Template talk:Include-USGov

Comment on including articles in categories

I removed <includeonly>[[Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from public domain works of the United States Government]]</includeonly> because some templates (see {{Bioguide}} for example) includes a subcategory. This template should not add articles to the cat. Templates that use this template (sub-templates?) should add articles to cats.—G716 <^T·_C> 03:23, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Great catch! Thanks for fixing! —hike395 (talk) 21:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The number of articles in Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from public domain works of the United States Government is down from nearly 8,000 before I made the change to about 1,800 now, and I think that there are still some more that will be removed as the server cache purges. —G716 <^T·_C> 22:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Italicize "document"

{{editprotected}}

See Template:Include-USGov/Sandbox for proposed change. --- when I wrote the doc subpage, I noticed that the word "document" was not italicized. Please note that Sandbox does not include <noinclude></noinclude> material, which should be preserved in real template. Thanks! —hike395 (talk) 17:00, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Hike, what about the rest of the non-italicized parts I see in the examples at Template:Include-USGov/doc? Shouldn't the whole text be italicized, including the document name, author, comment, ...? Amalthea 17:15, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

This meta-template is designed for use both as a stand-alone article notice (which tend to be italicized), and as an inline reference (which are not). I think it would look odd to be completely italicized, so I thought the compromise was to change from italics to non-italics at the specific document name.

Perhaps the italics should just be removed entirely. —hike395 (talk) 18:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, from the way it's being used I'd say both the italics and the icon should be removed. The random samples I just looked at all had it listed in the references or the external links section (1, 2, 3).
But then I'm not quite sure I'm getting the purpose of this template. In the three cases from above I'd just use a normal citation template, and in other ones like this where there is no link to the source material I don't see the point at all, since the attributions isn't really necessary.
Amalthea 19:32, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The trend over the last couple of years has been for the removal of italics on stand-alone article notices (see Category:Attribution templates). Please remove the italics from this template. -- PBS (talk) 10:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Done. Please remember to update the documentation as well. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 21:52, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Accessibility improvement

{{editprotected}} For WP:ACCESSIBILITY by visually impaired readers, the purely decorative image that this template generates should have "|link=" as per WP:ALT #Purely decorative images. To do this, please install the obvious sandbox patch. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 16:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. — RockMFR 21:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Following up on the previous request, the Mediawiki software has changed since then, so the template now needs an empty |alt= as well as a |link=. Please install this further sandbox patch to accommodate this. I discovered the problem when reviewing the alt text for the featured article candidate Smedley Butler. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 23:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Date

Sometimes federal government documents (especially press releases or other announcements) include the date that they were issued. Could a date parameter be included in this template? Eastmain (talk • contribs) 18:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

add source parameter

Please copy Template:Include-USGov/sandbox to Template:Include-USGov. This will accomplish three things:

1. adding a source parameter, useful for using sub-templates such as {{cite web}}, where this template is being called as an inline citation;
2. performing error checking for a missing agency parameter; and
3. fixing a long-standing style issue with misitalicization when used as an inline citation.

Thanks! —hike395 (talk) 00:10, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Done. Killiondude (talk) 08:30, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

As I was preparing to update the documentation, I noticed a serious bug that affected many of the templates that called {{Include-USGov}}: if the template is given an agency and a URL, but no article, it used to create an external link under the agency name, now it doesn't .. I fixed this bug in the sandbox version --- please recopy the sandbox up to the main template.

Note that I revamped the test cases to match the documentation, so we won't have this problem in the future. —hike395 (talk) 09:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Done. Killiondude (talk) 18:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Whitespace issue

There's an extraneous paragraph break being introduced, I think by the sub-template {{GSA building}}. See Union Station (Tacoma, Washington)#Attribution for an example. Mackensen (talk) 16:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed It was indeed extra white space in {{GSA building}} —hike395 (talk) 00:59, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!--Mackensen (talk) 12:16, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Editable by templateeditor?

This seems like a sort of template that should be editable by people with templateeditor rights. Can an admin change it? Thanks! —hike395 (talk) 09:22, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Bringing back this request: can we make this template editable by templateeditors? —hike395 (talk) 03:01, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Where in an article are this template and its derivatives supposed to be transcluded?

It looks like this template and its derivates are often placed in the References section, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina#References. But it doesn't look so good. It looks kind of messy to mix different kinds of lists that are about different things into one big list. Is there an official best practice of where to place this form of information? A special section in which to place them, for instance? --Jhertel (talk) 14:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

The custom of putting PD attribution templates at the top of the references is an old one, used in thousands of pages. WP:FREECOPYING supports this custom. However, many editors prefer inline citations when copying free material. WP:FREECOPYING also supports this. This template can be used as an inline citation. A pattern (which I support) is to mark every paragraph that is copied with an inline citation that uses this template. See, e.g., Rocky Mountains. —hike395 (talk) 10:52, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the information and pointers! I personally agree that marking every copied paragraph is best. Otherwise it's hard to know what sentences or paragraphs were copied. --Jhertel (talk) 11:55, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jhertel and Hike395: I know I'm reviving a nearly four-year-old discussion here...but I came here (truthfully, from {{NTSB}}) to determine where this template is supposed to be placed. The documentation doesn't say. Judging from your discussion, there is no consensus. Can we find a way to give some guidance (i.e. best practice) to editors new to this template or its derivatives? I realize the preference may be complete freedom, but for the doc to avoid the subject entirely is to promote tribal knowledge among experienced editors. – voidxor 19:28, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

No parens around accessdate

Shelbystripes modified the sandbox so that the accessdate is a standalone sentence at the end of the transclusion, rather than a parenthetical phrase. I think it looks better this new proposed way! Thanks for doing this! —hike395 (talk) 06:33, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I was just trying to write up my description of the proposed edit. It makes the accessdate text render in the same manner as {{cite web}} format, as a separate sentence following the document description. The edit also adjusts the span headers so that all the accessdate text generated is within <span class="reference-accessdate"></span> so that the text is excluded for users that hide the accessdate. I would appreciate a reviewer copying Template:Include-USGov/sandbox to Template:Include-USGov to incorporate these changes. Shelbystripes (talk) 06:40, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done Looks good! —hike395 (talk) 12:06, 31 December 2017 (UTC)