Template talk:Al

Proposed template:al

Purpose

Provide a mechanism for access to pages in a project that is being relocated

Mechanism

If the page specified exists in the main name space, return the page name.  Otherwise add the prefix and return that.

Difference from #redirect

1. This can be used when a project is being copied from one place to another rather than being moved.
2. Some of the relocation can be checked before the relocation rather than having to do all the cleanup after the fact.

mtew 17:14, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Questions

1. Why is it named that?
2. How is it different from Template:Moved?
3. When would it be used (clarify and expand)?
4. What is it for again?

--JonTheMon 17:24, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Short for 'Alternate Location'.  The brevity is fairly important.

2-4. Moved is for documentation and usually after the fact while this is to be used in anticipation of relocating something and generates alternative page names that can be used where ever a page name might be used.

      mtew 18:09, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

why would you need to anticipate moving something? and why would you need alternative page names? --JonTheMon 18:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

And why are redirects not the better option for it? poke | talk 18:20, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Jon: You mean you never make preparations before you do something?

Poke: Redirects are fine if you intend to move something, but I was thinking of copying something rather than moving it.  Say you have something working as part of a project, but are not completely happy with it, but it has reached a state where someone else wants to use it.  At that point you want to give them a copy, not just move it to their space (which could be the main name space).  It is not so much that these would be 'better'.  They provide an alternate way of doing something.  There will be situations where #redirect is entirely appropriate, while these might be better than trying to hammer a #redirect into a form that it doesn't do particularly well.      mtew 19:13, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you're going to develop something for someone/something, typically you'd construct and test it in your own userspace, then make it live when you're satisfied with it. And if you want to do updates, the live version is out there, and you continue to work in your userspace to refine what you want and after enough testing copy it out to live. I don't see how this template would help faciliate that. --JonTheMon 21:06, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Draft available

A draft of this is available at User:Mtew/Projects/Drafts/al.

I still don't get what this is about... or how/when it should be used; why it would be used and why it has to be so complicated :/ Same with the "At" template.. poke | talk 13:10, 27 March 2009 (UTC)