Forum:Why were citation templates deleted?

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I note that the citation templates such as {{DW}} and {{DWM}} have been deleted. I've looked for a few minutes for some sort of forum discussion about the matter, but haven't found any rationale or consensus for this deletion. And I've checked category:citation templates to discover that they are all gone. What was wrong with those templates? To my mind, they reduced the number of keystrokes needed to cite things, especially where multiple citations for a single point was necessary. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:16, December 4, 2010 (UTC)

I know that the DW template had some issues with creating a bunch of garbage non-desired links in the "most wanted" special age due to MediaWiki's improper handling of the "ifexist" construct, which the DW template used to determine if it needed to point to "the article" or "the article (episode)". -- sulfur 12:56, December 5, 2010 (UTC)

The discussion was on the template's talk page which has been deleted along with the template.

sulfur's got the gist of the discussion basically the templates were creating a lot of red links and messing around with the wanted pages list. There were some other issues also with the template that made it somewhat counter intuitive. --Tangerineduel 14:12, December 5, 2010 (UTC)

Well, as I've just got finished posting at Template talk:Discontinuity, the "redlink on wanted pages issue" is a non-starter these days. The average user cannot easily find Special:WantedPages, because the new skin doesn't even include a link to Special:SpecialPages. And how in the heck were those templates counter-intuitive? They were the easiest things in the world to use, as I recall, and saved a ton of keystrokes It was just {{DW|EpName|EpName|Epname}}. How's that counter-intuitive? (Oh wait, we don't have a forum thread where we can discuss that, because it was never discussed here, nor do we have the original template talk pages, where there was a development discussion. Bummer.)

You speak as if this was one template. But it really wasn't. It was a whole range of templates, a scheme of citation. Now, I didn't start Template:DW and the wider citation project, but as one of the people who spent hours getting all that to work — I'm more than a little pissed that you guys wiped out a whole class of template without even putting it up for discussion here. Deleting a page, fine, that can be discussed on a single page. But wiping out a range of templates, and not even leaving behind the code so that it might be adapted into something better, that's just dirty, dirty pool.

I find the rationale given here, in combination with your responses on Template talk:discontinuity, completely unacceptable. Just because something is, to use your word, "clever" doesn't mean you run away from it when it gives a tiny minority of users an obscure problem that the vast majority of users can't even see. A completely acceptable solution was given to you. You could have linked The Sensorites (TV story) to The Sensorites, if it bugged you so much. But no. You decided to trash a lot of work, all the history of that work, and even the discussions pertaining the extermintation of that work. Truly, I have never seen anything which more clearly fits the aphorism, "throwing the baby out with the bath water".

If this sort of situation ever arises again, can I suggest that you at least move the undesired template to something like Template:TemplateName/Archve, then delete Template:TemplateName so that people can't link to it anymore. But you'll at least retain the coding work that was done, so that it can be recycled and improved upon. Just because you don't understand something, and you hurl the word "clever" at it like an invective, doesn't mean that it's worthless. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:05, December 5, 2010 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to be attacked on this, while I have explained it I did not delete the template, I did initiated one of the discussions concerning them, and on this forum page I just provided the information to build on what sulfur had already said (I really considered saying nothing, concerned that attack that might follow).

The wanted pages is accessible from the top of the Recent pages, it's also within the help pages for users to access should they want to help with something on the wiki, they're maybe not obviously useful but they are used to work out which pages might need creation or what pages might have incorrect links to pages. There's other uses for dedicated users along these lines.

The aim of removing the template was to make the wiki run more smoothly, as the users who created the template / maintained it were not currently editing on this wiki, it was an issue raised and then was addressed by the admins that edit on this wiki regularly.

Some things do bug myself and other admins and editors, some things like un-used redirects, which is why we likely wouldn't create the link you suggest, part of the behind the scenes stuff that the admins do is to clear up stuff like that.

Now I have, however un-deleted the template and the template's talk page, and moved it to an archive so it may be preserved as you've requested. You can find it at Template:DW/Archive 1 and Template Talk:DW/Archive 1. --Tangerineduel 07:30, December 6, 2010 (UTC)