Template talk:Talkback

Cruft

This template is of such marginal usefulness that I would favor deleting it, unless someone can make a strong case for it. LtPowers (talk) 16:15, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean? Do we already have any other template for talkback message on wikivoyage? On en.wiki, commons, and many other language projects, there exists some or the other version of talkback template. Or do you mean, we don't need a talkback template at all? -- Lovysinghal (talk) 16:51, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

We try to keep the number of templates to a manageable minimum. I don't care for this particular solution on en.wikipedia -- it's garish in addition to being unnecessary -- but I accept that some people prefer it. Here, though, with our limited amount of user talk page traffic, it's just more stuff to keep track of. LtPowers (talk) 18:53, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

From what I understand, the traffic will only be increasing. When people do use it, how can you call it unnecessary? You may not use it if you don't wish to. For others, let them decide. I agree that it is a bit too loud. I personally would have preferred something closer to the one on Commons and had thought of copy-pasting that here first. But then it is internationalized perhaps and not suited for our purpose. You may suggest some changes though to make it look more elegant. There is not much about this template to keep track of. I vouch to do that as long as I am here and if you can trust me. Lovysinghal (talk) 06:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Useful for its very garishness and standardisation - hopefully people will realise that it is an exception to the general etiquette of not removing/modifying stuff posted by others on talk pages and that it should be removed as soon as the message has been read. For this reason only it may have a utility since polite folks may be more loathe to remove a "hand-crafted" message. -- Alice^✉ 20:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Lovysinghal claims I can refuse to use it if I don't want to, but that's not really true, is it? People will use it on my talk page whether I want it there or not, won't they? And of course, it's there cluttering up other people's talk pages when I go to use them as well. And the worst part is that it really serves no useful purpose. We have watchlists for a reason; why the heck do I need to be notified when someone responds to a message I left on his page? LtPowers (talk) 00:31, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Because some people (including most newbies since it's not switched on by default) will not have set their "watchlist user preferences" for "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist" to on?

At least when the victim target removes this garish template it may act as a signal to the perpetrator thoughtful correspondent that his message has struck home been noticed? -- Alice^✉ 00:39, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Still experimental?

This template has been experimental for over a year now. So do we want to remove the experimental tag and keep it? Rework it? Toss it? Has the new system of notifications reduced our perceived need for this kind of template? I haven't seen anyone using this lately, and like User:LtPowers was never convinced of a need for it in the first place. Texugo (talk) 16:57, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of talkback messages telling me that I should read a message elsewhere, but this template is in pretty standard usage on Wikipedia so we may want to keep it around solely because people will likely expect it to be here, too. That's not an ideal reason to keep a template around, but at the same time I think the bar is lower for templates that aren't meant for use in mainspace and it doesn't hurt us in any way to have this one here. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:20, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

The harm is the same as it is for any excessive template: It makes Wikivoyage harder to use. If someone uses it on my talk page, I have to remove it or leave the talk page cluttered with an unnecessarily large box. If someone uses it on a newbie's talk page, they're left trying to figure out what to do with it. If a newbie sees it on someone else's talk page, they may feel they need to use it and waste time trying to figure out how. Powers ^(talk) 18:25, 6 February 2014 (UTC)