Template talk:Nicholas Sandford research

Bug

This seems to be calculating the last appearance wrong. For example, Baked Husk showed up on the 10th and the 18th and it shows it as an 18-day gap... ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 12:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh yeah, stupid me made it calculate the difference from today.. :/ Thanks for telling me, it's fixed now. poke | talk 12:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

If you know there is going to be a problem, fix it ahead of time

Poke: You and I both know that there will be a problem, so there is no reason to back out what will be a necessary change. This is preventative maintenance. To avoid an edit war, you should put it back. --mtew 13:36, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

You have absolutely no idea how this will be going on in 7 months. It could work completely different as now so that the template is no longer in use. And apart from that we won't ever list all those data entries on this single page. We will have to archive sooner or later anyway and we have to change the archived entries anyway. If you are already now working for 2010, then we should also not forget about Category:Updates for example, which will be a lot more complicated to get those sorted in a nice way..

Also, let's create the next 10 election pages already because we "both know that there will be a" need for those in the near future, "so there is no reason to back out what will be a necessary change. This preventative maintenance." <- You get it how stupid that thinking is for a wiki that gets edited every day anyway? We don't have to think about what happens in multiple months, because changes are implemented very fast from one day to another. poke | talk 13:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Further to this as poke already said, this data will be archived and I'm assuming it will be archived under years and months, thus really no need for putting the year in the data itself. -- Salome 13:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

No need for hyperbole tho... mtews idea has merrit, but yes if it is archived yearly then its not needed... probably best to wait and see whats needed when the time comes... MrPaladin 13:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Poke: Those red herrings really stink you know; they have no place in this argument. While anything can happen in 7 months, there is still going to be year-to-year transition about then. Any archiving will have to accommodate that transition.

All: OK. Archiving. How can it be handled? The various counts will need to be maintained. When should the data be shifted to an archive? How much should be shifted each time? How little should be left after the shift?

Foreseeable problem – Maintaining the counts and last seen dates will be big trouble for non-technical people (and not all that easy for technicals either) unless there are specific tools or instructions for doing it. We have about six weeks from now to have a plan ready. --mtew 14:21, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Archiving with my last version is easy. Move the day calls to a archive page, add the year - if necessary - and preset the data variables on the main page with the archived data.. No need to modify the template to be able to handle years in a complicated way, if all templates calls need to be changed anyway, and to maintain the possibility to include all, because that is just too many work for the server just to update the totals... poke | talk 14:33, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Let's see – Remembering the year from one day to the next and handling year changes when they happen is too complicated. Sorry, but I don't believe that.

How is a non-tech going to know what variables need setting and what values they should be set to? What impact will typo's have and how do they get detected? That process does not fit my definition of easy. --mtew 15:06, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

IMO, bench the issue until October or November. --JonTheMon 15:33, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

As said before Mtew we don't operate by your definitions. Their are 5 people in this convo currently and 4 of them disagree with you, maybe you should let it go? -- Salome 15:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)