Template talk:Memoryalpha article

Notes on using the {{memoryalpha}} and {{memoryalpha article}} templates

Template:memoryalpha article is for placing a link in the "External links" section of articles here that have a corresponding article at the Memory Alpha wiki, when the article there has a different title than the article here (at wikipedia). If the articles on both sites have the same title, and it seems very unlikely that either will be moved to a new title, it is ok to use Template:memoryalpha instead (which makes use of the {{PAGENAME}} and {{PAGENAMEE}} variables, and thus will result in 404ed links if the page is ever moved). Typical syntax for Template:Memoryalpha article is:

==External link==

*{{memoryalpha article|Memory_Alpha_Page_Name|Display Name}}.

Which (currently) produces:

==External link==

• Display Name article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki

You can look at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Memoryalpha and Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Memoryalpha_article for more examples of each.

I am breaking wiki etiquette and posting this text above other people's discussion, because I think this usage information should be at the top of the page. See the discussion below for reasons why these templates should be used. ~leif ☺ _(talk) 22:23, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Previous discussion

Inspired by Template:wikiquote, Template:imdb title, etc, I figured we need a consistent way to link to Memory Alpha articles. I intend to use this template in "External links", like this:

==External link==
* {{memoryalpha}}

But I'll probably just put it on a few articles for now, until there is some feedback. Another option would be to make it like the Wikiquote/Wiktionary templates, and have it render it's own box... I think that might not be appropriate for a non-Wikimedia source though. ~leif ☺ _(talk) 20:35, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

See also Template:Memoryalpha article for linking to other articles. ~leif ☺ _(talk) 00:11, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, I really don't like this. I don't think it follows the KISS principle, and it devotes far too much energy to a non-Wikimedia project. I like MemoryAlpha, but this template is more complex than just making a normal external link. Please don't expand this for now, because it will cause a lot of re-work if we have to un-do the template additions. This really isn't how we should be using templates at all. A template makes it easy to make a consistent change to text on a large number of articles - the key words being "change" and "consistent". How often do you expect this text to change, and why is is so important that the links be perfectly consistent? -- Netoholic @ 10:54, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying sooner! I think that using these templates is preferable to using simple hyperlinks because this creates an easy-to-detect explicit connection between two databases that could potentially be used in a JOIN operation at some point in the future. Also (and this is actually less important to me but will probably make more sense to most people) if Memory Alpha's domain name or URL scheme were to change (again), it will be easy to update these templates. As for helping a non-wikimedia project; I think these links primarily benefit wikipedia readers and re-users by giving them more/better information. There are a lot of subjects that Memory Alpha covers in much more detail than the stubs at wikipedia do (though in some cases the opposite is true). I really don't care if this doesn't follow the "KISS principle", as I'm pretty sure that most people editing Star Trek articles in the wiki can figure out how to put two values in a template.

Are there still any objections to this? ~leif ☺ _(talk) 22:23, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

I personally think it's good and in fact was trying to copy something like this for Template:Hrwiki, but because there is presently a rather simplified-and-unanimous "delete it" vote regarding my template on Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion I thought I'd mark it for a deletion vote to spur the Trekkies (er, Trekkers?) into helping articulate a formal policy, since you're probably ready to argue for it and I could use your support in an intelligent debate. At minimum, I'd like a result of the discussion to be a policy page describing how this balance of information is to be managed for the Interwiki overall. Sorry to disrupt your work, in any case, and I hope it comes out to a favorable result... User:metaeducation

The problem that I just noticed with One (Star Trek) is that the template breaks if the article names differ between the memoryalpha wiki and WP. Rl 08:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Note that I have now replaced the manual hyperlink on One (Star Trek) with a Template:Memoryalpha article link. ~leif ☺ _(talk) 22:23, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a great template; as a prolific contributer to MA, as well as frequently working on WP, I think this is an excellent link between the two. May I propose some small formatting changes for it (since I'm barging in here anyways)?

<div class="noprint" style="clear: right; border: solid #aaa 1px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em; font-size: 90%; background: #f9f9f9; width: 250px; padding: 4px; spacing: 0px; text-align: left; float: right;"> <div style="float: left;">[[Image:WikiMemoryAlpha.png|80px]]</div> <div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;">'''[[Memory Alpha]]'''<br /> has more about this subject:</div> <div style="text-align: center;">'''''[http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/index.php/{{PAGENAMEE}} {{PAGENAME}}]'''''</div> </div>

— THOR 17:04, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in HTML, so your Help is appreciated ;-) I use it for now, hopefully no browsers cause problems. --Memory 21:33, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

New Version

Wups, sorry, i created a new one: Template:Memory Alpha without knowledge of this one. But I think there is no problem, it has the same function as this one, but more like the nice Template:Wikibooks e.g. :-) --Memory 01:14, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I see that your new template has been deleted, and you've updated Template:Memoryalpha to use the wikimedia box style. It looks good on some articles, but kind of funny in places where it's the sole external link. If this change is going to stay, Template:Memoryalpha article should be updated to match it. ~leif ☺ _(talk) 22:23, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Updating Memoryalpha article is what I want, but I would run some tests with it before. I had no time for this up to now. --Memory 21:05, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikibooks is a sister project to Wikipedia. Thus it gets a flashy box. Memory Alpha is not. Thus it gets the same treatment as Wikitravel gets at template:Wikitravel. --mav 14:25, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Why is Memory Alpha not a sister projekt? Only because someone doesn't announced it as one? That's no argument. It is one, that's obvious. Sarek

Sister projects are official. You can't just claim to be one. For one, Memory Alpha is run by other people, who have no responsibility to Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiki. .. itself. -- Ec5618 17:20, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

There are a lot of Wiki... which are not run by the ...pedia people, but as long as they use the Wiki software and principles, they are Wikis like all others. Sarek

On the main page, there is a short list of Wiki Sister Projects. An outside Wiki shouldn't assume it can add itself to Wikipedia as a sister project. And there is no way of knowing whether the people running an outside wiki are adhering to the wiki principles. as such, they should seek official recognition as aSuster project before creating templates like this.

As a side note, Sarek, you are signing your posts with [[Sarek]], which does not lead to your user page. Please consider creating an account, and please sign using the customary four tildes. -- Ec5618 16:50, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

---

Ok, you can stop the discussion, I'm going to develop a different template for my indication. --Memory 13:12, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

• Please do not create two versions of a template to fulfill the same purpose. What you should do is create a stunningly beautiful template in your userspace, then show it to the people here to convince them. Radiant_* 07:20, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

TFD

This template was nominated for deletion, but consensus was to keep. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/Not_deleted/June_2005. Radiant_* 07:20, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

External link

This should show the external link icon, but simply changing to an external link fails it because of spaces in the URL. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 02:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

It should to work now - Use {{PAGENAMEE}} instead of {{PAGENAME}} for the page title with underscores instead of spaces. -- grm_wnr Esc 02:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Aha - thanks. --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates!) 02:48, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Right, our little conflict seems to go nicely under this heading, SPUI. So, I want to use the interwiki format to link to Memory Alpha (I'm no trekkie, btw). This is in line with external link templates such as Template:Wikitravel, Template:Wikicities, Template:Gameinfo, Template:Meatball, Template:MusicBrainz wiki and others. (you get the picture, I hope)

You seem to think that this solution, which doesn't produce the external link icon, is somehow misleading to users. I ask why that is. This external link template, as all others, needs to be placed in the "External links" section of an article. That seems an obvious indicator enough for users to know they are leaving this wiki. If they weren't, the link would have to be placed under "See also".

I hope we can reach a resolve here. If you still disagree, you should take this to some higher-level policy page and argue that _every_ external link, relative to en.wp, should have the icon. --Azertus 15:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Being a little (but not very emotionally) involved here, I'll just say that I see little reason to treat an external link different just because it's a wiki. The interwiki map is a great tool for usual wikis running in thread mode (like our talk pages do), but it's unencyclopedic and against the spirit of NPOV to treat these links differently in articles, and we're talking about a template anyway so the ease of editing doesn't matter. However, I think this should be so for every external link, and squabbling over this template is useless - the discussion should be held on the guideline level, at Wikipedia talk:External links. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Except that this is the way it's always been (with the MemoryAlpha: style) and that format is used on a number of pages that do not link to this template. Perhaps we should just leave things as they are? Rondack 07:03, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

"the" star trek wiki?

Ok, this is minor, but the tag says Memory Alpha is "the" star trek wiki. "the"? I doubt Memory Alpha is the only star trek wiki, and even if it is, saying "the" makes it seem like it's the best, which violates Wikipedia's NPOV Policy. I have changed the template to read "a" star trek wiki. If you have any arguments, tell me. --Ashfire908 18:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Why are we edit warring

Would someone like to explain the objections to this for me? So far I've heard "It's undiscussed," which is silly because one should be bold in updating pages and thus prior discussion is not grounds for reversion, and "it doesn't need to be a box," which is equally strange, as templates masked as plaintext are actively frowned upon. Does anyone actually have a good reason for edit warring this one? Phil Sandifer 20:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikia is a 'for profit' 'child of Jimbo', and the "official" sister projects are 'not for profit'. AFAIK, there has long been, and I think should continue to be, a bright line between the two. Sohelpme 00:47, 28 May 2007 (UTC)