Template talk:Findsources

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[edit] Please be more careful with this template; it is an AfD and bio-stub tool

What the heck happened to this once-functional template today? It used to be succinct and useful. Now it is full of a bewildering array of options, some of which don't convey anything useful (what does "a9" mean?), and spits out 'you must add "+" between words for phrase search', which might be useful as part of the template documenation, but is just gibberish as part of the output. Reverting. This template is newly but increasingly used in AfD (it's a "hit", but please be gentle with it), and in a number of biographical stubs' talk pages. Please do not alter it so radically without discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

If a radically different version of this template is desired, create a FindSources2 (but experiment in your sandbox please, not with live templates). If the new version is of sufficient interest, I'm sure it can be merged here after a consensus discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm rather baffled and taken aback by your scolding tone as well as you lack of investigation of the actual links in the new template. A9 is the Amazon search engine and the link went to the book search (which covers many newer books not covered in google books; there was a string error in the last version which has now been fixed). The MS equivalents refers to the Microsoft equivalents of Google Books and Google Scholar - they do not cover the same ground. A differentiation was introduced between Google archive news (the only option in the original content) and Google current news (which is not covered in the same way by the Google archive news). Google is not the be all and end all of search options. As for the suggestion that the vital piece of advice to add "+" for phrase searches is "gibberish" - I really don't understand your point. I've created an alternative template as you've asked, but I don't see why I should be held off from live, usefulk template creation because you say so. I don't think there's a "bewildering array of options" - compare Template:Search - though perhaps you think that's gibberish too. Bwithh ^{Join Up! See the World!} 07:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, wasn't meant as a "scolding" but as a red-flag that stuff is breaking while you sandbox with a "live" template.

Re: "A9", well, OK, so it exists. Doesn't mean it means anything to the people seeing it (in retrospect, now that I go look at their site I do recogize their logo). Perhaps this term is out-of-context, but is A9 "notable"? I.e. is there any real reason to give their results a headline? There are hundreds of Web search engines, but few demonstrate any actual utility. Or, re: "Google is not the be all and end all", it is at least pretty reliable and makes its paid search results and honest ones easily distinguishable, which is vitally imortant for WP:RS purposes and related. I am not a search engine industry expert and am not objecting to non-Google search results by any means. I'm just confounded by the loss of topical results simplicity that this template exemplified a day ago, is all.

Re: MS equivalents, etc.: I'm skeptical that anyone here (from a legit NPOV standpoint) cares that this search or that is sponsored by MS or Google or whoever. The immediate value of the original template was that it categorized the searches by type not by ultimate corporate sponsor. Categorizing them by $ponsor just instantly polarizes debate as to potential value.

The "gibberish" point I thought was clear, and I'm sorry if it wasn't and was misinterpreted. Template usage instructions never appear in template rendering results on target pages. Ever. It just is not done. Or to put it a radically different way, it looks like an error message, and implies that something inside WP is broken. (Actually, I can think of a marginal exception: {{Prod}} pretty much freaks on you if you don't "subst:" it. But after that it is quiet.)

DIfferentiation between Google Current News and Google News Archives sounds like a great idea, but the (sensible, don't get me wrong) differentiation was lost in the tumult of unexplained changes ({{Summary}} comes to mind...), and isn't particularly clear in the rendered results that the user sees (in the new version I mean)

"Because I say so" hasn't a thing to do with it. I'm not a WP Bureaucrat or even Admin, just some random editor who was using this template widely and found it useful one moment, and literally felt I had to retract recommedation of its use an hour later because it was radically different by that point, without any explanation. Leading to:

I and others try out new templates all the time. Some of them suck, some of them are great, but it's better to sandbox first and set up an alt. template, and/or establish a dialogue about changing the extant one, because it is very hard to accurately predict what uses people may already be putting to a template and what unintended effects sudden changes to it might have. The TfD debate about {{Death date and age}} is a good case in point. Just the TfD-related tagging of it made a wreck of many, many articles' infoboxes. This "cascading effects" problem recently nipped me in my own butt, so I swear my horse is not high here (see my talk page regarding {{Vietnamese name}}).

And yeah, with regard to {{Search}}, bewildering is certainly the term.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

By the way your "Robert+Smith+Engineering" example was a poor change to the template page. It doesn't work very well because of the way the search template works. May I also suggest that this template is not exclusively intended for your use in bio-stubs. Bwithh ^{Join Up! See the World!} 07:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I honestly don't follow your first comment; if the you think the change is for the worse, revert away! I thought it helpful because it demonstrated that +terms might need to be added for the search results to be useful; that's all. Addressing the second point, I didn't at all mean to suggest that it was exclusively used by bio stubs. Rather, that its principal use thus far is in AfD, and that use is principally for WP:BIO issues, hence the addition of the the academic search by someone else (which I'm not too happy about, really, as it rarely applies). I think the entire thing needs to be forked into a bunch of more customized variants, e.g. FindSources-academic, FindSources-band, etc., with some basic variants also existing, such as, FindSources (for really generic things like "celluloid" or "automobile") and FindSources-bio for biography searches that are not particular to topics that already have their own customized nuances or criteria. Perhaps a side discussion, but I hope the idea resonates with you. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bullet no good

Very strongly suggest removing the bullet. I noticed that the "Comment" has already been removed. This template should be usable inline, like {{User}} and a zillion others. It would be much more versatile that way. As it stands as of this writing, it is only useful if put on a line by itself, which is a bit limiting. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'll remove the bullet. Addhoc 09:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

It now works inline. Some AfD archives may need to be formatting-fixed (i.e. the occurrences subst'd, indented properly and preceded with "Comment:, which was removed from the template), but I think an admin should be asked to do that, given that they are AfD archives. Heh. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested merge

• Oppose for now, possibly two different uses. The short version for putting into a paragraph, and being unobtrusive. The longer version for a more exhaustive search. Addhoc 09:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
• Semi-oppose for now per Addhoc, and see also above ideas with regard to forking this into several more topical templates. Some of the features of version 2 might be great additions here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: To clarify the above, I thinkt that some of the new features of the #2 version should be merged into this one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 15:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)