Template talk:Ru-census

Grammar

This template produces the following incomplete sentence. "Population: 179,780 (2010 Census);[3] 198,028 (2002 Census);[6] 268,747 (1989 Census).[7]". In English, there should be a verb in every sentence. It's a shame that the Ru-census Template adds grammatical errors to so many Russian-related articles, and it should be fixed immediately. A better phrasing would be "According to the 2010 census, the population of __ was X."- Gilliam (talk) 07:42, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

This template does have major issues (see below), but there's nothing grammatically incorrect about the formatting you provided. The semicolons are, if anything, better. (Kindly see semicolon to review its use in lists when separating terms which themselves include commas.) Those semicolons should only be removed if the template were somehow formatted to use thin spaces instead of commas between each group of digits.

Your rephrasing omits the entire reason for the template. 2010-specific data would use {{ru-census2010}}, not {{ru-census}}. If we're creating whole sentences, it should look something like "The population is ###,### (2010).^[#] It was ###,### in 2002^[#] and ###,### in 1989,^[#] near the end of the Soviet Union." But templates in Wikipedia articles generally shouldn't generate entire paragraphs. It's better to keep it small and allow the editors to adjust things as they go. (For example, your proposed formatting would have to use the article's page name and then accidentally include phrasing like "... the population of Petropavlovsk (Petroskaya) was..." and "...the population of Petropavlovsk, Petroskaya was...", which actually would be stylistic or grammatical errors.) — LlywelynII 03:15, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Ok... I'm sorry. (A) The template itself isn't bad: it makes lists... but the way it is being used in the middle of prose paragraphs is pretty terrible. Even worse where they're doing this to the leads of articles. (B) Changing the template is much easier than going through and adjusting its present use. (C) I now do prefer my phrasing for where the template is currently located. What do you think? or should I remove the context about the Soviet Union? (It's totally unnecessary for us older hands but I assume many Wiki readers might miss what was going on if they just see the date by itself.) — LlywelynII 03:23, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The purpose of the template is to provide a quick and dirty means to add (referenced) population data to stubs and articles lacking a Demographics section. Articles that do have a Demographics section should not generally employ this template, at least not in the lede. Having full sentences is of course always a better option, but is not always a realistic one (and I don't mean any individual pages, but rather the whole workload overall).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 26, 2014; 11:55 (UTC)

Nope. The WP:LEAD should not have these 'quick and dirty' sentence fragments and using the template in this fashion is a reason to either correct it or remove it entirely to prevent such misuse. It could function as a quick and dirty demographic section on its own but people aren't using it that way. — LlywelynII 22:23, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

The key word here was "stubs". Stubs don't really have a lede; quick and dirty information is by far all they contain. When stubs are expanded, then of course this template can (and should) be moved to the Demographics section as soon as it is available, or it may not even be necessary if that section is developed enough and the numbers can be incorporated into prose.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 2, 2014; 12:53 (UTC)

Thanks, kind of

It is good to have this information. That said, it is unhelpful to use this list of historical population numbers in the WP:LEADs of articles (as at Azov) where we should just be giving the most important and recent information. This template really only belongs in a demographics subsection of a page and the documentation should be LOUDLY marked to prompt such use. — LlywelynII 03:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Formatting

Similarly, the initial formatting was much too noisy and WP:UNDUEly focusing attention on the Census links. The links are there but the only important information for the reader is the date, which shouldn't be so large it looks like and interferes with the actual population figures. — LlywelynII 03:00, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I restored the "Census" part in these templates. Population templates allow using both Census and estimate parameters, and the distinction between the two is quite important. I also think the small fonts looks ugly in the lede, but am willing to see if this opinion is shared or if this will perhaps grow on me. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 26, 2014; 11:55 (UTC)

Nope. What looks ugly in the lead is a mess of oversized sentence fragments inexplicably marred by needless verbiage in addition to their links and citations. Corrected. Cheers. — LlywelynII 22:14, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I apologize I was not specific enough. Mixing cases is ugly in any case, and this one is no exception, but the real problem with the small font is that estimates are used with these census templates every now and then; like so:

Population: 55,555 (2010 Russian census); 44,444 (2008 est.).

As you can see, if your formatting is to be retained, that would lead to the Census link being in a small font, and an estimate clarification being in a normal-sized font. That's not good. Another thing that's not good is that it becomes unclear what the Census year link links to and that it is different from the estimates. Sure, one can hover over the link to see what it is being linked to, but that requires an extra effort on the reader's part, assuming the link is not overlooked at all. Such a practice is discouraged; see, for example, WP:EASTER.

Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 2, 2014; 12:53 (UTC)

punct

What's the matter with |punct= in this case (at the end of the first paragraph of the lead)?
Not only it doesn't emit a correct default, but the parameter doesn't seem to work at all (in an edit preview). — Mike Novikoff 01:25, 27 May 2022 (UTC)