Template talk:External reference error reports

Hide reports section and table if the parameter is empty

If |reports= is empty the reports section and table should be hidden. I didn't manage to support that unfortunately. Perhaps anybody is cannier? Thanks in advance, --Marsupium (talk) 12:11, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Two features to support tracking

@Marsupium: Some features are needed to support tracking. Consider ULAN https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property_talk:P245#Error_Reports entry "Neuer Schloss". Need this in each row:

• people must sign their contribution, else how can I ping them if I have a different opinion? Maybe have a param "user"?
• generate HTML anchor else how can the source contact be sent to a particular place for discussion? Maybe make "item" mandatory and use that for anchor?

In addition:

• After looking at several such pages, I'm convinced we need a header (eg "Error Reports") before the table. Don't know if the template can add it automatically; I've added one for ULAN.

--Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 10:41, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

You are right about all that. The template is definitely in fledgling stages.

• Signing: I was yet aware of that. The timestamps are a similar issue I think. I'd prefer to put the user name in every field for an "action" so the work on one "report" can be picked up by someone else eventually and it is still traceable even without page history investigations. It's possible to use {{yes|~~~~}}. That is not nice and breaks the sorting option, but is easy. The best I think could be to get buttons somehow that open the editing and automatically fill in the timestamp and the user name, use {{ISOdate}} and still preserve the sorting by date.
• Anchor: Good idea! I tried to use a more structured variant of the |description= field, an |ID= field, and fetch the formatter URL and create external links automatically, though with the regular expression operations I failed to prevent a timeout with Lua. If it's still possible to add this functionality to the template I'd prefer to use an external ID as a fallback rather than making the |item=/|item1= field mandatory since there are also cases that don't really affect an item here.
• Heading: Adding ==Error Reports== to the template shouldn't be a problem, but I don't know, headings belong to those things that can cause problems when added by templates, e.g. if the heading levels on some transcluding page are different … Perhaps it is the best solution to add the headings manually like you did on Property talk:P245#Error Reports. Problem there: Now Template:ExternalUse and Template:Authority control properties are also under "Error Reports". I guess it is part of a general problem with the structure of property talk pages. I also observed different cases of the order of the external uses and the constraints etc.

--Marsupium (talk) 20:53, 11 June 2017 (UTC)