Template talk:Gbm4ibx

Template:Gbm4ibx is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. This template does not have a testcases subpage. You can create the testcases subpage here.

Please categorize

Please categorize this template into Category:Coordinates templates. Thank you. Mike Peel 21:18, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. – Luna Santin (talk) 03:25, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This template is effectively gbmappingsmall.

I had started making what I thought a pretty uncontroversial change moving articles over to Template:gbmappingsmall given that both templates in reality are exactly the same thing. However, ras52 has requested further consensus to these changes. IMHO all these very similar grid reference templates do no serve any purpose other than to make the use of grid reference templates more complicated, and in the case of this template being the same as gbmappingsmall it makes sense to change over to one. Although gbmappingsmall has a longer name, its name is clearer and a better describtion of what it does (especially in relation to other grid reference templates). It is also used directly by more articles, and therefore it makes sense to move to that one. I would also note that this template is intended as an auxillary to other templates and that the changes that were complained about were being made to articles space. As for the complaints about gbmapping small not having documentation, it does at Template talk:Gbmapping. IMHO, this tdocumentation is superior to the one on this template which basically tells you what the acronym stands for and that it is to replace a redundant template. Pit-yacker (talk) 20:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for coming here to discuss it. I'm not wholly against the change, and now you've explained the rationale, I can see the logic behind the edits. I hadn't intended my comment on your talk page to come over as confrontational, so sorry if that is how it came over.

Regarding the length of the name, I can absolutely see why a more descriptive (and therefore necessarily longer) name is better. However when I first encountered this change it was when a series of consecutive edits turned up on my watchlist where the article grew by 2752 bytes, 2381 bytes, etc. In a list article, there can be hundreds of uses of {{gbm4ibx}}, often handwritten, and a 7 character increase per template rapidly adds up. If you're trying to enter such a list manually (as I currently am), entering all the grid references manually is tedious enough without doubling the length of the template name. My preference would simply be to make Template:gbm4ibx a redirect to Template:gbmappingsmall (or vice versa). That eliminates the redundant template, but leaves the short name.

Secondly, although, as you note, there is documentation on Template_talk:gbmapping, this isn't the right place for it. First, template documentation belongs on the template itself (in a <noinclude></noinclude> block) or, better, transcluded from a /doc subpage — users of the template shouldn't be expected to read the talk page to understand it. Template:gbm4ibx gets that right. Admittedly it fails to properly document everything. When I saw your edit, I went there to find out about the template, and saw no documentation on the template — hence the comment on your user page.

Finally, and this is a much more trivial issue, {{gbm4ibx}} is fully-protected whereas {{gbmappingsmall}} is not protected at all. If you propose to change all instances of the former to latter (and if any are done, I think all should be done), there will be a lot of pages using the latter because a lot of infoboxes use gbm4ibx. We should get {{gbmappingsmall}} fully-protected too.

Can I suggest the following course of action:

Move Template:gbm4ibx/doc to Template:gbmappingsmall/doc, and put a suitably modified copy at Template:gbmapping/doc.
Copy content of Template:gbm4ibx to Template:gbmappingsmall (they only differ in the way the documentation is done).
Ask an admin to indefinitely fully-protect Template:gbmappingsmall and to make Template:gbm4ibx a redirect to Template:gbmappingsmall.
Continue making the changes you were doing with AWB.
Manually revert those changes to lists (such as the examples at the beginning of my comment) so that they continue to use gbm4ibx.

How does that sound? — ras52 (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For now, I have reverted the use of {{gbmappingsmall}} on list pages. I have also created a documentation page at Template:gbmapping/doc, which is basically an edited (and updated) version of the documentation that was at Template talk:Gbmapping. I have included this on the noinclude of the gbmapping templates that are not protected. I will wait until to see if there are any other opinions before making further edits on this. Pit-yacker (talk) 23:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

11 years later, I have redirected this template to Template:Gbmappingsmall — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:28, 9 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]