Template talk:NJReportCard

message: I saw the change at Fair Lawn High School, which looked good. I followed the instructions, and was able to update pages with links to the NJ School Report Card for Teaneck Public Schools, Teaneck High School and Teaneck, New Jersey. All worked like a charm. I say that we start going through the pages still using the 2003-04 version and change them to use the new template, then go through the pages that had already been changed manually to use the 2004-05 version. Congratulations on getting this to work so well, so quickly! Please add a blurb for your new template on WP:NJ. Alansohn 13:16, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Test results 

message: I continued to try to find some type of code to allow us to not type the school/district name, but after awhile I gave up because I do not think I will find anything. If you want to try to find some way, though, go ahead, but I think it's almost better this way because it "forces" to the link to be for the correct thing--a link can not accidentally have the wrong title because its title is typed in, not given by the page it's on.
Second, I went through the What Links Here page for this template and corrected all of the templates so that they all have the name typed into the template and appear correctly. Therefore, all of the existing links to the template should be correct at this time. //MrD9 20:37, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template Status 

message: Should this template be used with subst:, or without? —chair lunch dinner™ (talk) 03:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From my understanding, without or it will not work. The point of the template is to enable the ilnks to be updated all at once, since they change each year. Subst'ing would remove that functionality as far as I am aware. 03:45, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, that's what I figured. I just created Jackson Memorial High School and redid Central Regional High School. —chair lunch dinner™ (talk) 03:54, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subst? 

message: I know that we originally tried to make it so you didn't have to type in the name of the district/school, but now that AndyZ's made it work, I think we should go back to not using it. The past few weeks have shown that it's not that big of a deal to type in the name into the template tag, and I think leaving it blank (to have it filled in by the page's name) is acutally not worth the problems associated with it.
*For the minimum effort involved in copy/pasting or retyping the name
**We ensure the name is correct--if the page name changes (or in the case of schools like Pope John XXIII High School (Sparta, New Jersey) where the page name isn't the name of the school)
**We create consistency--all template links are parallel
**We associate the three numbers (county, district, and school) with what they represent; it allows for links to be moved around, copied to other pages, ... more accurately, since it's not just a random bunch of numbers
*Using PAGENAME as a default creates inconsistency, allows for the chance for names to appear wrong (or for links to be copied to other pages and to say the wrong things), and is not really a great shortcut because it takes nothing to put the name in the template
Therefore, although AndyZ helped out a lot by finding a way to do this, I think that, on second though, this ability is more of a "curse" than a "blessing" (for lack of better words), since the minimal effort involved to insert the name in the template is worth the certainty that template links are accurate and easy to manipulate consistently and correctly. Any opinions? (And I know someone's going to argue "why not leave the optoin available even if you don't use it," but again, consistency...) //MrD9 03:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Optional Name Parameter