[[:Template:Question]]

Am I the only one who thinks this problem has made a mess of the ESP Key Question talk pages? Is there a way to fix the problem without abandoning the idea of using a template to apply special formatting to questions used as section headings?

What is that template supposed to do anyway? But yes, you're right, putting section headings in templates is _always_ a bad idea, see e.g. Template talk:Welcome, where this has also been a problem. Regards,

There is no compelling reason why anybody should want to add new questions in the middle of the talk page, consequently one could give the template a parameter that determines the section number. In the long run this should be fixed in MediaWiki: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9240.

The purpose of the template is to increase the readability of the page.

MediaWiki doesn't have a parameter to specify the section either. It only has a section number that numbers all sections consecutively ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php ). This would, of course, mean that hard coded section numbers could be subject to change, even if only subsections are added, which doesn't seem to be good idea.

See: Broken as designed

One could also try to combine the template with LiquidThreads for the five talk pages concerned or one could use sub pages specified by the templates. That would make editing convenient and redirection to the pages easy.

Hence https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9242 --Fasten 12:28, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I have modified Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 1 key questions to use sub pages. The template could now support convenient editing of sections but I don't want to make that change before the other pages are converted (otherwise people might get confused how they are meant to edit the pages with two competing systems on the same page).

The problem has been filed as https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21268

There is a potential problem: If somebody came up with the idea to enable LiquidThreads on a transcluded subpage LiquidThreads would maintain two independent discussions: One for the talk page and one for the subpage. Content posted on either page wouldn't be visible on the other page, which is confusing for users and consequently should be prevented. (I see that as a bug of LiquidThreads.)

This is now extremely inconvenient for editing. There are no links to the subpages. On attempting to edit the page, one must root around in the list of transcluded pages to find them, and many users would be left clueless.

Yes, but the template can now very easily provide an edit link in spite of MediaWiki's shortcomings. It just doesn't do that yet because I'd prefer to convert all five pages to use of subpages. Is that something we should do? I'd hate to do that and then to revert back to an earlier state.

I have enabled editing on the Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 1 key questions talk page with a special parameter "edit=1" to the question templates. In normal operation this parameter would not be required.

Thanks! Now it works more or less like it previously did. A big help. Now what about the bits of text/code(?) that are still left dangling a number of places? -- BullRangifer 20:50, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Now this page still needs fixing, which is where I have tried to edit and need to move a misplaced comment of mine. -- !BullRangifer 23:20, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I have converted The talk page for ESP3_key_questions. Enjoy.

It's more colorful. Cheer up!

What you call "dangling bits of text/code" are just text. They were in the text prior to the change and I didn't see any need to remove them. Please feel free to edit the text. --Fasten 09:19, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm sure all this has been irritating to you, but you have handled it all very nicely. Respect! -- BullRangifer 16:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

You know what irritates me? Virtualkarmaparticlehyperneurotheology.

There is a very compelling reason for adding new questions in the middle of the page: questions are grouped by topic.

Yes right, I should have worded that more carefully. Under the assumption that MediaWiki has some way of addressing sections properly instead of just with a sequential numbering scheme and while there is no compelling reason to add sections in the middle of a list a reordering of section numbers might seem unnecessary and consequently hard coded section numbers might seem a possible solution. The issue has become irrelevant because the question template uses subpages now.