Forum:Displaytitle bis

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Note: This topic has been unedited for 1399 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over.

HolUp and I could have a revert war at Mar-a-Lago, the article not the resort. The article changes the name of its subject and wants its displayed title to reflect this, as El Salvador wants to be El Humidor.

MediaWiki now has (always had?) the DISPLAYTITLE magic word for this. However, Uncyclopedia also has the template {Title}, which allows control of text and alignment. What the template does is plant invisible DIVs into the page code, which system-wide JavaScript at MediaWiki:Common.js notices and modifies the title line as the author desires.

An Uncyclopedia template is more flexible; it could even be written to simply spit out DISPLAYTITLE. {{Title}} relies on a JavaScript hack that has to be transferred on every page render, whether or not it's used; and consequently does nothing at all for users who are running with JavaScript disabled. DISPLAYTITLE also changes the page name in the page properties and {{Title}} does not. DISPLAYTITLE does not give the author control over the alignment of the title, as {{Title}} does. Does anyone need that?

At Wikia, DISPLAYTITLE seemed to be restricted, as mentioned at Forum:Displaytitle (2008), used mostly to defeat the initial capital letter on page titles. It doesn't seem to have that restriction here.

Did we create {{Title}} because MediaWiki didn't used to have the capability? Do we want to endorse one or the other approach? Do we want to bot-edit pages to harmonize them? Spıke 🎙️18:11 5-Feb-21

Javascript and Trump's legal residence

Is there anyone alive today who still runs (or even walks) with Javascript disabled?

Can you even still do that?

I'd have guessed that the last Internet user who tried to turn off Javascript as a regular thing had expired some time around the time the last of the Netscape Navigator prebuilt binaries were finally removed from mozilla.org's download page (but maybe I'm wrong).

As to how that relates to Trump, latest news is that some collection of legal people of some sort have decided that Trump can live in his hypermansion after all, covenant be damned, and the neighbors can just eat cake (or whatever). So, somebody who doesn't break out in hives trying to even think about this topic might want to update the last paragraph of the Maggie Lagoo article. Snarglefoop (talk) 02:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah, the Powers That Be. But I can't see the real outcome being funnier than my rendition of what was true last week. I have NoScript installed but run with JS enabled for Uncyclopedia. Do you have perspective or recommendations on my technical questions? Spıke 🎙️02:18 6-Feb-21

*sigh* I just knew you'd want some kind of useful input rather than a bunch of random words. :-(
My understanding is that there are two commands to do almost the same thing for the same reason there are things that look exactly like mice living in the Americas, and things that look exactly like mice living in Europe, and they're almost completely unrelated. It was a good idea so it got implemented (at least) twice.
If displaytitle had existed in its current form back when title was being written, we would probably only have displaytitle today.
But this doesn't address the question of what to do about it. Does it really benefit the site in any perceptible fashion to get rid of title everywhere? Obviously it wouldn't hurt anything, but it's not obvious that it would be worth the time invested. On the other hand it could reduce confusion and maintenance costs (cough volunteer labor cough) going forward so maybe it would be worth it.
There, I think I succeeded in answering both no and yes. Snarglefoop (talk) 02:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks (and no thanks). Well, I use {{Title}} when I have to, for no better reason than that I've waded through Common.js to see what it does; and HolUp is spending time replacing it with the other, and didn't say why. I would simply like some policy guidance.

Upon further review, we also have {{Title-left}} and {{Notitle}}; there are over 500 callers (the great majority in subpages of Game:Zork); and a random sampling suggests that many would look more like Uncyclopedia pages if they didn't use it, but I guess the authors thought themselves too important to have their Uncyclopedia pages look like Uncyclopedia pages. Spıke 🎙️03:42 6-Feb-21

What is this word "policy"?
But seriously, that's presumably what this forum is supposed to hammer out. If you and Romartus can agree on a policy, then it's a done deal, as far as I'm concerned. If LLew agrees too that's even better (but I think she's off somewhere taking derivatives or something so we may not hear from her on this). Snarglefoop (talk) 05:04, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh yeah -- and regards HolUp making uncontrolled creative improvements without any explanation given -- that actually sounds significantly suboptimal. We spent a while at work with one guy replacing "boolean" with "bool" everywhere, because it was more standard, while another person on the staff was replacing "bool" with "boolean" everywhere because it was what we used on the project (and it was even in the style guide), and things like that don't usually benefit anybody.
So yeah, I agree that there should be a policy on it and once it exists, somebody should point it out to folks who are trying to standardize usage of the title tags. Snarglefoop (talk) 05:10, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Not sure I quite understand the problem. Anyway, though we are a parody of Wikipedia, we can still do our own thing with separate page categories. Can't see why we can come to an arrangment that settles any issue. RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 13:23, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that there are two ways to code the same thing, and I am confused as to which is preferable. We are indeed a parody of Wikipedia, and ought to superficially resemble it, but coding as Wikipedia is coded is a non-goal. I have no preference but just want a clear direction. Spıke 🎙️16:03 6-Feb-21

From Nigel

It certainly looked like Title was created to get around DISPLAYTITLE limitations. The problem with doing shit like this is that the original coders aren't around anymore to maintain what they created. Cases in point were various templates (still nonstandard all over the place) and spoofed page header images that both got broken somewhere along the line. Now hopefully fixed.

Title alignment enabled by Title is very limited and pretty useless. Blanking titles is extremely useful for games – you don't want to tip off a player to know exactly where they are. Game pages don't need to look like Uncyclopedia pages and in fact look too much like Uncylopedia pages. A moot point since nobody appears to be playing the games.

So I'd suggest sticking to DISPLAYTITLE which is a known MediaWiki thing. Apparently DISPLAYTITLE does not allow free changes in page titles or blanking of the displayed page title in its standard configuration and so requires additional coding/tweaking to do those. I think we have that (?). Rationalize via bot to DISPLAYTITLE if you like but just don't break anything. -- (talk) 04:00, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

That seems a reasonable suggestion. Perhaps we should formally call a vote on this. RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 09:45, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Again, I have pored through Common.js and am able to avoid breaking {{Title}}. I am ready to vote for one or the other but still do not see enough historical perspective to know which. DISPLAYTITLE does not allow author control over justification of the time, though I am not sure we need that. Spıke 🎙️13:16 8-Feb-21

From Llwy

I don't know how common it is to turn off JavaScript, but MediaWiki itself has built-in support for this, which should tell you something.

DISPLAYTITLE is surely preferable, and I added it to several pages back in 2018 after Wikia had removed the restriction on it and broken the JS for {{title}}. However, {{title}} can customize titles beyond what DISPLAYTITLE provides. DISPLAYTITLE also doesn't allow adding links or images to the title, as is done on some pages, e.g.:

• MS Paint has an MS Paint-written image for the title
• Newspaper has a newspaper title-themed image
• A links the title to AAAAAAAAA!

Maybe we don't ever want this anymore, but we would need to decide that before ditching {{title}}. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 05:08 20 February 2021

Now we are getting somewhere! (1) Why is DISPLAYTITLE "surely" preferable? Because it works even without JavaScript? (2) I strongly prefer funny writing to gimmickry, but would not want us to legislate against the above gimmicks. (As stage props, please, not as the main plot.)

Your comment suggests that a decent resolution is to allow both, and have me go into {{Title}} (again) and add a recommendation that authors use DISPLAYTITLE unless they want one of the advanced uses. Spıke 🎙️10:43 20-Feb-21

From HolUp

I prefer using DISPLAYTITLE because Title omits the "- Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia" from the page's name in browser tabs, which just looks weird to me.--HolUp (talk) 00:12, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate your response, but this seems like a non-reason. All pages have the reference to Uncyclopedia; why should pages that change their own title not have it? Should we contrive so that no Uncyclopedia pages have it? To make this decision, I think that whether it looks weird to you counts less than doing it the way Wikipedia does it; that is, this is a superficial aspect of page rendition where the "best" thing is to just pretend we are Wikipedia.

PS--On my setup, following the reference to Uncyclopedia (in the browser tab and in the task window header) there is a reference to Mozilla Firefox. Doubt we can do anything about that. Spıke 🎙️00:35 23-Feb-21