Help talk:Template limits

message: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:List_of_language_names_ordered_by_code --NE2 16:33, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed by replacing the template calls with the expanded wiki-source by using m:Special:ExpandTemplates (see project page). --Ligulem 18:36, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Found a casualty on meta

message: Forgive me, but this isn't a useful feature, particularly without giving any kind of warning on Wiki (the mailing list is all well and good but basically invisible). It breaks WP:CP for a start, so the WMF can just live with noone being able to list, review or delete illegal text. Or, the devs can write us a bot that daily subst's the page. Or just get rid of this 'feature'. -Splash - tk 17:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "It breaks WP:CP for a start", well nothing new (see VPT), that's why I've added it to the new :Category:Pages exceeding template inclusion limits. And I must say we shouldn't optimise MediaWiki for this kind of page. It is very atypical. I'm sure we will find another solution for this page. And the "feature" is not a feature per se, it helps running the servers smoothly and disables certain template DOS attacks. These limits make sense to me and I trust Tim that he installed it for good reason. And I also see no problem the way he introduced it. I have read the announcement on the mailing list and I was aware what he intended to do. And you can't get your feet wet by endless theorising upfront. These new limits do work astonishingly well.  --Ligulem 18:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course it's new. CP wasn't broken until this was introduced. Adding it to a category does what, exactly? Does it allow AfD to function? CP? Does it break articles, processes, policies? And I suppose we're supposed to accept that, say, everyone reads VPT? I didn't ask for theorising, I asked for some advance warning that large numbers of things were going to be wilfully broken. In what sense do they "work astonishingly well"? They are invisible unless they break things, at which point things aren't working at all. I read the mailing list posts now and see that they are protection against a problem that never occurred, which is all very well, but it's a solution that is really a long way suboptimal. -Splash - tk 19:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes it's new. What I wanted to say is, it had already been reported on VPT. As such, it's no news. Which "large things are willfully broken"? BTW the problem *did* occur here, caused by such things (which demonstrated the attack vector). Or do you think server response times in the order of 10 or 20 seconds to update the cached html of a page are acceptable? Well, ok, I'm not a WikiMedia dev anyway and do have nothing to say about how this wiki is configured. Tim does. He's also co-responsible for keeping the site running. So probably I should better shut up on this anyway. But Tim has my support on this. --Ligulem 23:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not very useful 

message: I increased the limit from 1024KB to 2000KB and changed the code to add links to missing templates. WP:CP now works, although it takes 8.5 seconds to render and generates 1.5 MB of HTML, so I wouldn't like to call it "fixed". -- Tim Starling 23:31, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Sorry for the edit conflict (did I overlook an indicator?), I just happended to have rechecked WP:CP at the same time. Yes, the page should and can be reorganised, iff Splash (and others) agree to reorganise this page. --Ligulem 23:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't worry, the complaint in my edit summary was in jest, it's not late enough in the day yet for me to get angry at edit conflicts  -- Tim Starling 23:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, that page will inevitably exceed the limit again before too much longer if the methodology isn't changed. Though they have plenty of warning now. The links for suppressed templates is a nice addition BTW. --CBD 23:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I imagine "they" would be very open to suggestions about how to change "their" methodology if you'd like to give "them" a call. Although honestly, the only changes "they" can probably make are to not display the entries on "their" page. A methodology that doens't actually display the listing isn't so hot, really, but perhaps it's the only way if whatever the actual problem in MW is can't be fixed further away from the editorial frontline.  -Splash - tk 00:53, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please replace "they" with "we" :). Seriously: Splash, thank you for expressing your concerns with WP:CP. Now let's try to find a solution: Do you think it would be completely inacceptable to split up the page in subpages, and simply link them from WP:CP instead of transcluding each and every subpage into WP:CP? Please forgive me, but — while certainly very important for organising the project — WP:CP is not part of the encyclopedia material as such, so couldn't we try to be a bit less demanding there and save some resources in favor for computing power for the articles? --Ligulem 07:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is less a concern with CP and more a concern with the 'solution' to the problem taken by the devs. (Who can of course solve problems however they choose, but they can still take criticism, too.) It appears to me that the 'solution' has been to 'fix' MediaWiki by breaking Wikipedia, and so the 'solution' is a bad one. I think you're over egging the pudding rather with the implication that CP is causing computational resource problems with article reading/writing/maintaining. Both were getting along dandy until this new (arbitrary) limit was invented. As to your suggestion, well, that's what I had in mind when I said above that a methodology that doesn't display the listing isn't so hot, but may be the only way. CP is a ghastly backlog because it's damn hard admin graft -- making it the harder is only going to work around the (new) technical flaw rather than actually make anything better. But I can't see any other way until MediaWiki is fixed. -Splash - tk 11:19, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I should be clearer on why non-transclusion is a poor approach. Apart from the admin-hate it will generate, it will make it rather much the harder for an editor to find their article's listing if it doesn't appear on the page the relevant links take them too. ( isn't substed becuause....it's so much code, oh the irony.) Having to negotiate their way through several potentially large pages to locate their item is going obviously to cause them problems. Now not many copyvio listings are challenged, but really MediaWiki shouldn't have aspects that actually make life harder where before it was relatively easy. -Splash - tk 11:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it wasn't easy for the servers and Tim probably had to decide to do something about it. He sure can't wait until the servers are down before he does something. Furthermore, we probably cannot expect that pages like CP are explicitly excluded from the template limit logic. I know we editors are damn greedy when it comes to features (I was such a bad guy myself on that qif debacle) and the devs do have to give us some firm stops when needed (preferably done in the software and not with policies). And it is up to Tim to decide what stops are needed. Wikipedia is growing tremendously and it's in the interest of all of us that it runs well. Some collateral "damage" (from editors standpoint) is sometimes inevitable. As long as only some procedural pages like CP are effected, we are better off taking that bitter pill for the sake of the whole site. Ligulem 12:00, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#New template limits. --Ligulem 12:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

text: No, it really is 'they'. The regulars at CP are the ones who will have to deal with whatever system is used there. As to suggestions... to keep generally the same functionality while reducing transcluded size I'd go with a change of archiving method. Currently alot of closed entries stick around for weeks until all the other entries from the same day are closed. If you instead had a monthly archive page (with headers for each day in the month) you could move each entry to the archive as it was closed and then delete the empty 'day' pages when they had been fully resolved. More manual archival process, but clears out closed discussions immediately and consequently reduces the size of the page. Making it easier to follow as a side-benefit. --CBD 19:46, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There aren't any regulars at CP. Generally, 'closed' entries are removed from day listings as they are dealt with, and links that are blue are genreally un-dealt-with. This means that the day pages decrease in size as they are cleared. They don't get deleted because it then makes it hard for people to go and work out what happened to a given listing. Minor points aside, I'm not quite with you on how this reduces the size of the pages that don't transclude in the first place while leaving them visible; nor how it fixes the (should-be-non-) problem with the "current listings". But maybe I misunderstand something. -Splash - tk 21:46, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Limit increased, links added

message: the limit is quite high, plain transclusion like used on the deletion pages etc really shouldn't exclude them without making the page insanely big, its when structures are used that recursively call templates or templates with large noinclude sections that problems may occour. Plugwash 13:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, I'm sorry, but I don't completely understand what you want to say with your post (scratching my head ;-). Per the "quite high": WP:CP did hit the 1MB limit until I changed some transclusions to links (a reorganisation is still pending there). AIDS is currently at 363,088 bytes pre-expand size. So we can't completely ignore these new limits. Although 2MB is quite comfortable. And the new doc template pattern is neat anyway (example: Template:MONTHNAME). Templates that are called many times on the same page are also adding pretty much to the pre-expand size. Cutting down on hefty noinclude content on these templates by using the doc pattern is really beneficial. --Ligulem 17:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  let us remember 

message: * Lower the limit to about 512K. Gigantic transclusions are signs of something that's already broken. For example, WP:CP is already broken, from a social perspective; the backlog is enormous. Instead of catering to the failure, better to force a rethink, since nothing else has prompted one. 
* Transcluding template documentation onto template pages via noinclude is just plain silly. John Reid 18:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You contradict yourself. Could you explain please? What exactly is "silly"? And why? What does the heading "Salaam" mean? --Ligulem 21:55, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Salaam is Arabic for 'peace' and a traditional greeting. As to decreasing the limit to force things like WP:CP to slim down... it wouldn't work. The size of that page and others like it is a factor of Wikipedia's rapid growth. A smaller limit on transclusion would just force those pages to include the full text directly... no transclusion making the limit irrelevant. As to 'doc sub-pages for templates. With the details Ligulem has incorporated they actually work out quite well, especially for heavily used templates that are permanently protected. --CBD 09:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: <Off topic> I do know the word "Salaam", thanks ;-). What puzzled me is why it was used as a topic for a discussion. First "Salaam", and the "plain silly" ;-). What a contrast. But nevermind. --Ligulem 09:27, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Salaam 

message: Maybe what is needed is a "Template usage" namespace, which could be used for documenting the template and parameters along with example usage (and test cases, if needed).
I've tossed around this idea on other another wiki, but decided that with template limits being enabled it might be time to file a bug with the suggestion.  (See bugzilla:7210).  I'd like to know what others think of this idea.  Would it be confusing to have a third tab for templates?  —TheMuuj Talk 21:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. Did you read Wikipedia:Template doc page pattern? We can already do a lot with that a the moment (See template:cite news for an example). --Ligulem 22:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a pretty good approach.  I'll be sure to use it in the future.  —TheMuuj Talk 17:36, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Idea for reducing size used by documentation/usage 

message: I had a problem with 1.8.2 which was fixed by removing the automatically-generated six-line HTML comment. See Cite.php page on meta.wikimedia.org. I can provide more detail if necessary, as I accept that my message on that site was a bit garbled! Best wishes Jonathan3 11:44, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parsing problem 

message: I hit the template limit recently on a page using templates to list mathematicians by date. I was directed to this article for an explanation, but I found it so confusing that I even thought it was self-contradictory! Judging from other comments on this talk page, I may not be alone. Anyway, I think I understand the issue better now, so I hope previous editors won't mind if I try to rewrite some of the article to clarify it for the benefit of non-experts. I will do my best not to introduce any incorrect statements, but I trust the experts to keep me honest ;) Geometry guy 17:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I rewrote this page this afternoon; I hope the new version is more clear. If any developers are watching this page, please feel free to correct any errors. I looked through Parser.php and tried some things in my sandbox to find out how it works, but it's possible there's some subtlety that I missed.  CMummert · talk 23:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing documentation 

message: Thanks for the updates to this page post the new preprocessor implementation. Can someone please explain how the preprocessor node count works? Geometry guy 11:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Since I'm still waiting on the toolserver db to come back up, I'll look through the source and fix something up. Patrick did a nice job of trimming out the stuff that is no longer relevant, and correcting my date error. I think that the next step is to think about whether there is a better structure for the page given that the new limits are easier to understand. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice rewrite! One query: is it really true that all template arguments are fully expanded and their length added to the template argument size? This would imply that ignored #if's and #switches could still add a lot to the template argument size, whereas they don't seem to in my (admittedly anecdotal) observations. Geometry guy 22:11, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, as I have been playing around with things, I see that I don't understand everything as well as I thought I did. I'll let you know when I figure out what's going on. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  New preprocessor 

message: OK it is against expectation. I am writing a template to produce possible Arabic verb forms from the verb root. I have run into the parser limit (the HTML source says so). Because Arabic is bidirectional and messes-up things when written within left-justified text, I created a subtemplate for the letter ta instead of using the unicode value for readability reasons. This worked partially, but but didn't parse for the more complex verb forms. So I tried to reduce template transclusion in my code by using UTF values instead. The strange thing is that even the verb forms that worked before don't work now. The current version is the older version with the  template. How can that be?.(I tagged the problematic code with ERROR HAPPENS FORM HERE)-- hɑkeem¡ʇuɐɹɯǝǝʞɐɥ 10:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was #ifeq'ing utf values with characters input from the keyboard. I learned that wiki doesn't process utf's but passes them to the browser. Thanks. -- hɑkeem¡ʇuɐɹɯǝǝʞɐɥ 05:25, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Why does is UTF produce an error but not a template that produces the same UTF?

message: *i understand the need for this, but was wondering how is it triggered and/or configured? Bud0011 (talk) 05:47, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  what are the limits that cause "Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded?" 

message: If there are going to be such template limits, then there should be limits on templates being unnecessarily expanded/rewritten with no regard to bytage; one consequence of a thoughtless substitution of a "new, improved" template () for a completely easy-to-use and less-bytage one (, although what's at that link now isn't waht it originally was thanks to its predecessor being "deprecated") is that existing pages which use lots of it are now damaged and require revision see Wikipedia_talk:Canadian_Wikipedians'_notice_board#Why_are_templates_not_working_on_this_page.3F and template talk:cite bcgnis.  The advocate/creator of "cite bcgnis" claimed that coders are told that they shoudl write templates as if there were all teh server space and processor space in the world; but so long as there are limits on the size of pages, and these new template limits, then that's a conundrum.  Why can't CONTENT also be written without regard to server/processor space/power?  Or is priority being given only to making the INTERFACE as big and bloated as it wants to be, and page-content is to be sacrificed to make room for more code????Skookum1 (talk) 20:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Content has no limits, though page splits are suggested for really long articles. I'm not sure where you got your info about this. Content is generally straight text, or wikilinks and other wiki markup that is usually easy to parse and light on processing load. Templates, on the other hand, may make use of functions which could have recursion or loops, which are processor intensive. Mindmatrix 15:28, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Yeah, well...

message: I've added the counter Highest expansion depth as a section, but cannot describe it. Anyone? -DePiep (talk) 10:35, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added: "Highest expansion depth" 

message: See Draft:Template:Hybrid_motor_type/doc. 217.162.112.133 (talk) 22:57, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: So cut it down. Does it really need to show demonstrations of every possible permutation of parameters? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:54, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  I will not cut it down. They are the test cases for the template. I can check that the code is working properly in the preview before commit. 217.162.112.133 (talk) 18:08, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

text: The template must be too complex. Given the simplicity of what it does, I don't see why it should exceed the limit. Also: testcases are usually placed under /testcases, not /doc; lint errors must be eliminated if you plan to ever roll it out; I strongly recommend you create an account. Nardog (talk) 18:30, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Limit too small for all template documentation cases 

message: I added this to WP:Template editor#Other considerations and this across several sections of WP:Template limits to encourage editors to pay attention to template limits before changing templates like  that are used many times on one page, as they can push a page over the limit.
Module:Citation/CS1 and the templates and modules that call it are another example. On pages with hundreds of citations, a seemingly minor change to the citation templates can push a page that has hundreds of citations like Donald Trump (700+ citations) over one or more of the limits. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:31, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update to [[WP:Template editor]] and [[WP:Template limits]] 

message: You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic#Dealing_with_technical_limitations_of_WP%3APEIS.   talk 00:16, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion on how to deal with PEIS limits at [[2019–20 coronavirus pandemic]]

message: If you need to reduce a page's post-expand include size, it would help to understand where that PEIS comes from. So is there a tool that, given a particular page, tells you how much different parts of the page contribute to the PEIS? One possibility would be to break it down by section (so, like the "Section sizes" template, but for PEIS instead of source size), but another would be to break it down by template name. (E.g., all of this page's calls to the "cite" template contribute X to the page's PEIS). Jmdyck (talk) 18:12, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: There’s already a report in the HTML source, which shows template expand times, not PEIS, like this:  I can imagine something like this for PEIS as well. (I don’t know how feasible it technically is, though.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 00:50, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Analyzing a page's PEIS 

message: Looks like a help page to me — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move to help namespace? 

message: Will constrant expressions only be expanded once (until the template code is modified)? Trigenibinion (talk) 18:22, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Constant expressions 

message: It is very bad that whitespace is being counted. Trigenibinion (talk) 14:05, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whitespace 

message: You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 May 7 § Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded.  * Pppery * it has begun... 17:12, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion at [[:Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 May 7#Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded|Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2021 May 7 §&nbsp;Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded]]

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 
The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:19, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Template limits →  – Appears to be a help page. Pinging , who originally proposed this. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 05:02, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 18 March 2022 

message: Users interested in WP:EXPENSIVE parser functions, especially #ifexist, may be interested in the discussion WP:VPT#PAGESIZE as inexpensive alternative to #ifexist parser function. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:45, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Workaround for #ifexist expensive parser function