Template talk:About

Template:About 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.

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Comma as well as "and"

This needs to support || or |,| as input to generate a comma, as well as presently-supported |and| to generate the word "and", so that this:

{{About|humans as a species|other uses|Human (disambiguation)||Humanity (virtue)||Human nature|and|Human condition}}

works. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼

How does selfref= work?

This documentation says that This template supports |selfref= (see {{self reference}} and MOS:SELFREF for details). but none of these three pages give an example or instruction of how to apply this option.

What's the format for it? If I try |selfref=WP:FALSEBALANCE or |selfref=FALSEBALANCE, I get For the Wikipedia policy, see False balance (disambiguation). at the end of the hatnote. Lord Belbury (talk) 08:16, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lord Belbury: After poking around in the code a bit, I think the intended usage is selfref=yes, leaving all the other parameters unchanged:

{{about|subject1|the Wikipedia policy on subject2|WP:FALSEBALANCE|selfref=yes}}

...and poking about in the generated HTML code shows that the "selfref" class has been added. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:49, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Got it, I didn't realise it was for applying selfref status to the entire template, I assumed it was to allow a single unprintworthy "and for Wikipedia policy" link at the end of a long hatnote. I'll update the documentation to say what it's for. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:57, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 March 2023

This edit request to Template:About/doc has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

The 3rd example:

{{About||Use2|Article2}} →

should have a generic, unqualified "other uses" / disambiguation example explicitly included just before (or after) it:

{{About||other uses|Category:Disambiguation pages}} →

So "About (disambiguation)" would be the clean example here, but as this is the "About" page, this About template already links to "About (disambiguation)" by default. However this syntactic, calling-convention privilege is shared by none of the other pages listed in About (disambiguation), even though it would be useful to link to the disambiguation page from any and every of the potentially ambiguated pages, see About (surname), About.com, about.me, abOUT, About URI scheme, About box, or About equal sign. I mean to use this in related and adapted works of literature and art, since this example strikes me as a little silly.

I had trouble understanding that I needed to abstract this example to get what I wanted — the template parameter interpretation is fairly opaque. I think this usage, which should be common, should be show in way that's easy to understand, and easy to copy and use without deeper thought beyond the intent.

I expect that a disambiguation link to something with a name that is a substring of the including page title is a common occurrence, and so appropriate syntax should be demonstrated on this documentation page.

I have in mind to use this in such a case (my recent edits are hint enough), and there are around 2 dozen pages I think I will use this example on immediately. Mcint (talk) 01:56, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely a helpful example to have! I've updated the docs accordingly. ElanHR (talk) 05:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 March 2023 (2)

This edit request to Template:About/doc has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Replace item 4, with shorter form.

{{About||other uses|Article (disambiguation)}} →

should become

{{About|||Article (disambiguation)}} → Mcint (talk) 06:05, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Already done ElanHR took care of this. Lizthegrey (talk) 16:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not actually fixed yet :) ElanHR and Lizthegrey, this is still broken on the page - it's missing a 3rd vertical bar. Currently it looks like this:

{{About||Article (disambiguation)}}

but it should look like this, with the third vertical bar added:

{{About|||Article (disambiguation)}}

Thank you!

136.25.161.245 (talk) 20:36, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that! Fixed now. Looks like it was missing an extra nowiki. lizthegrey (talk) 21:15, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]