Template talk:Expedition
I almost never use the image at the top of the page, and I usually make the expedition page before I have photos, so I commented out the image at the top to elide the empty image tag that subst:Expedition always leaves. -- Jevanyn 15:10, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
__NOTOC__ ?
why does this default to no toc? my personal opinion is that the toc makes sense in some cases (multiple people reporting) and is not a detraction otherwise. just wondering what the reasoning was. --mykaDragonBlue [- i have no sig -] 12:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
Improved Expedition template
I've created an improved version of this template (currently found at User:Eldin/template/Expedition) which allows you to specify the contents of various page sections in the template, or omit page sections entirely. My version should be completely compatible with the existing version, by which I mean any template usage which works in the currently existing version should produce identical results in either the existing or my modified version. I would like to eventually replace the existing version with my modified version, but I didn't want to make major changes to such a widely used template without at least having some discussion about it first. --Eldin (talk) 13:52, 27 July 2013 (EDT)
- Looks reasonable to me, but I've got a couple of suggestions
- Making the image at the top of the page (sort of) required isn't good, as the template (should) often get used long before the pictures are uploaded.
- The "help" message is very dense, making it hard for me to read. I'd suggest adding a blank line before and after each pair of "turn this section on/off" and "use this text for that section" params to make it more readable.
- Other than that, seems good to me. Jiml (talk) 22:28, 28 July 2013 (EDT)
- I suppose I could add a flag to turn off the image at the top. I'd rather have it include or not based on whether or not a value for 'image' was provided, but that breaks the strict backwards compatibility I was shooting for in the first version. I did make the changes you suggested to the format of the help message. --Eldin (talk) 04:22, 29 July 2013 (EDT)
- Thanks for putting the work in to improve the template. However, I'm wondering if many of the options will be used much. It would take some time to fill in all the fields or set the flags, and might be rather quicker to just use the basic template and then cut out the unwanted sections while editing the report. I suppose the most useful way of using the new template would be for people to keep a note of their 'default' expedition report settings, and to copy-and-paste that when setting up a new expedition page. Is that how you'd intended it to be used? — Benjw {talk} 13:44, 29 July 2013 (EDT)
- I imagine that at least some of the new options will almost never be used and were only included for completeness because it was trivial to add them at the same time as the more useful ones. Others are things I've personally wished for in the past. Keeping a copy of personal default options is certainly one way to use it. I was also considering the idea of having an app or a web-form that someone could fill in that would build an expedition page from the template without the need for figuring out how to edit the wiki. And of course, it still covers all of the use cases which the existing template does, as all of the new options will default to current behavior if you don't specify otherwise. As a note though, it only behaves properly if you use the {{subst:template}} syntax. If you just use the {{template}} syntax, the way I currently have the conditional logic built doesn't work right. But I don't think that's a big deal to users of the existing template, since it isn't very useful with just the {{template}} syntax anyway. --Eldin (talk) 17:05, 29 July 2013 (EDT)
- It is designed such that someone who uses it in a manner which is useful with the existing template should get exactly the same results with mine as the existing one. I have not yet found any case where it doesn't work as intended, but if anyone does I'll consider that a bug and try to fix it.--Eldin (talk) 16:23, 18 June 2015 (EDT)
- Given the lack of objection since I proposed switching it out, I've replaced the old template with my enhanced version. If anyone finds any problems with the change, please let me know here and if I can't address the problem in a timely manner, feel free to revert to the previous version.--Eldin (talk) 16:12, 26 June 2015 (EDT)
Categories
Some people find working with the categories difficult. Sourcerer attempted to simplify this by removing almost all comments, including those that give some explanation of a category. I fear this will lead to people giving the wrong category to an expedition. I do not have a good alternative solution (other than completely ditching the wiki and going for a style more like the geocaching website). --Eupeodes (talk) 18:55, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
- I agree, particularly about the text explaining each of the result categories. The other thing that having those there does is make sure that all of us agree about what they mean, so all of us do it the same way. I don't really have an issue with making it slightly complex, since there is text there making it clear that if they just leave the result category section alone, someone else will sort it out for them. Jiml (talk)
- I feel that removing the portion of the comments which explains when to use which categories is probably over-simplifying things to the point of making categories confusing by not providing enough info (as opposed to them being confusing because of excessive or disorganized info). A better solution than removing it altogether might be to have someone do some wordsmithing on the comments to try to make the explanation of the categories as clear and concise as possible. But I think the best long-term solution short of moving to something other than a wiki is likely something along the lines of a page where you can fill in a form, tick some boxes, maybe attach some pictures, and have it create a expedition page for you. --Eldin (talk) 03:36, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
- Interesting. I like the form idea. When I "removed" the comments, I actually moved them all into one block leaving the categories in a separate block so there was still some explanatory text. It's not that big a deal. The template has been working for over 10 000 expeditions. But it would be nice it fewer reports needed fixing. --Sourcerer (talk) 09:33, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
- I feel that removing the portion of the comments which explains when to use which categories is probably over-simplifying things to the point of making categories confusing by not providing enough info (as opposed to them being confusing because of excessive or disorganized info). A better solution than removing it altogether might be to have someone do some wordsmithing on the comments to try to make the explanation of the categories as clear and concise as possible. But I think the best long-term solution short of moving to something other than a wiki is likely something along the lines of a page where you can fill in a form, tick some boxes, maybe attach some pictures, and have it create a expedition page for you. --Eldin (talk) 03:36, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
