Template talk:Cbb link

#ifexist limit

According to this announcement, #ifexist calls will be limited to 100 per page by 12-9-07. This template currently makes 5 calls to that function, thus the {{cbb link}} template won't work for any schedules with more than 20 games, which is a shame because this template is so useful. The template is using the parser function to look for articles with the following name:

(year) (team) (sex) basketball team - 2007-08 Virginia Tech Hokies men's basketball team
(team) (sex) basketball - Virginia Tech Hokies men's basketball
(team) basketball - Virginia Tech Hokies basketball
(team) - Virginia Tech Hokies
(school) athletics - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University athletics ...and if none of these exist, it uses:
(school) - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

I propose that cases #3 and #5 be eliminated. I believe #3 is checked in case men's and women's teams are combined on a single page (or if it's simply a men's page that hasn't been named according to our implied convention - WP:WPCBB is really unclear). These pages should be separated by sex, and renamed accordingly. I'm not aware of any pages named like #5, and think the link will work just as well going directly to the (school) page if none of the others exist. If we reduce the #ifexist calls to 3 per {{cbb link}}, that will accomodate 33 uses per page, which should cover most team schedules. Thoughts?

In addition, I think we should state in this template's documentation that once a season article exists (case #1), a direct link should be used rather than a transcluded {{cbb link}}. Hoof Hearted (talk) 14:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes ... that's reasonable. I think we should take it one step further, though, and have a separate template that doesn't even include the year. The "so what" of that is that a random minor conference team like Murray State or someone will never have a season page. So that would drop it to two uses of the template to link to them. Really, Schoolname mascots ought to always redirect to Schoolname#Athletics so in an ideal world, we could do it with just one #ifexists. --B (talk) 15:43, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That adds another layer of complexity to our situation, but I agree it's a viable option. I'd rather determine if it's necessary before building a second template (i.e., will my proposal take care of all the problem articles with one template). I just split my rankings page into men's and women's versions, but there are still too many ifexist calls — and they would all be "major" conferences. By the end of the season, each individual Poll could have more than 33 uses of {{cbb link}}, so I may be stuck. :-( Hoof Hearted (talk) 17:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I still think subst:'ing the template where the usage results in #1 usage, which is the ideal usage, is the best. We completely eliminate the need to ever check again once that page exists. MECU≈talk 21:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive uses of cbb link

Every college basketball article that I create gets stuck with this category at the bottom of the page. However, I really don't care for your "cbb link" template and therefore, removed all of them from the article I was creating {2007-08 Missouri Tigers men's basketball team), yet I'm still tagged with this category, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. How do I go about removing this from my page?

Thank you.

--Bjrwiki (talk) 03:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Recode to force use of en dashes

One problem I'm seeing with this template is it forces the user to input the pull hyphenated year (2008–09). Unfortunately, it appears a lot of users are using hyphens to separate the years instead of en dashes as it required per WP:DASH. This template needs to be recoded to take that option away from the user. One way is to mimic the functionality of {{NHL Year}}. It simply asks for the first year and it calculates the next year. So all you enter is 2008 and it will derive the 2009 or 09 and force the use of en dash. Unfortunately, making that change now will break every use of the template currently in place. But it is definitely something that needs to be considered.—NMajdan•talk 13:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've completed the rewrite of this template. The season and gender parameters no longer work. The year parameter was kept for legacy purposes but you no longer need it as well. Also, instead of entering the full season (like, 2009–10), all you have to enter is the first year and the template will calculate the ending year. The new template actually only now looks at the first four characters in the year/1 parameter. I also cleaned up the switch statement a bit. If anyone spots any issues, please let me know.—NMajdan•talk 20:03, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Due to a server limit of 500 "expensive parser function" calls (e.g. #ifexist:, PAGESIZE:, and PAGESINCATEGORY:), this template will only work properly if the page using it has not already exceeded the limit. When the limit is exceeded, the page using this template or module is categorised in Category:Pages with too many expensive parser function calls. (further information)
tag

Regarding the use of the {{expensive}} tag on the documentation, this template uses the ifexist function I think 5 times, so it can only be used 100 times (I also didn't realize the limit had been raised).—NMajdan•talk 23:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]