Template talk:Welcome to Wikipedia: Difference between revisions

Editor Retention

This template is within the scope of WikiProject Editor Retention, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of efforts to improve editor retention on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Editor RetentionWikipedia:WikiProject Editor RetentionTemplate:WikiProject Editor RetentionEditor Retention

Archives

Archive 1 Archive 2

This page has archives. Sections older than 21 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present.

Unless this is an issue on my end, it appears that {{{{{|safesubst:}}}Usig|i}} substitutes to my full four-tilde signature when previewing {{subst:Welcome to Wikipedia}}. Additionally, it seems that the following code is problematic for signatures, since it simply adds the full four-tilde signature twice, at least for me:

{{{{{|safesubst:}}}Usig|3}} <small>{{{{{|safesubst:}}}Usig|5}}</small>

Is this just on my end? If not, then who knows how many users have been unwittingly substituting this template and adding malformed welcoming messages as a result. Does this have to do with {{Usig}} or the safesubsts, which appear to be the common components here? Given how few watchers there are on this page, I'm pinging Fred Gandt, who was the last editor to have made a major edit to this template. I hope they don't mind and apologies in advance if they do. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 23:12, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind being pinged at all, but am just about to go to sleep; I'll take a look in about 12 hours if it's not resolved in the meantime. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 07:03, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Done The problem was in {{Usig}} after another editor had fiddled with it for apparently no good reason. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 16:08, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, Fred Gandt! While you're here, though, I have a suggestion that may improve the template. After noticing it with my signature, which includes an em-dash (—) at the beginning, I realized that the user signature at the end displays all the markup and coloring and effects that the user adds to their signature. This is intended, of course, but might it be better to simply replace the signature at the end with just the username and a timestamp? Specifically, replace the following:

{{{{{|safesubst:}}}Usig}}

with the following:

[[User:{{{{{|safesubst:}}}REVISIONUSER}}|{{{{{|safesubst:}}}REVISIONUSER}}]], {{{{{|safesubst:}}}Usig|5}}

This ensures it only prints out the username and timestamp, minus all the signature decoration, signature markup, and other out-of-place modifications that each user implements. If you are interested in implementing it, along with some other minor changes I added, feel free to use the code in this sandbox revision. A comparison of the changes can be seen here, which also include cleaning up the Signpost item, removing underscores in wikilinks, voiding the HTML line breaks, and deitalicizing the interlanguage main page links. Thank you for your time. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 13:09, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I made some more changes to the sandbox that may be worth inclusion. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 14:35, 18 August 2018 (UTC); last edited at 15:11, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Done I've implemented most of your suggestions as suggested, but have left the full user signature as such since the auto signing is merely a convenience and should accurately reflect what we're actually doing, which is signing a message left on a talk page, practically as usual. I also juggled the order and layout of the final few main paragraphs for what I consider to be a "better" sense of priority and to keep the whole from looking "intimidating". This template was carefully designed to carry a massive amount of information to new users without appearing too bulky or complex, and I (for one) would like to keep it reined in where possible. I do however agree that the reminder/advice to add edit summaries was a glaring omission and was glad to add it :) Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 14:15, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again, Fred Gandt, especially for tolerating my pestering. I entirely understand your rationale for the signature and keeping the template as minimally intimidating as a massive template can be. Your thoughtful consideration in developing and maintaining this template is appreciated. I hope you have a great rest of the day / night! —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 14:27, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please fix unterminated br-tags. This is currently breaking proper functioning of syntax highlighting when editing the wikicode of any page that includes the template. To fix:

• Please change all <br> to <br/>.
• Please change all <br> tags containing html attributes, to add an ending slash as required by Html syntax. For example:
  • Change <br style="line-height:220%"> to <br style="line-height:220%" /> as well as all similar code lines starting with '<br'.

Although the Html5 spec considers <br> a self-closing tag (thus not requiring an ending slash) that doesn't mean that all associated programs can handle it properly. In particular, the syntax highlighting program cannot. The principle to consider here, is: "Be strict in what you send, but generous in what you receive." We should end br-tags with a slash, at least until syntax highlighting handles it properly. Mathglot (talk) 05:10, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe an easy fix is by using {{break}} since I assume that will generate the required break, without messing with the highlighting. Mathglot (talk) 05:14, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. "I assume that" - that's what the sandbox and testcases are for. I've refreshed the sandbox as a mirror of the live template ready for you. Cabayi (talk) 09:53, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Advice on Help:HTML in wikitext is to "avoid" slashless <br>s. Developing code to coddle other programs that incorrectly handle the data they're required to parse is bad practice. The syntax highlighting is broken, not this template. However, in all likelihood, the syntax highlighting will be broken for a while more, so fair enough. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 12:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, thanks. Mathglot (talk) 12:36, 24 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fred Gandt, not worth another intervention on this at this point, but somewhere I remember seeing that use of {{br}} avoids the problem entirely, so maybe is a better solution going forward, in similar situations. I've used it to good advantage, and have seen no problems. Mathglot (talk) 09:14, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} template should be substituted so it stays the same (approximately user ID ± a constant) 83.9.228.74 (talk) 15:18, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and have made the change in the template sandbox. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:31, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(More) Though I see that the change was proposed before, at the top of this page, and rejected. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:45, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't so much "reject" it, as stated my opinion and no discussion was forthcoming. Since the subject's cropped up again, and John's already to go with it, I don't feel strongly enough one way or the other to argue. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 21:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 19:42, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Fred Gandt: After this edit, text strings such as "MESSAGE FOR REGISTERED USERS" are subst'ed into the output. Is that intended? There's an example at User talk:Umar a usman. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:45, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm confused by this. The example was added to the page in December 2019, many edits after the edit to the template you suggest the problem was "after" (it was definitely after it, by several years :D ). I just tested a substitution on my own talk page, and as expected it seems fine. Without a step-by-step way to reproduce the problem, I wouldn't know where to start looking for a fix (without running through ever character of that frankly horrible code (should remake it in Lua to be honest)). And "no", it is not intended :D Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 21:07, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the contributions of M-Mustapha (the editor who left the example welcome message, I see two nearby edits with the same summary reading: (Welcome "to Wikipedia" FOR IPs OR THE REGISTERED USER'S NAME!: T) (Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit). I wonder if there was an issue with mobile editing at the time? Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 21:15, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Fred Gandt: Oh, I see what I did wrong. I tested it at User:John of Reading/X3, but the template uses {{Ipt}} and only produces the proper output on a user talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:11, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, well, yes, then, that is intentional :D Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 08:42, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I suggest to replace File:UncialB-01.png with File:UncialB-01.svg in the template. --ZabeMath (talk) 12:07, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]