Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Xiong (talk | contribs) at 05:44, 16 April 2005 (put the archive back in the box). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Talk archive

02:22, 2005 Apr 14

Talk summary

00:43, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC) -- Page created 19:05, 2005 Feb 4. A developer cited as authority for the article text. Much technical discussion of transclusion costs and server workload. Page caching mentioned as a culprit. Examples of double transclusion given, and those of higher degree. The use of subst: encouraged.

Dispute over the status of the article itself; lack of consensus. Tagging of the article as "not policy". Heated debate, biased terms wielded. Lengthy rebuttal and defense.

Discussion

Not a technical issue

hahaha! i agree with you on pretty much all points. keep in mind that this whole page is just about a temporary treatment, though. the solution is to get more machines and better software, and these things will happen in the future, as i understand it. templates and meta-templates are beautiful things, and we should take as much advantage of them in saving human labor in the future as we can. in the meantime, we will just use subst: a lot and try not to edit those blasted stub templates (before you know it they will attain consciousness!), to avoid losing our ability to use the other beautiful things the pedia has to offer. - Omegatron 00:02, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Emergency measures

I reply to Jamesday's comment:

...Now tell me how to get rid of the problem today and for the next six months....

As an emergency measure, of course, we can make less use of transclusion. We can use substitution instead -- and indeed, there are many times when this is preferable, not only because of server performance problems.

There are many things we can do, as an emergency measure, to reduce server loads -- some of them fine ideas in their own right.

• Stop edit warring, especially over large, complex pages.

• Stop edit warring over templates. It is especially good to be very sure your change is a good one when you edit a popular template.

• Stop revert warring, move warring, tag warring.

• When you have a disagreement with another Wikipedian, at least try to discuss it with him. Don't act out your disagreement.

• Stop tagging templates marked for deletion with {{tfd}}. Tag those pages on their associated Talk pages, and use the form {{subst:tfd}}.

• The same can be said for much tagging. Most tags will work just as well if they are substituted, and many will do just as good a job if they are substituted on the page's Talk.

• Think before you use a template. It is not really necessary to be careful creating a template; but whenever you decide to transclude, know what you are doing and why.

• Consider substitution at all times. If you just want to make use of template contents, use {{subst:sometemplatename}}. Once you save the page, the link to the template is not merely broken; it ceases to exist, and causes no performance issue. The other side of this is that if the template is edited, its substitution will not change. This can be good or bad.

• Don't use images just to be cute. "An image is worth 1000 words." -- well, not only is its value 1000 times that of a word, so is its cost.

• Lay off the Preview button. Think about what you are writing. Use an external editor, spellcheck there, and proof your remarks yourself before pasting them into the edit box and hitting Preview.

• But use the Preview button before the Save button. Multiple edits to a page make work for both machines and humans.

• Edit by section. It is a lot less wear and tear on the page, and easier for you, too. When adding a new section, I often find it helpful to simply add the section head, save the page, and then reopen only that new section.

• Archive Talk. Long pages are hard to render, and if a user's browser times out, he is encouraged to reload the page over and over.

• Archive Talk to history whenever possible. There is no need to create a new page; history already preserves everything, anyway. All you need to do is this simple, two-step procedure:
  • Blank the page entirely. I like to insert a comment, such as "Archival in progress." You must do this first, in order to create a history link.
  • Open page history and copy the link location of the Talk page in its previous state. Paste this URL into the new, blank Talk page as an external link (using single brackets). I also like to copy the datestamp of the archive.

Most of these are good ideas at all times. — Xiong熊talk 01:43, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)