Template talk:Missing image

Some thoughts

• Good to see somebody with some idea of Template: space working on this.
• Ideally, some kind of explanation alluding to "removed from our sister's image library". I'm struggling to think of phrasing that is appropriate/understandalbe whilst remaining short.
• Someone (Tom?) raised a point about screenreaders when this was last discussed in IRC. Following, is there some way the caption can be made to note the image's death?
• Might it be worth linking to an explanation somewhere about why we do this instead of image removal?
  

Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:31, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

• I agree, we'd like an image with some explanation. What's appropriate could vary with addition to image caption (see below).
• A practical disadvantage atm is that with no redlink, someone looking to fix the problem has to edit the article just to find out the name of the missing image.
• The technical challenge in adding to the caption is identifying which parameter is the caption; it doesn't have to be the last parameter (image syntax). It should be doable, if a bit tedious.
• A link on relevant image practice sounds good. I forget whether we have a pre-existing suitable write-up.

--Pi zero (talk)

On further thought, I don't see how to determine whether a given unnamed parameter is the caption or not, as there's no obvious way to tell whether a parameter is actually the size rather than the caption. It may be necessary to require that the last parameter always be a caption. --Pi zero (talk) 13:03, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Upgraded to adjust the image caption. --Pi zero (talk) 16:09, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

After some thought, we really don't have any proper link/explanation for it. I should add one to WN:ARCHIVE - after all, WN:ARCHIVE is what we've been interpreting as covering images. I intend to revamp that page soon as it could be quite simplified now we check things very thoroughly pre-archive. As for the automatic redlink, I wonder how possible (or desirable) it would be to automatically link it direct to the Commons deletion log? Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:07, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I've been figuring we'd want to fine-tune some things.

• The not-available image itself should probably be replaced with something more customized for the purpose.
• A link to WN:ARCHIVE seems a plausible choice.

• I've been weighing whether or not to suggest adding something to WN:ARCHIVE about holding up archiving when we're down to ten articles on the main page. Which I do because, when we get that low on recent articles, the list on the main page functions as samples of our work, for which one wants a reasonable variety.

• Linking to the deletion log is technically doable. I like having a link to the file itself, so that if one should ever happen to be restored/replaced, the blue link can be seen, whereas one couldn't tell from a link to the deletion log.

It occurs to me that we're being a little presumptuous in always saying the image has been deleted from Commons; I think there might have been one case I've encountered so far where the image had been deleted from Wikinews. --Pi zero (talk) 17:03, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

As a downpayment, I've added to the caption a link to a quick-and-dirty blurb about why we don't substitute different images, and a link to the commons deletion log. --Pi zero (talk) 19:06, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Okay, now we've got optional named parameters local and itsdeadjim; of issues mentioned, only remaining afaik is a customized replacement for the not-available image. --Pi zero (talk) 23:30, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that's right. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 23:38, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Rethink

The whole concept of this template needs to be rethought. Using it causes the using article to disappear from the image's global-usage list on Commons; if we can't find a way to fix that, we should undo all uses of this template and delete the template. --Pi zero (talk) 15:29, 1 June 2012 (UTC)