Template talk:GlobalProblems/Virtual Console

Too broad?

This template seems too broad to be useful. It also hasn't been used in game pages like the global problem templates of each VC system does; these are already sufficient and easy to maintain. I'm fine with seeing this template go honestly. Lucario (talk) 02:44, 15 August 2017 (CEST)

Apparently, after reviewing the codes behind template:GlobalProblems, this template will be called in virtual console game pages when there's a new issue for it. Still, it wouldn't be too hard to copy/paste the problem entry into each template of the affected VC system. Lucario (talk) 02:59, 15 August 2017 (CEST)

I'm completely against removing it. The whole {{GlobalProblems}} and its subtemplates were made to avoid duplicating common entries in different places and to get changes made here or in any of the subtemplates instantly reflected on all applicable pages, and I personally think they serve this purpose very well. Dolphin got more accurate as the development continued, and even through we never relied on {{GlobalProblems/Virtual Console}} that much, I still prefer to have it around if we ever need it in the future than having to duplicate whatever entries that could be put here on any of the other {{GlobalProblems}} subtemplates, which would go completely against all the reasons that made us develop {{GlobalProblems}} on the first place. Plus, having this template around actually doesn't add any maintenance burden at all, so there's really no benefit in purging it, we would just be losing functionality without winning anything in return - mbc07 (talk) 06:17, 15 August 2017 (CEST)

Of course, the GlobalProblems template and its subtemplates for each VC system are very important to have, but with them around, this template isn't much to me. I don't think the loss would be too devastating with this template purged either. For example, it's going to be extraordinary for us to even find issue that applies to all Virtual Console either way, and even if so, the GlobalProblems for each VC system can relay the duplicate problem information into game pages pretty well. I had the urge feel to purge out Virtual Console#Virtual Console Global Problems to feel consistent with Main Page... well, idk. Lucario (talk) 09:00, 15 August 2017 (CEST)

If that's your only motivation for purging this template, I still prefer making it hidden by default (just like in the game pages), adding the section in Virtual Console only when we have active entries than completely purging it. It's actually very easy to do that. - mbc07 (talk) 05:11, 16 August 2017 (CEST)

You could make GlobalProblems completely consistent on platform pages with the way it works on game pages like this, only adding a header when necessary, or just remove the header from Virtual Console only and add a check to GlobalProblems to add it back when there's a problem, like this. The first one seems cleaner to me than page specific behavior. Actually if you make the behavior the same between both types of pages, you could collapse a lot of this code. You could take out the whole switch statement and page type checks and just have this. - Xerxes (talk) 08:10, 16 August 2017 (CEST)

Well it's going to feel cleaner to have this template purged as well. The codes meant to call VC subtemplate can be "hidden" in GlobalProblems' edit history for performance reasons and the subtemplate itself can be recreated quite easily. You can come back and prove me wrong that they were necessary all along that there's a new problem that actually needs to relay in all VC pages out there, hmm? Lucario (talk) 09:25, 16 August 2017 (CEST)

I kind of understand removing it since it's been empty for four years and the Virtual Console page looks a little less attractive with the blank header, but since there were actual global VC problems in the past which spurred having this template, conceivably it could happen again. I'm not really in a position to make a prediction like that, though. - Xerxes (talk) 09:31, 15 August 2017 (CEST)

I generally agree that it's unlikely at this point we'll have issue applicable across all VC titles. Though unclear that the functionality to support it causes much problem. Still need to look more closely at Xerces' suggestions, though I'm generally supportive of code cleanup that isn't impactful on anything. Kolano (talk)

In my rewrite of GlobalProblems I've found that the Virtual Console page is a lot more annoying than I thought. The way GlobalProblems was written before almost seems like it had the switch statement and differences between platform and game pages just to work around Virtual Console. For instance, there has to be new conditional statement checks to make sure that issues from GlobalProblems/Virtual Console don't get displayed twice on the Virtual Console page. Even if /Virtual Console was allowed to exist but the call from the Virtual Console page was removed, that would still allow me to remove code, that's how page specific it is. I did a version of the template where GlobalProblems/Virtual Console was removed, and I was able to shrink the character count down by somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 not including wrapper tags and documentation. I support removing this template now; I have a reason to want to delete it besides its inactivity. - Xerxes (talk) 01:53, 18 August 2017 (CEST)

I ported over the new sandbox logic with some tweaks while trying to fix the excessive whitespace {{GlobalProblems}} generates. Sadly it didn't fix that, but I made the rewritten template functionally equivalent before copying it over so there shouldn't be any change. Well, I sort of lied, there's a small change; now the template generates a clickable link to edit global problems instead of forcing editors to copy/paste from the page comments. That's it, though. - Xerxes (talk) 17:06, 3 September 2017 (CEST)

Does that mean we should to clean up the comments embedded in pages regarding how to edit the appropriate Global problem template? Kolano (talk) 21:28, 3 September 2017 (CEST)

It would also be nice to format the edit link as /w other sections (i.e. [edit] within the header) Kolano (talk) 21:33, 3 September 2017 (CEST)

You'd think that wouldn't be such a difficult request, but I'm dumb and even after I got it working somewhat it was pretty buggy. The TOC includes the [edit] in the section name and the link doesn't look the same since I guess MediaWiki refuses to parse <a> tags with variables in them for security reasons, I had to make the link using MediaWiki tools instead. As far as removing the comments on game pages that'd help clear up the whitespace issues, the issue with that is if there's no global problems up for a console, the only place that would link to where to add one is the platform page, since those headers are always up. Maybe that's not such a big deal though, since right now {{GlobalProblems/Virtual Console}} is only linked from the Virtual Console page without any game page comments (and it didn't even have that link until I just added it). - Xerxes (talk) 22:51, 3 September 2017 (CEST)

Is that preserved in the sandbox? It may be possible to clean it up, but I'd need to fiddle with it. I presume your concerns were:

• The link icon
• The "[edit]" text in the nav-bar

Yeah, you can go for it, the latest version from that image is still in the sandbox. I literally copied page source and slightly adapted it though so there's probably a much better way to do it. The header is everything between the <h2> tags if you ctrl-f on it, it's a giant blob of html sitting in the middle of the template. - Xerxes (talk) 00:12, 4 September 2017 (CEST)

User:Lucario worked on it through the night and got it working a lot better. There's a few small problems but nothing as bad as the horrible TOC from the first draft, so I went ahead and pushed it to live. Ironically I was reading about it last night and headers from within templates are supposed to generate an edit link automatically, but even if it did it'd take you to GlobalProblems and not to the individual console's page, so this solution is better. I also went ahead and purged the headers from all the virtual console platform pages, so that the edit link would work consistently in taking you to the globalproblems subpage, whereas before on platform pages it'd take you to edit an empty header with just a template call in it. (It also eliminated an #ifpageincat if anyone's keeping score.) - Xerxes (talk) 16:41, 4 September 2017 (CEST)

Wonderful work you guys too! An issue with header underline abuting with infobox fixed and several code clean ups, the custom header is now indistinguishable with others. The current issues with it are pretty minor, they may not qualify some additional code to make them "look right" with others. I've seen some edit button having color of external link somewhere else (psst, that edit and purge buttons you find in beginning of template's documentation page). Lucario (talk) 11:46, 5 September 2017 (CEST)