Template talk:Catmore1

Conflicts with documentation

Is there a reason not to make the default parameter a link of basepagename? isn't that the reason we're making sure all categories have same-named articles, so that catmore1 can be used in its default form? –xenocidic (talk) 05:55, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are three reasons:

1. Making a change to a template that completely contradicts its documented behavior is never a good thing. The parameter is clearly marked as required.
2. wikipedia's catmore1 does not have a default. If there was ever a need to reinstall this template, behavior at this site would break, because it relied on a feature that does not exist in the source.
3. The template is not as robust, once you start calling it multiple ways. Standards exist for a reason. Arbitrarily changing calling mechanisms, introducing conflicting calling mechanisms, or making assumptions about where the category's article would live, are additional sources of problems. Suppose the articles ended up elsewhere. You can't assume that a REDIRECT would be there to catch your markup dependency. Once it was discovered that the links broke, someone would have to spend time tracking down all occurrences where that assumption was made and fix them.

Consistency in how you call something is very important. Again, we do not want to introduce markup differences in articles, where it's done one way in one article, and a different way in another. It's confusing, and it wastes peoples' time (either by needing to fix things, or in trying to understand why articles are different when comparing them).

I keep stressing good practices for good reasons, to minimize future problems. The article link needs to be hardcoded. That's a requirement, as stated in the doc, and I don't expect it to change. --FeralKitty (talk) 06:33, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. Though "conflicts with documentation" should never be a reason not to change a template. The documentation is descriptive, not prescriptive. Your arguments in #3 make sense, but if the main article was moved to not match the category the link would need to be updated either way. Nevertheless, moving on. –xenocidic (talk) 06:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

If the document is descriptive as you state, kindly explain to me why it didn't happen to describe that the parameter was now optional, and defaulted to the BASEPAGENAME? If you expect to change the code, you're obligated to change the documentation to reflect the new behavior. Having said that, even if the documentation was changed, the second reason would have been sufficient. --FeralKitty (talk) 07:20, 24 August 2008 (UTC)