User talk:Xiong/tagging

It's not all black and white

There are cases where tagging is good. For instance, when {{usercomment}} was put for deletion, it was the tagging that made me know about it (it wasn't on my watchlist back then).

There are cases where tagging is bad. For instance, if someone added a {{tfd}} to {{IPA fonts}}, the template would break (since it's used in the midle of an attribute).

A borderline case would be {{tfd}} itself; while it being tagged was what made me notice it was up for deletion, it led to a confusing effect (but of course nobody would put {{tfd}} itself for deletion ☺).

Tagging templates for deletion works best with boxes or boilerplate messages, where it just adds a small extra box above it (in CSS talk, it works best with block elements). It doesn't work well with text formatting or other special effects templates (in CSS talk, inline elements). It doesn't work at all and has harmful effects with structural templates (for instance, templates meant as attribute values, or in some cases where multiple templates are used to create a single box).

My recommendation would be to use {{tfd}} only on block-like situations (colored boxes, stub notices, other paragraph-looking templates), create a new {{itfd}} to use in inline-like situations (for instance, on a user signature template or emoticon template; {{itfd}} would be an inline element to prevent breaking paragraphs), and to put the notice on the talk page (possibly with a third kind of template ({{ttfd}})) when it's a "structural" template.

--cesarb 17:59, 28 May 2005 (UTC)