Template talk:High-use

About these templates

The {{intricate}} template has long been used for a similar purposes as these {{high-risk}} / {{high-use}} templates. But I have always felt that one doesn't really fit for high-risk / high-use templates, since it mostly talks about the code being intricate.

That a template is intricate is usually obvious when one looks at the code, no need to tell that. What is not obvious from just looking at a template and its code is if a template is used on many thousands of pages. So this template is a way of telling that.

Also, I have noticed that many admins are sloppy and don't use sandboxes, instead they try things out directly on protected widely used high-risk templates. Edit comments like "just testing" on templates used on 100,000 pages or more are all too common. This template points them to the /sandbox and /testcases, even if those subpages have not yet been created. This also means that non-admins are pointed to those subpages and thus can help out by experimenting in the /sandbox.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Wording

This discussion was moved here from David's talkpage:

Since you are a native English speaker and I am not, and you are not me and thus might see things I have missed: I would like some help to check and correct the text of some templates and their documentation that I have created lately. And if anything in their explanations is unclear ask me and I'll explain and thus I will know what might need a better explanation.

• {{high-use}} – I think this one should be pretty straightforward to understand, so mostly a language/wording check.

Looking forward for your comments on this!

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:36, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Please take a look at User:Matthewedwards/Sandbox/Template:High-use. I re-worded the template slightly, and will take a stab at the documentation later tonight. -- Matthewedwards (talk · contribs · count · email) 23:24, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I like your rewording of {{high-use}}. I think we should use your rewording pretty much as is, except two details: I think we should keep "server load" instead of "server bandwidth" since it is not about connection bandwidth but about CPU load. That is, every time you change a template all pages that use it has to be re-rendered. And perhaps (but just perhaps) we should say "please discuss any changes" instead of "please discuss any major changes" since for the really high-use templates I think even tiny changes should first be discussed. Put perhaps people will think it is too much to ask that? Or something like this is perhaps in between: "please discuss your changes". Or would that sound weird?

Thanks for taking a look and for the improved {{high-use}} text!

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:18, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't sure if "Bandwidth" was correct, but I wonder if the majority of users will understand "server load" and what it means regarding every page being re-rendered? Personally, I don't like second-person usage, so instead of "your", how about "please discuss any changes"? -- Matthewedwards (talk · contribs · count · email) 06:34, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I have now updated the text of {{high-use}} using a slightly modified version of your text.

And yeah, "load" can mean any kind of load. But since "bandwidth" would be untrue I prefer to use "load" even thought the word might seem less clear. I think we need to link to more explanation somewhere. There already are two pages explaining these things ( Wikipedia:Template test cases and Wikipedia:High-risk templates ) but their explanations are currently pretty bad and I didn't know how point to them in a nice way in this message box so I left that out for the moment. I am thinking we should perhaps instead add an explanation at the top of the message box's documentation about server load and why testing is a good thing before deploying (lots of good reasons for that). And then perhaps link to that explanation from the message box? This message box is only used on template pages so we are allowed to link to its own documentation like that.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Splitting ((high-use)) and ((high-risk))

This discussion was at first a part of the section above, but since it led to the splitting of the template into two templates I added this section title. --David Göthberg (talk) 22:09, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I've removed discussion of "bandwidth" or "server load" from the wording. Firstly, while it may be a concern to a select group of editors who do lots of work on extremely high-profile templates, WP:PERF is not supposed to be something that we concern our users with, and not every change to a template considered to be in "high use" (which I've seen applied to templates with a hundred transclusions) is going to cause the server farm to fall over. Secondly, the major concern should not be performance anyway - it should be screwing up and having that negatively impact hundreds or thousands of articles. I've reworded the template to reflect this. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:00, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Chris Cunningham: You have misunderstood this message box in several ways. So let me explain:

1: We made this message box since we needed something to put on the very high-use templates. That is the top 20 or so templates. Those are used on about 300.000 - 3.000.000 pages each. We had frequent problems with admins doing fast repetitive experimental edits on them. Thus causing widespread disruption to page layouts. And even pushing up the job queue so much that we got noticeable effects such as editing got slower for everyone and category list updates got seriously delayed. (Back in 2007 such edits even caused server crashes. But the devs fixed that so now the servers at least do not crash anymore, instead things just get slow.) So this message box is not directed towards regular Wikipedia editors, instead it is directed to admins only.

2: "Server load" in this case does not mean bandwidth. In this case it mostly means server CPU load. If you do 10 edits within some minutes to a template that is used on half a million pages, then we do need to think about performance.

3: The sentence "The tested changes can then be added in one single edit to this template" is essential when you deal with the kind of fools like the admins that do 10 experimental edits in 5 minutes to a template used on 300.000 pages. They even have used comments like "Experimental edit, probably won't work" in their edit comments. So they knew they were experimenting, still they did it directly on the high-risk production templates. And this happened all the time. After we added this message box to the highest risk templates it seems such incidents have become much rarer.

4: Yes, the visible disruption to lots of pages is today probably the bigger concern, since the servers are more stable now. And that is what we meant with "disruption". And yeah, the text should perhaps be somewhat tweaked to reflect that.

5: I think that changes to templates that are visible on that many pages should be discussed before deployed. Thus we used the wording "please discuss any changes". You changed it to "consider discussing changes", which I think is a too soft statement.

6: You removed the line break after the first bold sentence. I find that less readable. The first sentence is the most essential part and works as a heading.

Thus I have reverted most of your edit.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:31, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

That's fair enough; the new lower bounds on where the template should be used means that it doesn't apply to the templates I was really concerned about. I'll think about creating a new header for those. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:42, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that is a good idea! I agree, we do need a softer message we can use on many other templates to inform people that they can use the /sandbox etc. I am thinking something like this:

• For the really high-risk templates (top 100 or so), we can use the template name {{high-risk}}. (That is currently a redirect to this {{high-use}} template.) And {{high-risk}} can use the current pretty hard wording, and the current orange major warning "content" colour.
• For the rest of the high-use templates (down to say templates used on 2000 pages or so), we can use the template name {{high-use}}, and use the softer text you suggested in your edit to this template. I really like your softer wording, and for this level it would be perfect. And we can use the yellow minor warning "style" colour and the yellow warning triangle we often use for the yellow level.
• For regular templates we could make a template named something like {{sandbox reminder}} or so. I have to think a while for what is the best name for that. Name suggestions are very welcome. That one should probably use the default blue "notice" level and default blue (i) icon. That template should perhaps mostly be placed on templates were we expect or already get frequent edits, and on semi-complex templates. For the really complex templates we already have the {{intricate template}}.

I am not so concerned about exactly what bounds we choose between the three templates, I just mentioned some recommendations so people don't need to waste time thinking about it and can just follow the recommendations.

Chris Cunningham and anyone else reading this: What do you think?

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:19, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Y Done - I have done the split into {{high-use}} and {{high-risk}}. And I have updated all pages that transclude or link to these templates, that took about 100 edits, phew... And while doing that I noticed that people were already using {{high-use}} for many not so high-risk templates, so thanks Chris for coming up with the idea of making it two templates.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent work. Thanks David. I've tweaked the wording on {{high-risk}} to be a little stronger now. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. And wowsers!, that is really strong wording, but yeah, probably appropriate for the {{high-risk}} message box.

How do you feel about the bounds I state in the docs for when to use these message boxes? (Currently 2000 - 100,000 for {{high-use}} and 100,000 and up for {{high-risk}}.)

By the way, one reason that I and others leave an empty line between the "<noinclude>" and the "{{documentation}}" in the template code is to make it easier (less error prone) when we cut and paste back and forth between a template and its /sandbox. (There are several reasons why we don't want to display the /doc page on /sandbox pages. And the sandbox often contains a {{template sandbox notice}} that we want to retain.) And that empty line only costs two bytes of template code, and that is in the noinclude area thus not affecting the size when transcluding the template. And some of us find it more readable since it keeps the actual template code and the "administrative" parts apart.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:00, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The boundaries sound good. We can always change them if we come up with better ones. As for the whitespace on the doc line, I normally leave a blank line just above the end of the template, as the mbox code ignores whitespace. But I'm sure you're aware that getting a programmer to use someone else's whitespace conventions is about as easy as getting dogs and cats to play together. :) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:12, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

You mean leaving a blank line like this?

{{ambox
| text =
Lots of text and complex code.
                  <!-- The "blank" line. -->
}}<noinclude>
</noinclude>

Yeah I sometimes do that too, especially before the end braces of complex #switch cases. MediaWiki allows such a blank line before several uses of end braces. But we have a special tweak in the mbox's code to make them ignore whitespace around their "text" parameters.

And true about whitespace conventions. I knew it was a long shot, but I wanted to explain why I code like I do anyway. So far I have managed to convert many template programmers to use more whitespace! :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit request

{{editprotected}} Can the link to Special:MostLinkedTemplates be replaced with Wikipedia:Database reports/Templates with the most transclusions, since this page offers more up-to-date information? PC78 (talk) 20:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Page is not protected :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:46, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, well, there you go. PC78 (talk) 06:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Update number of uses dynamically?

Is there some way the template parameter for number of uses can be updated dynamically from the data in Wikipedia:Database reports/Templates transcluded on the most pages? Set theorist (talk) 09:50, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Should the High-risk message box be in includeonly tags?

There are several places where editors have surrounded the {{high-risk}} template by <includeonly>, tags, such as Template:!/doc (where I've since removed them), Template:WPBannerMeta/doc, Template:Class mask/doc, Template:Class/doc, Template:Class/icon/doc, Template:Importance mask/doc, Template:Importance/colour/doc, Template:Importance/doc Template:Reflist/doc, Template:Tl/doc, Template:Asbox/doc, Template:Navbox/doc. This seems unnecessary in light of this edit. Furthermore, I've changed the text of the message to make it clear that it is warning users about "any changes to this template" (rather than changes to the documentation). If anyone wants to clarify the wording further, or add a sentence about being bold with changing the documentation, that might be helpful, but it should be fine to remove the noinclude tags from uses of this template on documentation subpages. Set theorist (talk) 09:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I removed the includeonly tag from many uses of {{high-risk}} but there are still more to do. Set theorist (talk) 09:05, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

This seems undesirable behavior. Partially, this template tracks the actual templates which have hundreds to millions of transclusions. We don't want to add /doc pages to those results, it would seem to me. --Izno (talk) 14:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

sandbox and testcases links

When this template is placed in a /doc subpage, it works fine whether that /doc subpage is viewed on the main template, or directly. However, there's a problem if the /doc subpage is viewed on the template's /sandbox, as with Template:WikiProject Aviation/sandbox: the links are to non-existent pages Template:WikiProject Aviation/sandbox/sandbox and Template:WikiProject Aviation/sandbox/testcases. Of the two, the second is the greater problem because having edited a /sandbox you will often wish to go directly to the /testcases subpage, and the red link may lead the editor into believing that no /testcases exists, and that they should create it; whereas it does in fact exist at Template:WikiProject Aviation/testcases.

I think that the code that generates these two links should detect that this notice is used the /sandbox and /testcases subpages, in the same way that it detects use on the /doc subpage. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Special:TemplateSandbox

It seems like it would be helpful if these templates would mention the existence of Special:TemplateSandbox, which sounds really handy for testing modified templates on real pages. —SamB (talk) 18:37, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 4 April 2014

Change the link to a WM Labs link like this: Template:Tl, the database report is so stale (not updated more than six months ago). Eyesnore (pc) 20:45, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Question: Which link would that be? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:58, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Like this: http://tools.wmflabs.org/templatecount/index.php?lang=en&namespace=10&name={{urlencode:BASEPAGENAME}}, with plain link span. Wikipedia:Database reports/Templates transcluded on the most pages is too stale (not updated more than six months ago). Eyesnore (pc) 21:23, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Not done for now: That link isn't in this template. Please sandbox your proposal at Template:High-use/sandbox. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:32, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

We need a smaller boat

I suggest we add an option to reduce this template to a one line only. First, that should do for the admin/TE who embarks on editing (TE protection should be there of course). Second, those six lines of verbosity it takes today is distracting from the main function of a documentation page, and is not even addressing the visiting editor. (trigger example: it was re-added [1]). -DePiep (talk)