Template talk:Infobox/Thing

Issue with automatically adding categories

To start, I'm not quite sure if this is the correct page to start this discussion since Template:Define describes it as a "long and confusing chain of transclusions."

Regardless, in its present state, this template adds <parameter1> and <parameter3> as categories to the pages that transclude it. The trouble with this is that child templates like Template:Implant then also get added to the previously mentioned categories. For instance, Template:Implant appears as an item in Category:Implant. The reason this is an issue is because Template:List scrapes the entries from category pages to create pages like Implants and Medical Items. As a result, Implants and Medical Items (and probably several more pages) display a malformed entry that really shouldn't be there in the first place.

I would have no idea how to fix this, but I thought it was an issue worth drawing attention to.

Foxbud (talk) 23:34, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting it, but unfortunately its a known issue. There are probably ways to fix either the list or the template to stop it showing up but the Template:Define structure is in the process (slow as it is) of being obsoleted and replaced with infobox main. Define is just an inflexible mess that can't deal with things outside of its structure without massive rewrites. Too many items don't have the simple unitary natures that it expects and its too hard to add everything it needs. As another user said, its "overly clever". Harakoni (talk) 01:49, 29 September 2020 (UTC)