User talk:Valjean

Next Steps

	Next steps!
	It's time to answer some questions! Would you check out the list of questions that were submitted by the community and others and try to answer some? -- Philippe 01:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

How can we give credit for good contributions?

You probably meant to reply to Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 3 key questions#How can we better prevent editing that hurts quality (e.g., vandalism and malicious edits), and fix it when it occurs? instead of Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 3 key questions#How can we give credit for good contributions? --Fasten 11:34, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you're right, but now I can't figure out how to edit it since you changed the format. It's all screwed up, including the appearance. Please restore standard formatting. Using templates for every little subsection is very awkward. -- BullRangifer 02:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

You can only edit the whole page. The edit buttons of the sections lead to the question template. One could modify the template to support section editing but thank to MediaWiki that isn't trivial. If you insist I'll fix it. --Fasten 13:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Using normal formatting would solve the problem. What you do on your own talk page is your business, but making such a radical change to a public talkpage is disruptive. I'm sure your intentions were good, but this does cause a problem for others, so yes, please fix it. By "fixt it", I don't mean fixing the template, but not using templates at all on such talk pages. Just use normal Wikipedia style. -- BullRangifer 14:01, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Please discuss that in a wider circle. I cannot easily revert back to the earlier pages because other people have edited the pages and I do not have heard criticism from others yet. In principle I would offer to either revert back to the earlier state but with all messages that have been added or to modify the template to support editing of the section. Your opinion alone is not enough because others might prefer the latter option. I do think the template does have advantages. --Fasten 14:55, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Then at least edit the template so it works. It won't do to have sections that can't be edited individually, and "edit" buttons that encourage one to do so, only to find a message not to edit here. I'm sure you can see the problem with that situation. -- BullRangifer 23:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, but MediaWiki has two independent shortcomings: The REST API cannot address sections by name and templates cannot determine the section they are used in, which means this will have the potential to cause confusion when new sections are introduced at the same level. --Fasten 08:25, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Until those problems are solved, then the normal formatting for talk pages should be used. Readability of normal talk pages isn't a problem, and it's much easier to tweak edits and formatting to solve any problems that might arise. Why fix something if it isn't broken? While it's true that improvement cannot occur without change, lots of changes can be made without real improvement, or at least improvements that are significant enough to justify all the trouble. Right now it has become more complicated, with more steps involved, to edit a page that uses liquid threads, and one with transcluded templates is a nightmare. It's just not working. Maybe in the future it will. -- BullRangifer 14:41, 24 October 2009 (UTC)