Template talk:Subject page

"Related Subjects" -> "Subsections"
I changed the title of that column because the relation is hierarchical; it is not a general loose relation. Alternatively it could be named "Subordinate Subjects" but I think the latter is too technical a term. --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:24, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That heading has gone through several different revisions; I'm personally fine with that title. And that's the benefit to using a template transcluded instead of substituted&mdash;it's easy to make changes and have them all be updated at once. -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:17, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there a discussion about that heading? If it isn't appropriate for some subjects, there should probably be an optional parameter to change it. --Martin Kraus (talk) 19:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Featured books of subsections?
I think there should be at least an option to include featured books (and books with print version etc.) of subordinate subjects (subsections) in the list of featured books of the parent subject. For example, none of the featured language books appears on Subject:Languages (although there are only a handfuld of them). Because of this empty list, most readers will probably conclude that there aren't any featured language books. --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:24, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This is the one thing I'm sure can be technically accomplished, at least with my knowledge. I know it's probably the one remaining objection that might be leveled at subjects, now that I've created a system and altered the subject code to indicate book completion progress.  But, let's say a subject could pull all the featured books from every sub-subject out there.  The higher-level subjects, as more sub-subjects are added or featured books are assigned, would see the list of featured books shown on them balloon out, with none of those shown actually members of that subject page itself.  The one consolation I can give is that Featured books is linked prominently from the main page and left-hand navigation, and lists all the featured language books in the languages section.  -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:25, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've added an optional parameter "featuredbooks" which replaces the dynamic list of featured books by whatever is specified (preferably a list of Goodbook templates); see Subject:Languages for an example. What do you think? --Martin Kraus (talk) 20:14, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

books in main subjects
For some (all?) of the main subjects (e.g. Mathematics, Languages, etc.) the subsections/subtopics are actually more important than the books that are not classified in any of the subsections. Therefore, I would suggest to classifiy these books as "Miscellaneous Mathematics" etc. instead of just "Mathematics" etc. (These books are not important enough to be listed on the main subjects page.) The template should accept an optional paramter that indicates that a subject is one of these main subjects. In this case the left column should include the subsections/subtopics and the right column should only show the list of featured books (as specified by the "featuredbooks" parameter). Comments? --Martin Kraus (talk) 20:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I made root subject with your changes and with some tweaks to reflect that some parameters from this template will be known (for instance, there will be one parent and it will be "books by subject". Trying to use parser functions in this template to have this one do both messes up the tables and requires using !, making the code ugly.  Now, the only problem is that when I try to use root subject on Subject:Languages it messes things up.  I already filed the books that were in that subject elsewhere or in Subject:Language education.  Can you take a look at root subject and see if you can't figure out the problem? -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:40, 18 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Subject:Languages looks fine to me; I guess you already fixed the problem. Good work! --Martin Kraus (talk) 06:56, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Display problem
The "subsections" and "featured books" sections overlap on my screen. Is anyone else having this problem? Liam987 talk 21:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you give a specific example of a page where you see this happening? So we're looking at the same thing.  (I looked at an arbitrary subject page and didn't see a problem, but we really need to be looking at the same page.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 23:11, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
 * for instance, on Subject:Languages of Europe. Liam987  talk 00:15, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing anything wrong there. In the right-hand column thereis a blue heading for "Subsections", a list of ten subsections from English to Yiddish, then a blue heading for "Featured Books", which lists no books directly in the subject itself but two featured books that are in subsections.  Is some part of that overlapping for you?  If so, what browser are you using?  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 02:52, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Remove 'In subsections:' when there aren't any
At the moment, this template adds "In subsections:" even when there are no books listed under that. I think it'd be nice to remove this in these circumstances. Would involve using the expensive magic word PAGESINCATEGORY. —Sam Wilson 10:47, 5 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, DPLs were never properly integrated into wiki markup. The list itself is inaccessible to the wiki markup because it's only added to the page after the wiki markup has been fully rendered; and the magic words are underpowered relative to the logic of DPLs, specifically there's no way to tell how many pages a category contains in a particular namespace.  I don't know of any way to figure the actual number of pages that would appear in the "In subsections:" DPL; if there is a way, it would involve Scribuntu, and I'm concerned that coding specific patches like that in Scribuntu does long-term harm to our infrastructure by making it brittle and reducing the degree of system control invested in wiki markup.  Maybe if we could come up with a sufficiently general device for this sort of thing and code it in Scribuntu... but I'm not sure we could get it general enough, and wonder if the benefit outweighs the drawbacks.
 * (Btw, on the broad topic of wiki markup: I concluded several years ago that if the wikimedia sisterhood is to flourish, it's imperative wiki markup be aggressively improved, as user community empowerment corresponds directly to the investment of system customization solely in wiki markup &mdash; but I also concluded that the Foundation will never aggressively improve wiki markup because it's been led astray by a self-perpetuating mindset inconsistent with the needs of the sisterhood.  Therefore a solution is needed that minimizes dependence on the Foundation to fix things &mdash; we can at least hope the Foundation will not break things quickly, but improving them is up to us.  I've an idea I've been pursuing for a while; link.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:29, 5 January 2017 (UTC)


 * After saying all that, there's one possibility I still need to check out, that might support what you suggest; I'll need to study it a bit more. The key wiki markup is in subject page/booklist.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:32, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem to pan out. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 5 January 2017 (UTC)