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Find A Grave qualifier [2 November 2012]
Jrich, I noticed your recent change to this template, removing the Find A Grave qualifier. I don't really agree with the change. This template is generally meant to be used on cemetery pages where there may be multiple links to additional resources. Much like the Billion Graves template for cemeteries, this template had the qualifier to show the user would be directed to the Find A Grave website. For example, the page for Place:Long Island National Cemetery, Suffolk, New York, United States now has two links that just say "Long Island National Cemetery". The use of this template differs from that of Template:Fgravemem. That template is used in the source citations where Find A Grave is the source title, so listing the name again would be redundant. --Jennifer (JBS66) 06:31, 2 November 2012 (EDT)
- So perhaps I should have asked first. Sorry, I assumed, since they were created at the same time, and since I had in that original discussion, suggested a template for citing cemeteries, that it was meant for embedding in Source Citations (original discussion at here). And since the name of the source is "Find A Grave", having the cemetery show up in the source citation as "Find A Grave: cemetery", followed by the source name "Find A Grave" is redundant and confusing. Without the qualifier, you have the freedom to make the second argument be "Find A Grave: cemetery", or even simply, "Find A Grave". If the qualifier is built into the template, you do not have the freedom to remove it, so all you can do is not use the template. Which defeats the purpose of the template, which was to provide a better way to make URLs that could change en mass if the Find A Grave website's URL changes. What Links Here suggests that there are a lot of uses of this on Person pages, which are probably mostly in source citations so it is a significant usage of this template. I am somewhat surprised more people don't include the cemetery name in source citations, and it might be because the format of the template is so ugly. Or should there be two separate templates? --Jrich 09:59, 2 November 2012 (EDT)
- My guess is that people don't tend to include the cemetery name in the source citation because the burial event already contains that information. If they want more information on the cemetery, they can access that via WR's cemetery place page or via the Find A Grave memorial link for that person. I reread the original discussion, and, honestly, I think your comment about including the cemetery name in the source citation was overlooked. I remember working on these templates, and I specifically recall that we were working to reproduce how the citations used to appear on cemetery pages with this one template. Also, to your point about this template linking to a number of Person pages, most of them appear to be linked because of source citations you've created. I am open to suggestions, and hope that others watching this page will contribute their thoughts as well. --Jennifer (JBS66) 12:30, 2 November 2012 (EDT)
- I would argue that the original purpose was to simplify the specification of a Find A Grave URL so there would be less errors in data entry, and so that changes in the form of the URL could be made en masse with one change to the template. It sounds like you have been using it for a specific purpose that needed the qualifier inserted, which is, strictly speaking, beyond the limited scope of making a URL of the form [url text], and therefore makes it less useful for general usage, be it on a place page, a source citation, or in a discussion in a narrative, or on the Talk page, etc.
- Regardless, there are now many instances of different uses of one template which seem to have different needs. One fix would be to create a new template for one of the uses. Elegantly, a fix might be to add a third argument {{fgravecem|###|text|q}} where the third argument "q" causes qualifer {{q}} to be added. For example, using a third argument of "fg" might invoke template {{fg}} which would expand to "Find A Grave:". If that's possible? Either way, all of this still requires fixing a bunch of pages.
- All that said, it is probably simplest to change the template back. So I have done that. Next time I get annoyed at the appearance of my source citations, I will simply add a new template and go edit a lot of pages. --Jrich 13:42, 2 November 2012 (EDT)
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