Talk:Chief Interrogator Washington

WIP?

I was looking at the WIP category, and I clicked on this guy randomly. Although he's listed on the category page, and editing him says he uses the WIP template, I don't see it in the actual code. What's up with that? Felderburg 19:20, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

After some confusing sleuthing, I've tracked the issue down. The article has a {{Mission Briefing}} that references Calvin Scott (Praetorian); Calvin's article uses {{wip}}. {{Mission Briefing}} uses {{linkifexists}} which in turn uses {{exists}}. And {{exists}} is where the problem lies. The template's documentation states: "The method is based on transclusion [...] Even if this result is used for comparison only, [...] the page counts as being transcluded." So it appears that the use of {{exists}} on Calvin Scott (Praetorian) is causing Washington's article to think it's transcluding Calvin Scott (Praetorian), along with everything transcluded within Scott's article, even though it's not actually being transcluded. A bit of a mess.

I believe the only solution would be to change {{linkifexists}} to use #ifexist instead of {{exists}}. However, I'm pretty sure we switched to {{exists}} because of some problem with #ifexist. So I'm hesitant to switch it back since I can't remember why we switched in the first place. -- Sekoia 23:24, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

*Embarrased face* We switched because I noted that the "if exists" was causing very minor "contacts" that are put in missions with even the barest snippet of dialog to show up on the "wanted pages" list. The change eliminated that, and made sure that the wanted pages are actually wanted because they are referenced with hard links, rather than a character's automatic inclusion in a template. I would argue that that's a minor issue compared to pages showing up on the WIP list that shouldn't, so maybe a reversion *is* necessary? Felderburg 21:41, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Well I'm glad you knew why the change was done, I had tried searching for the discussion and couldn't find anything. :) I reverted it back. I agree that the other issue is the lesser of the two. And there's no telling what other odd side effects the {{exists}} template might have that we haven't noticed yet. -- Sekoia 15:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)