Template talk:Dl

To more closely match the existing {{Ocean name | item name}} templates, I'd make the order of the dl template's parameters be {{dl | disambiguation suffix text | item name}}. It looks fine otherwise.

How common is the case where other than Ocean name is required as the disambiguation suffix? For the most part the disambiguations I've come across only need the Ocean but I don't know for sure how much usage the newly proposed dl template would be used. -- Faulkston 03:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

For your first point, it's an easy fix, but seems a shade counterintuitive to me. Yes, suffix first would match the other oceanname disambig templates, but the shift from pagename (suffix) to dl|pagename|suffix seems a bit more logical than dl|suffix|pagename.

As for your second point, there's 102 pages with the word "flag" in the page title somewhere. Granted not all of those are in the disambiguation suffix, but that's not even counting the pirates, crews or buildings. Or Idea Links, which this would work for as well. If you think of how many times the BK flag Jinx gets linked to with [[Jinx (flag)|Jinx]], {{dl|Jinx|flag}} (or {{dl|flag|Jinx}}) just seems so much simpler.

(Mind you, I'm not suggesting we go back and retroactively apply this template wherever it would go, but even if we just use it from here on in, it'd make updating the flag pages (at the very least) a bit easier.) --Belthazar451 03:15, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

True, the order of parameters to dl doesn't matter too much. I would go for either ordering. I think there was some other template definition where for sake of consistency with existing templates, the less intuitive parameter order was maintained. In the case of dl, it's starting from a one parameter precursor whose disambiguation suffix was determined by the template name, so there's maybe no consistency to maintain.

The flag Jinx is the one example disambiguation which stands out for me. And as you said, there's no need to retroactively fit everything to the new template. After all, the template would expand to the text being replaced, so there's just no point in doing so. I remember that some editors tried using {{crew | name}} and {{flag | name}} as disambiguating templates before. However I believe that those templates were in fact set up for another purpose (ifdef used to generate a link to an article only if it existed).

I don't believe that disambiguations for Idea Links pages were ever needed. It's certainly true that the right link would be generated using the dl template; the semantics of the template use wouldn't however be right. It's a minor point anyway. -- Faulkston 04:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yah, that was me who brought up the idea of using the crew and flag templates for this potential use. There was a bit of conversation about it, then it was proposed to extend the function of the ocean redirect templates, and then the conversation just petered out. So I thought I'd just make the template and let people evaluate it when it's already there to look at.

So what say ye? =) --Belthazar451 04:20, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems fine by me though it's possible but unlikely that someone may slap a redundant label on this template (I can't see why myself). As I recall, the crew and flag link templates never worked properly, despite the best efforts of several editors (MediaWiki version problems, it seemed to be). -- Faulkston 05:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Okies, I've moved it to the Template namespace for use. The trick to prevent anyone else from claiming redundancy is to use it so much before they get the chance to do so, that it's a real bother to un-do it all again. =D Still, even if it's only me that actually uses it in my flag page updating, then in my eyes, that's still reason enough to have it. Sure, it can duplicate the function of the ocean disambig templates, but it has its own unique function too... so much as I can tell, anyway. --Belthazar451 05:48, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

An alternative to using this template is typing [[pagename (suffix)|]] (pipe near the end!). But this will be automatically expanded (like the signature) after editing, so it isn't exactly the same. I just don't know how well-known this is, so I thought I'd mention it. --Alfwyn 13:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)