Template talk:Otheruses4

Questions

Perhaps I am just... not finding it, but I can't figure out what the <span> portion of the template actually does... it seems to render things in Italics, but then Italics is turned off by using the double apostrophe... so I am confused what it is for.

Also, while I am thinking about it, the name of this template (and {{Otheruses5}} for that matter) seems odd and unintuitive to me. Why is there a 4 when there are only 3 paramaters? —  Talk · Cont 00:52, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Because we copied them from Wikipedia is probably the most accurate short answer. :) The span has the class "dablink" in it. That allows global and per-theme global customizations to be done on it (see MediaWiki:Common.css for instance). *shrugs* -- Sekoia 02:03, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I guess I will have to pretend that "explanation" about the span class made any sense to me at all. Aside from the annoyance of fixing links... any reason it coldn't just be "Otheruse" and "Otheruses" (for example)? —  Talk · Cont 05:17, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Taking a look at the history for {{otheruses4}} at Wikipedia, it seems they came to the same conclusion you did back in 2009. They migrated to a different set of templates, which we might consider borrowing. Take a look at the various stuff at {{about}} on Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Hatnotes, too. If there's interest and support, I can try to port over the relevant templates from Wikipedia and then sic my bot on making updates. -- Sekoia 07:51, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

From what I can tell, the template {{About}} over on the Wiki is a bit more advanced than what we usually use this one for. I think what I would like to see is something like this:

This article is for {AboutThisPage}, for {AboutOtherPage} see {OtherPage}.

or

This article is for {AboutThisPage}, for {AboutOtherPages} see {OtherPage1} or {OtherPage2}.

and include something we don't have

This article is for {AboutThisPage}, for {AboutOtherPage1} see {OtherPage1} or for {AboutOtherPage2} see {OtherPage2}.

That last one is something I have occasionally thought we should have so that one doesn't necessarily need to redirect to a disambig page to force the user to have to look at a bunch of options and then click again. So, essentially, a minor wording change, an additional option, a new name, and perhaps a better designed set of parameters (having no words in them makes it slightly harder to remember what order things go in. —  Talk · Cont 08:24, 10 June 2012 (UTC)