of the is English is pretty much irrelevant—something not distinguished by this template, and something for which there is no reason for it to make any distinction.

Furthermore, in a great many cases, what is a "correct" name, no matter how that vague term is defined, will change over time. In other words, in many cases, the spelling in the redirect is more correct than the one in the target, at least for some periods of time.

We need to choose one of them to occupy the slot for the slot for an article's name. That does not mean any alternatives are incorrect; at most, if discussion and a reasoned choice has been made, it means that it was chosen as the best one to use for the name of the Wikipedia article. In most cases, we don't even have that; we have no dicussion, no implication whatsoever of incorrectness.

That false statement should be removed from this template. Gene Nygaard (talk) 12:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to stick this template here, and the above comment should probably be noticed. (Maybe the fix should be something like "the spelling in compliance with Wikipedia naming conventions"? {{editprotected}} Thanks! $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 22:47, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Per the earlier thread above, which I started, I'm also requesting that the "unprintworthy redirects" category be removed from this template at the same time. Thanks. --Tkynerd (talk) 00:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, there appears to be no consensus as to whether spellings with diacritics conform to Wikipedia's naming conventions or not. In the absence of any such consensus, the statement about correctness should be removed from this template altogether and not replaced with anything else, IMO. --Tkynerd (talk) 00:11, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Edit declined. Consensus not demonstrated yet, request not specific enough. See WP:PER. Sandstein 16:51, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The current text is controversial and lacks consensus, and should therefore be removed. The request is more than amply specific: (1) remove the text The correct spelling is given by the target of the redirect. from the template; (2) remove the Unprintworthy redirects category from the template. No consensus for these changes is likely ever to be obtained, but it was an error to fully protect a controversial version of the template in the first place. The suggested changes make the template more neutral, avoiding NPOV concerns. --Tkynerd (talk) 17:42, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding "correctness", I concur with the arguments above and have removed the statement. However I'm undecided about the issue of unprintworthiness, so have not changed that. — Hex (❝?!❞) 23:04, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

How long has the template been missing?

It's not showing up on the page--how long ago was it stolen? I'll try to add it back. Aristophanes68 (talk) 20:53, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What are you talking about? McLerristarr | Mclay1 05:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Until I added the template back (flip through the page history), the Usage section was empty—nowhere on the page did it show exactly how the template was worded. Look at Template:R from other capitalisation and notice how it provides the templates in a ready-to-copy format. The documentation on this template page was just blank. Aristophanes68 (talk) 15:54, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about the documentation page but that never had anything in the usage section till you added it in. McLerristarr | Mclay1 06:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly my point. Why was it empty? Oh well, problem solved, I assume. Aristophanes68 (talk) 15:41, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

It was empty because no one ever bothered to fill it in till you did. Well done, I guess. McLerristarr | Mclay1 07:10, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Main other template

The "sister" template to this Rcat, {{R from diacritics}}, works in all namespaces. Is there any reason why this template should only work in the Main article namespace? If there is no objection, the following would allow this template to work in all namespaces like its sister template...

Modify these three lines of code from this:

</noinclude><includeonly>{{main other|
[[Category:Redirects from titles without diacritics]]
[[Category:Unprintworthy redirects]]}}

to this:

</noinclude><includeonly>
[[Category:Redirects from titles without diacritics]]
{{main other|[[Category:Unprintworthy redirects]]}}

That will allow this Rcat to categorize appropriate redirects in all namespaces, including the Portal namespace, which would benefit from this change (Example: Portal:Motorhead), while still maintaining that only mainspace redirects would populate the Unprintworthy redirects category. If there is no objection, I will include an {{Editprotected}} template in a few days to effect the code modification. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 04:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

The "sister" template to this redirect category (Rcat) template, {{R from diacritics}}, works in all namespaces. To enable this template to work in other namespaces, to include the Portal namespace – examples: Portal:Motorhead and Portal:Pokemon – please alter lines 11, 12 and 13 of the code as follows:

Modify these three lines of code from this:

</noinclude><includeonly>{{main other|
[[Category:Redirects from titles without diacritics]]
[[Category:Unprintworthy redirects]]}}

to this:

</noinclude><includeonly>
[[Category:Redirects from titles without diacritics]]
{{main other|[[Category:Unprintworthy redirects]]}}

That will allow this Rcat to categorize appropriate redirects in all namespaces while still maintaining that only mainspace redirects would populate the Unprintworthy redirects category. Thank you in advance for your help! – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 21:33, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 21:57, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Mr. Stradivarius! – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 21:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Template loop error

The template Template:R from title without diacritics gives an error message on redirect pages using it, such as Stanislaw Lem:

Template loop detected: Template:Redirect template

Since I don't understand where the actual bug is, I am posting this to both Template talk:R to diacritics and Template talk:Redirect template. --Ørjan (talk) 10:38, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

It is because the changes to {{R unprintworthy}} have not been applied yet. Redrose64, Paine Ellsworth, please apply them ASAP. Petr Matas 11:45, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Fixed – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 11:48, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

"R diacritics" redirect is confusing

{{r diacritics}} currently redirects to this template. I feel that could potentially be confusing, as such a redirect name gives no obvious indication whether it is the source or the target page that has the diacritics, and hence the redirect could potentially be misused (though I still need to check how much misuse has actually occurred). Is it worth taking this to RFD? --SoledadKabocha (talk) 18:54, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

To editor SoledadKabocha: Sorry I missed this one. This is one reason why some editors loathe shortcuts. They can often seem very confusing, especially when there are two complementary rcats like "from" and "to". I am not one who hates short aliases, though, because I use them all the time. Since I try to always preview my edits, I usually catch it when I put, for example, {{Redr|dia|up}} on a redirect without diacritics, and then I change it usually to {{Redr|RDiacr|up}}. Those are just the two shortcuts that I started using long ago, so now they flow from my keyboard "effortlessly". Since most of these shortcuts are inherently confusing, does it make sense to RfD them all? or wouldn't it be better just to choose one you like for each rcat and stick to it? – Paine 21:02, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd be okay with RFDing them all, but what's important is not the actual deletion so much as treating them consistently. I don't use those short forms and so haven't formed much of an opinion on them specifically. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 18:39, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, as long as they're applied consistently and correctly there shouldn't be any problems. We can only hope. Occasionally a contributor will feel that more aliases are better than less. I worked with an rcat awhile back from its own "What links here" page, and one day I go to that page and instead of the three alias redirects it had prior to that day, it had nearly a hundred. One editor had decided that the rcat needed all those shortcuts based on what had been read about "redirects are cheap". I think I finally convinced that editor that yes, one redirect is cheap – but a hundred redirects? – maybe not so cheap. Anyway, I do wish I could watch these talk pages more closely so as to not give such late responses. There are no words to express how much I appreciate your input when it comes to these rcats. – Paine 02:29, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Since I'm not familiar with the usage trends of these particular rcats, I meant "consistency" in the sense of "RFD all or none of the redirects, and if none, discuss all of them at some other venue." I admit that that isn't very logical in this context, though. Anyway, you're welcome. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 03:50, 20 October 2014 (UTC)