Comments in Templates are BAD Edit

Well, I have learned my lesson. No more putting ANY comments in a Template! It causes all kinds of bizarre spacing and line break problems!!!

If you want to see info about my templates, some notes will be in the template's talk page. Anything else will be in Help:Template:TemplateName Florence Sopher of Lucan D'Lere 00:56, 6 October 2006 (CEST)

Superfluous parameter Edit

The third parameter (Good/Bad, which dictates whether faction reward is positive or negative), is unnecessary. That judgment can easily be made using the required +/- # parameter and the expr parser function. Furthermore, this third (optional) parameter seems to be a source of confusion for users... and heck, to be honest, I've never liked the kludgey way factions are done, but that's something to worry about another day.

What I propose be done is use the numerical faction change for decided "good" or "bad" faction and drop the third parameter. The immediate change that can happen is to change the categorization to work off the numerical value and then just not use the third parameter. Then, either when User:Uberfuzzy gets time or if Barx-Bot gets approved and up and running we can bot out references to it and update the template to just use 3 parameters.

What are folks thoughts on this? --lordebon 16:11, September 29, 2009 (UTC)

as you can see in the examples, faction influence is not always expressed in numbers, sometimes it only is 'bad' or 'good'. but maybe there's still a way to determine if the influence is good or bad just based on that without needing the 3rd param --Vraeth 17:02, September 29, 2009 (UTC)

That would be true if the good/bad was an actual measure of whether or not the faction reward is something you want or something you do not want. But take a look at Rock Collecting -- negative faction is a good thing in that very special case, but it's still assigned as "bad." Since all that those categories are really doing is negative vs positive, they just add confusion. (And thats what I'm against keeping them and just 'fixing' the few cases like the sootfoot talent society). Given that 99.9% of factions are positive=good, I don't think keeping this parameter just for that < 0.1% is worth it. --lordebon 20:30, September 29, 2009 (UTC)

The following check example {{#iferror: {{#expr:{{{2}}}*0}} | input should be numbers | {{#ifeq: {{#expr:{{{2}}}<0}} | 0 | good | bad }} }} could/should handle the check for good and bad factions by the number.

If parameter 2 is a not number the result would be input should be numbers.

If parameter 2 is a number like -500 or -1,500 or -1 the result is bad

If parameter 2 is a number like +500 or +1.500 or 20 the result is good

-- (Talk) 20:23, September 29, 2009 (UTC)

Yep. That's pretty much exactly the code I'm talking about. --lordebon 20:29, September 29, 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much the only reason Barx-bot hasn't been approved is that he lacks commentary. I'd like to see this parameter fixed. I don't care who does it. :)--Kodia 01:21, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a semi-subtle hint for folks reading this thread to take a looksee there and offer commentary =). --lordebon 02:43, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

So....when will the bot be working on this replacement thing? :)--Kodia 21:09, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

We have to fix the template first =) --lordebon 21:23, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

ok if i make it at the weekend so i have the time to check and watch? -- (Talk) 00:21, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

Er... I don't understand what you just said. So let me clarify what I'd like to do. The first step in fixing the template is to mothball the second parameter and calculate positive or negative faction result based off the number input. That's easily done once the template is unlocked.

After that there is no time pressure -- after all, at that point it won't matter what people put in that spot. However, the next step will then be to remove the second parameter from the template and then bot-remove it from every call to the template. Once the template change is made there is a time-pressure factor, as pages will begin to bug out unless the excess parameter is removed from the call. At this point in the term I do not have the time to run that process.

So, what I'd like to do at this time is just the first step: calculating positive/negative based off the number field and having the template basically ignore the second paramter for now. Once that is done I can start doing some passive testing (ie testing without making any actual edits) on the bot to get it ready for the next step, but I will not likely have time to actually run that until December and winter break. --lordebon 04:04, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

I only want to sure that i edit the code and doc in a good way, so i need to test it in my devtemplate one time quick. Prolly only takes a few mins but i need to have the time for it .. maybe i can test it today and change the template then. -- (Talk) 09:09, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

Template got updated, Old format still works and new format got added.
I will remove the support of the old format as soon as all pages that use this template got updated with the new format.

• Example old format: {{Faction|Court of Coin|+5000|Good|Quest}}.
• Example new format: {{Faction|Court of Coin|+5000|Quest}}.

-- (Talk) 23:33, November 8, 2009 (UTC)

A Coin guard uses new faction format now (updated one of the pages that uses it to check the correct call). -- (Talk) 23:38, November 8, 2009 (UTC)

Excellent work, smithers. :)--Kodia 11:08, November 9, 2009 (UTC)