Template talk:Todo

Argument

Great so far.

I'd like it even more if we'd support a list of arguments and a default assignment to Category:Todo if there is no argument given. Maybe a further (optional) description argument that does not result in a category. What do you think in general? --Xenwolf (talk) 20:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I also thought about Category:Todo default and how it’s not available from the current template so that’s a must. A list of arguments to add multiple categories is really great, as otherwise this may end in plaque spam and I would feel responsible for it. :D The description is a good idea too.

Please have a look into User:Xenwolf/SandBox#Testing template arguments. I think here's all you need. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:55, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes! I watched the final unfolding of it and that was mesmerising. Now I get what the pipe in the argument substitution means. I’ll merge this here, and alternative argument names are nice too. --Arseniiv (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Your turn! How do you find it now? Also how do we call it at the end, something like Template:Todo? --Arseniiv (talk) 21:57, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Template:Todo was exactly my guess. Should we go "to production" right now? --Xenwolf (talk) 22:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

It would be nice but maybe there’s still something to add or remove from the design. Maybe tomorrow if there will be no new ideas? --Arseniiv (talk) 22:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

How exactly will we do that, first edit the template docs to use its new name and then move, or just add a brand new page and then copy all to it, with corrected docs? I see the latter more appropriate but then all this discussion will be left here. --Arseniiv (talk) 14:53, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I'd say moving at first should work (including the talk page). BTW: I think that the idea to develop, test, and document (by using itself) a template within the same page is a bit over-sophisticated. You know that there are issues with self transclusion (for load-reduction reasons). The English Wikipedia uses subpages for documentation which works better. Considering your efforts to avoid any redundancy if possible, I conclude that you are a programmer. But MediaWiki (even with parser extensions and such) is not a great language. Hopefully we get Lua some day, see my request to the maintainer (Scribunto means Lua) ;) --Xenwolf (talk) 18:04, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Hehe. :D I’m not too opposed to redundancy, and with this template I was just lazy to add more subpages and edit many at a time, and also I don’t know how is best to organize such documentation subpage, so I dumped it all on the template page to this moment, but I’m all in to make something wiser. Hmm, will this doc subpage move automatically if I make it now? --Arseniiv (talk) 18:36, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

A bit later I’ll refresh my memory of those template functions and try to make this but if you can, feel free to mess with this template too! Also, how do you think, does it need a light pastel background too? Right now it may be too bland. (And rounded corners to not look so sharp.) --Arseniiv (talk) 20:20, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I personally prefer slightly shaded backgrounds to thick borders. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:55, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

With 1px border or with no border at all? I think no border would be not enough to delimit it from the surroundings, but 1px is fine. --Arseniiv (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I think 1px border would be better than no border (in this case 😉). --Xenwolf (talk) 21:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Text

The current text reads quite good but seems not to be applicable equally good in all possible situations. I'd suggest to start with a formal intro and a simple list of the things to do. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Doesn’t play nice with list syntax

Currently the template doesn’t play nice with list syntax * Template:Template... because it contains line breaks in code. But if we remove them, the code will be unreadable (I already removed several spaces for full stop to display right after the last category argument). Hopefully this use case won’t be needed! --Arseniiv (talk) 21:49, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Visual appearance

The box itself looks quite good. Sometimes it's too much if there is a tiny detail to do. I could imagine that we control this by user CSS (or group CSS). In cases where an article ha a lot to do, it could definitively help to make it visible to all visitors. But what about little things that you notice in passing and want to reserve for later, since you are currently busy with something bigger? Do they justify severe losses in the appearance of the article? In these cases I would prefer a marker invisible in the article text itself. I'm sorry that I'm only telling you this now, I just didn't realize it before, but now that I've tried your template in my sandbox it's clear to me. --Xenwolf (talk) 13:06, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

It’s alright! I thought about something like that yesterday too when infoboxifying intervals pages: sometimes indeed you see something minor but don’t want to go all on, or don’t know how it can be made better, like more a question for others: “have you seen this? is this good enough?”.

For an invisible marker, I immediately have an idea: just add an argument invisible and if it’s nonempty, then the template would add just categories (and maybe an empty span with a special class, so you can see it in the rendered page code if some need arises? and better a HTML comment inside it, with category names and the description). How do you find it? --Arseniiv (talk) 14:11, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

I think the todo in wikitext will be a good marker for itself. An HTML comment would only be visible in the HTML source (which is not normally inspected by wiki users). I'd plead for {{{inline|}}} to control the appearance within the article content (i.e. an opt-in solution). Since the auto-categorization is done, it is visible in any case. Two more suggestions:

1) {{Todo}} -- never visible, but always categorized as ''todo''.

2) {{Todo|comment}} -- always visible; not categorized if it's the only parameter

In this way we always have a visible effect in some form.

--Xenwolf (talk) 14:56, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

I thought an invisible todo with a comment may have uses too? (When a category name isn’t explanative enough but the issue is still minor.) As of opt-in, making less noise by default looks reasonable to me too.

About a single comment argument: IIRC in that case, the current version seemed to apply no categories, so there will be no need to change anything (if allowing an invisible commenting todo)?

And If page sources are always available to automatic tools then I agree there’s no need to make HTML comments, yeah — I suggested them mainly for this reason.

I’ll add opt-in inline switch a bit later, and then maybe let’s make just-comment todos always visible and argument-less todos always invisible, but personally I think that may be too tight. --Arseniiv (talk) 19:39, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I misinterpreted your HTML comment suggestion, thought you are planning to introduce it through a template. HTML comments could of course placed in wiki text on each place and they are of course helpful for editors. But to collect todo pages id does not help very much. I'm sure the wiki search isn't able to find them. BTW: boxes on pages alone do not force anybody to fix things, look Template:External image for a in my opinion sad example. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:14, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

For my part, I still have no experience uploading files and shy from it, so maybe many others do too? Being afraid to mis-upload or something. :) --Arseniiv (talk) 20:41, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Uploading is easy. The problem in the case indicated above were external images on pages that are not available any more. Internal (uploaded) images look fine, mostly. Even SVG images are possible, sometimes (really very rarely) with small defects. --Xenwolf (talk) 21:04, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

See User:Arseniiv/Sandbox#Todo with(out) inline --Arseniiv (talk) 20:09, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Looks good now. I think it's okay to type 9 more characters to draw attention from the actual content of a page to its defects. If you ask me, this could be moved to production (or "deduction") now, IOW, rename User:Arseniiv/TodoTest into Template:todo. Do you have the Move function available in the More ˅ submenu? If yes, and you are ready to do it, be sure to have both Move associated talk page and Move subpages (up to 100) checked. --Xenwolf (talk) 20:57, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Done! Though Template:Todo/Doc isn’t transcluded for some reason right now. Maybe it needs time to refresh something or maybe it needs a edit without changes? --Arseniiv (talk) 13:40, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Great :-). In cases like this (transclusion or even categorization doesn't look right) refresh as follows: 1) open for edit, 2) preview, 3) save. (because you actually didn't change anything, the history isn't affected) --Xenwolf (talk) 14:53, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Ah, nice! --Arseniiv (talk) 18:02, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Placeholder autotext

I removed the placeholder, because it doesn't look good if a free text has to be shown. Therefore I also had to remove the period because there is no sentence in the first line. --Xenwolf (talk) 22:07, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Adopt Template: Mbox?

Shall we update the style of this template to match the later ones? FloraC (talk) 07:59, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Did it anyway. FloraC (talk) 12:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)