User talk:Deadfire

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My Talkpage archives (by year): 2014, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2023, 2024

Broken link in new user talk message

Hello, I just joined this awesome wiki and when reading through the new user tips post I discovered that the "manual of style" referenced as the formatting guide has been deleted from wikimedia, talk page about the deletion.--SmaugTheDragon (talk) 14:21, 14 February 2025 (EST)

Thank you for noticing, and letting us know! I haven't updated that template in a long while and obviously should--Deadfire (talk) 17:22, 14 February 2025 (EST)

Clan/Inner Sphere Standard Battlemech section deletion

Hello Deadfire,

I was reading the deletion notice on the Clan Standard Battlemech page, and noticed that the comment period on the page had expired I believe back in Dec 2024. I believe the same notice appears on the Inner Sphere Standard Battlemechs page as well. As the comment period has expired, and the pages in question are still active, I recommend removing the deletion notice. If you are not the right person to talk to, I do apologize, and would ask to be directed to the appropriate party.

Thank you for your time, and have a good day! Stay syrupy.

-Heathen — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.77.130.249 (talk)

Hello Heathen,

Don't worry about apologizing, and thank you for identifying something that you feel has an issue, I will try to tackle your query!

• The reason for Category:Standard BattleMechs, Category:Clan Standard BattleMechs and Category:Inner Sphere Standard BattleMechs haven't been deleted yet is due to them not yet being empty. Categories shouldn't be deleted unless they are empty of pages.
• As to the reason why those categories have been tagged for deletion for so long and for that not to have happened, it seems likely that due to the template used on all pages on BattleMechs ({{InfoBoxBattleMech}}), automatically adds these categories to those pages, and requires that template to be updated for this to not happen.
• As my "job" on the wiki is being the Senior Editor for Templates and Automation, it does fall to me to correct the issue of that template doing that. However, I have been busy correcting and converting other infobox templates, as well, awaiting consensus on how the new infobox for 'Mechs should be. (As I may as well redo the entire infobox anyway if I'm at it)
• With the now better identification of it being a current issue, and with consensus not being there yet to redo the infobox entirely, I attempted to just correct the template by having it not populate those categories.
• With that done and now those categories depopulated, I was able to delete them.

Again thank you for letting us know about this, I hope to correct it soon. --Deadfire (talk) 13:47, 20 February 2025 (EST)

Template:Infobox and Template:InfoBoxBattleMech

What's the upside for converting Template:InfoBoxBattleMech to use Template:Infobox? I'm game if there's some point to it, but it'd be a lot of work and not inconsiderable disruption to existing articles if I make any mistakes. I'm unclear what the benefits for that work and risk would be. Cease to Hope (talk) 05:23, 15 March 2025 (EDT)

I should add: more broadly, when I rewrote that template in 2017, it wasn't so much a process of forming consensus on a plan so much as just going ahead and doing the necessary work instead of having a bunch of dead-ender discussions on how to do it. The old templates were a wreck and someone needed to bell that cat. In particular, the template implementation was more a matter of wrangling the existing categories and subcategories as they were at the time rather than a considered scheme as to how mechs should be categorized. What discussion there was, was pretty perfunctory, and I never did even end up implementing my preferred arrangement. (I didn't feel strongly enough about it to bother.) If someone wants to make a proper scheme for how mechs should be categorized and subcategorized, I'd be happy to implement it in that template if you'd like. Cease 05:49, 15 March 2025 (EDT)

Hey, I'll try to answer and explain:

• The Template:Infobox is a MetaTemplate that allows for all infoboxes to be uniform on how they are created and modified. The format is much easier for users to deal with and requires a lot less knowledge to do the same thing.
• A good number of infoboxes have already been converted to Template:Infobox (you can see the progress at BattleTechWiki:WikiProject Infoboxes
• It better supports the addition of Semantic properties that can be modified prior to being committed to the database.
• The current Administration does not want these templates to add categories to pages, and would rather that be manually done,
• Template:InfoBoxBattleMech shouldn't add any categories to the pages, and as I explained above.
• The "matter of wrangling the existing categories and subcategories as they were" is still always on going, however progress has been made in that the current administration would like the sorting of pages to be correctly diffused in to their correct sub-categories only and not in both main category and in the multitude of sub categories.
• Categories were never supposed to be replacements for lists (which we have started to do again), navigation (which we have use many navigational templates that have been built and used on like pages), and lastly Portals (like the under construction on for mechs)
• I would rather replace the old infoboxes completely, after testing the new replacement infobox, and apply in with the knowledge of testing.
• Before I replace it, it has been asked by the current Administration that I work on other Infoboxes (like I have already done so), prior to working on the higher used ones.
• BattleMech pages or any other unit page may use a different format by time I work on them, which would factor in how the future templates may work (such as subpages with the different variants having an infobox on them and be displayed on the mainspace page, or having data (such as Semantic properties) be used to generate the infobox).
• This is not to say the work you did is bad in any way, you worked with what you had, as I do :)

If you wish to talk more about this and the other things I mentioned please either reply or reach out to me via Discord--Deadfire (talk) 14:13, 15 March 2025 (EDT)

Hokay. I think probably people don't remember what things were like before the template handled this but there's other possible approaches, as long as someone's willing to do a bunch of bot work. I'll hit you on discord. - Cease 03:22, 16 March 2025 (EDT)