Template talk:NewWork

Proposal to eliminate this template

Claude T has found this template unnecessarily time-consuming, especially because it populates Category:New works. To me, Category:New Works doesn't seem to serve any function, and this template's usefulness is limited to putting the new icon on works less than 30 days old and assigning works to appropriate date-related categories. For the past few weeks, I have been testing a new version of {{PostedDate}}, that incorporates the relevant code from NewWork and {{IsNew}} without using either of them. On the test server, Template:NewWork has been disabled, Template:PostedDate has been rewritten without Template:NewWork or Template:IsNew, Category:New works has been emptied and has no subcategories. Category:New works and the Templates NewWork, IsNew, and IsRecent are not used by any other page outside this group (ChoralWiki:New scores archive mentions NewWork in the header, but doesn't use it). The tasks that NewWork used to do are now done by PostedDate, except no Category:New works.

After these changes, I have seen no effects to other programs and lists on the Test server.

I propose to change Template:PostedDate to the new version, empty Category:New works and delete it, and eliminate Template:NewWork. Template:IsNew would then have no purpose, but might be kept for future use anyway.

There has been a lot of discussion over the years; see this (hide transclusions) and this (hide transclusions), (especially here and here). Perhaps I have missed something. — Barry Johnston (talk) 15:49, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Barry. Anyone can go to that page to see how many pages calculate eternally their own age since 2006 for ever and ever, on each page-opening, to no avail: now 20,915 pages, more than yesterday and less than tomorrow. Claude (talk) 16:32, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Claude, you seem to not understand that time calculations will always be performed inside every single works page, whether using this template or not. This is required for the proper functioning of the Latest Scores list displayed on the Main Page; for the Multi-Category Search (which also relies on categories New works and New works in the past 30 days); and for several other categories that display works in a range of time. Such calculations are not too demanding on server resources and you shouldn't worry about them.

Barry, regarding the elimination of this template: I think there's no problem in incorporating the functionality of NewWork into PostedDate. Please just don't delete unused templates, they might be useful someday (and they are sometimes required when we preview an old revision). Just categorize them under Obsolete templates. Thanks —Carlos (talk) 00:57, 16 June 2020 (UTC)