Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Help:A quick guide to templates

Help:A quick guide to templates
This is largely redundant with the now trimmed down Help:Templates. I've been doing some browsing around our help pages which I find to be in somewhat of a disarray. Getting rid of this page would increase the accessibility of our help content. Swift (talk) 02:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Symbol delete vote.svg|15px]] Delete --Swift (talk) 02:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Symbol delete vote.svg|15px]] Delete - Finally some movement on getting our help pages up to snuff? &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 04:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Symbol keep vote.svg|15px]] Keep Don't delete unless you have changed the important links to this page, in particular the link on Help:Contributing_to_Wikibooks. Should that link point to Help:Template or to Help:Templates? Those pages should be merged, cleaned-up and rewritten, right? Who is going to do that work? And if someone is doing it, he or she will also be able to merge it with this page. --Martin Kraus (talk) 13:26, 16 December 2008 (UTC) --Martin Kraus (talk) 16:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Links to this page will of course be updated if deleted. Doing so before wouldn't be right as there has been no decision to get rid of this content.Help:Contributing_to_Wikibooks actually links to Help:Template and I had already added merge tags to both it and Help:Templates. If there is content here that you'd like salvaged, we can even hold closing this debate until it is merged with the other two. --Swift (talk) 13:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Since Help:Template has to be rewritten for clarity, I think it is good that Help:Contributing_to_Wikibooks also points to a shorter introduction to templates for "users" of templates. Help:Templates is probably a bad name for this, while Help:A_quick_guide_to_templates is a more appropriate title. Thus, I would be in favor of deleting Help:Templates and merging its content into Help:A_quick_guide_to_templates. This would avoid any confusion between Help:Templates and Help:Template. --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Any page on templates should be for users. Wikibooks help pages should not discuss technical details that are already (better and/or more appropriately) covered in Mediawiki documentation. Help:Template should eventually redirect to Help:Templates (or vice versa, if anyone has strong opinions on it). This title serves little or no purpose. --Swift (talk) 14:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was refering to "users" of templates in contrast to advanced "authors" of templates, i.e. people who mainly use existing templates and only occasionaly edit simple templates (without parameters). Well, what about this procedure: 1. merging Help:Templates and Help:A_quick_guide_to_templates under the title of the latter, 2. redirecting Help:Templates to Help:Template (or vice versa), 3. rewriting Help:Template, 4. a new discussion about deleting Help:A_quick_guide_to_templates based on the rewritten Help:Template --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I was referring to Wikibookians in general. For technical specifications (including advanced features) template authors should, in my opinion, refer to the much more authoritative and extensive documentation elsewhere. I just found this discussion.
 * How about this: Merge the three (I don't think the page under discussion has anything to offer) under Help:Templates, redirect Help:Template to it and delete Help:A quick guide to templates. If you think we need anything advanced here locally, feel free to add that to Help:Advanced templates, but I would urge you rather to go to http://www.mediawiki.org and contribute there. --Swift (talk) 16:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If the merge and the rewriting of Help:Template is done before the delete, I have no problem with it. I just prefer the Help:A quick guide to templates over Help:Templates (or Help:Templates Overview) because of 1) the formatting with italics for template names, 2) the explanation of subst, 3) the FAQ part, in particular the question about updates. On the other hand, Help:Templates seems to implicitly assume that you add templates only at the start of a page and I don't understand in which sense Template:Templatename should give the same result as  ; shouldn't it say that    gives the same result? --Martin Kraus (talk) 16:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I've copyeditted the contents of this page into Help:Templates to reflect the proposed merger so people can see what it looks like, which is something anyone could of done. I also renamed the page to Help:Templates Overview in hopes of reducing confusion caused by having two similarly named pages. I support the proposed merger, and propose that this nomination be closed as merge and delete. Perhaps for now at lest Help:Templates and Help:Template should refer to the same page until a decision is reached on what to do with it. I think this nomination should stay focused on what to do with the quick guide. Even what name to use can be discussed later. --dark lama  18:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I didn't know that it is fine to substantially change pages that are under discussion. I made some more changes to Help:Templates Overview. I agree with closing as merge and delete (or redirecting Help:A_quick_guide_to_templates to Help:Templates Overview). And I also agree that Help:Templates should redirect to Help:Template. --Martin Kraus (talk) 11:09, 17 December 2008 (UTC)