Template talk:TOC hidden

This template was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:

Keep, 24 July 2025, see discussion.
No consensus, 26 March 2007, see discussion.
Keep, 22 May 2007, see discussion.

Purpose of this template

This template is for utilization toward getting rid of large areas of empty space as commonly found in larger articles. Here is Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy article before usage of this template and here it is afterwards. Obviously a major improvement in terms of negating "dead lead space". This template is in need of documentation. I am planning on adding it shortly and it will be along the lines of Template:TOCleft/doc. (→Netscott) 08:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Code used

I suspect that the code used to make this template could do for additional finessing. Anyone with a bit of coding experience want to see if they can touch it up? Please do... it would be a pleasure to see this improve. :-) (→Netscott) 09:19, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Something isn't right. When the "[show]" link is clicked, under the word "Contents" a second "[hide]" link appears, which doesn't do anything and messes up the table. This won't do at all. I'm also not entirely convinced as to the need for this template at all. The solution to having two many sections in an article is to restructure the article, not try to hide the fact – Qxz 01:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we're working on improving on it quite a bit. I've already heard from a few supportive folks who are quite pleased to see this type of a template come into existence. One female editor was saying that it was an improvement for accessibility for vision impaired folks as the blank space frequently found in article leads is an impediment. (→Netscott) 01:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you've noticed...

... clicking around the area of the [show] button takes you to Image:TOCspacer.gif. It happens when the mouse-pointer is just close enough, but not exactly on top of the [show] button for it to get underlined (as in this way [show]). Can this be fixed? --Bluerain ^talk 07:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bluerain, thanks for the heads up. I've fixed this. Cheers. (→Netscott) 07:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bad idea

This is a really bad idea. Wikipedia already remembers if you have opened or closed the Table of Contents, and if one wants to have pages default to closed then they can modify their .js and .css files for the skin they have chosen so that it defaults to close for them and not for everybody. Additionally seeing Table of Contents on the top line and then contents on the second line and a box within a box is just ugly. See Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts, Wikipedia:Monobook to get started on editing your own script and cascading style sheets. --Trödel 20:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree this template is not a good idea, even for long articles. The TOC is one of the most important items on a page. We have to think from a new user's point of view. THEY want to see that TOC and see the important topics and shortcuts in a glance. I didnt know of this TOC template until I went to an article and I was looking for the TOC. Then I found out its hidden. The Usage of this template should say, please use this very carefully, if its really necessary. The TOC is there for a reason. --Matt57 22:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this template is a fine idea, though it may not be appropriate for a typical article. For some articles, a ToC is really just visual clutter, providing very little utility. The ToC is not removed or made inaccessible by the use of this template; it is merely collapsed so that it is not in the way.

That said, I do suggest that TOCright is often more appropriate than TOC hidden. —SlamDiego_←T 05:55, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bugreport

This template contains bugs:

It causes images to be misplaced (e.g. compare [1] with the TOC in it's expanded state with [2]).
The font size of the TOC, when expanded, seems to be reduced.
The show/hide button is misplaced (see image; might be due to the fact that I did not design the collapsible table script with this kind of usage in mind.)
The caption of the TOC in de collapsed state doesn't match the caption of TOCs which aren't generated by this template.
The caption and border are doubled when the TOC is in it's expanded state.

Could the developer please fix this ASAP. —Ruud 17:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ruud, thank you very much for your report. So, #1 is going to have to be determined on a case by case basis. Article formatting isn't out of the question. I've addessed #2 and #3, on #4 are you referring to the word Contents? On #5 I believe I've greatly reduced this. Could you provide another screen capture shot on your setup because your browser's not rendering the code like mine is. Thanks. (→Netscott) 23:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Other ideas to deal with white space

Make the font of TOC smaller, AND
Provide options to align left or right, while floating.

Thats really it. This is better than hiding the TOC. Always remember: any certain article is most of all made for NEW visitors to Wikipedia, who have not read the article before and they will always want to see the shortcuts and topics the TOC provides. --Matt57 23:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Matt57, you're failing to mention that the TOC is still there... you're just not used to the hidden aspect... visitors aren't stupid they can read ya' know? (→Netscott) 23:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a new user and I went to a page and was wondering where the TOC went. Now imagine the new users. The tiny "Show" isnt exactly visible. --Matt57 00:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Matt57, you're used to the "traditional" setup... so it is normal that it'll take you a bit to become accustomed to it. Now you'll never have a problem recognizing a TOChidden in the future should you come upon one. You can't miss 'em they are always right under the lead section of article text. (→Netscott) 00:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, the TOC is an important part of an article and should not be hidden by default. I see many of the links to the TOChidden were put in by yourself. --Matt57 00:59, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh? Here User:SlimVirgin used it on the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals article with the edit summary, "toc hidden because it's so long". Here User:Armedblowfish used it with the edit summary, "I really would like a Table of Contents to aid in section linking. How about {{TOChidden}} as a compromise?" because another editor was using __NOTOC__ thereby preventing the TOC from showing. Here User:ThePromenader reinstated to the Paris article. Here User:Sefringle used it on the Ibn Khaldun article. Here are several other users employing it: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and there are 10-15 more where that came from. Fact is that where TOChidden has been put in place it has been kept about 80-90% of the time. (→Netscott) 01:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I oppose that template in some of the articles. The should should be very limited and used very carefully. I've made my points. This template although looks great to you, is not a great feature for new WP users. Thats what WP is for. --Matt57 01:36, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll give a simple example: Suppose you searched WP for something you didnt know about. Would you rather not see the TOC on that article? Answer in only yes or no. A TOC gives you a glance at what the article is about and the topics it covers.--Matt57 01:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here User:Itaqallah used it, here User:DavidYork71 used it, shall I continue? (→Netscott) 01:05, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for those links, David. The way ItaqAllah used TOChidden in Islam and slavery amounts to censorship. In this case, it is as somoene would want people to read as less of a material as possible. Those are great shortcuts. We dont want them to be hidden. It destroys the navigation of the article. --Matt57 01:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You have zero clue what you are talking about. DavidYork71 was the first and he used it elsewhere too. (→Netscott) 01:48, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In any case, my original argument has been the above where I asked you to respond to the yes/no question.--Matt57 02:32, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am beginning to think that it is utterly pointless to discuss with you this topic when you do not acknowledge your utterly incorrect non-AGF statement about "censorship". (→Netscott) 07:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could you just be rational and respond to the simple yes/no question I asked above which has nothing to do with my acknowledging anything for this specific issue? By the way, the TOC already has a "Hide" link, so I really dont know why its good to make it hidden by default. This is bad design. People should hide the TOC in articles only THEY use mostly, e.g. maybe on their user pages. If you look at the template from a new comer's point of view, they would always want to see the TOC. --Matt57 11:46, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea!

(if 'Show' is prominent enough)

I got to this page by searching for what I assumed would be a tiny Wiki code that would switch the TOC default to hide. In my case this wasn't for Wikipedia, but for a corporate site using the Wiki software—and I don't have access to the CSS or JS. The work-around is to manually insert non-wiki headings. Then, of course, the user doesn't get the option of a TOC, but for the material I'm working with, that's far better than a vertical TOC pushing the content off the screen. Imagine you go to a site with pull-down menus accross the top, and all the menus default to being pulled down. That's the cluttered visual feel the TOC can give. (After all, on a web page the TOC effectively is a menu.)

I think it should be a switch like <wikitoc-default hide/> at the top of the screen. If users don't get that they can show the TOC by clicking on it, that's a visual usability design problem, not a function design problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.20.98.115 (talk) 16:49, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated disabling for main article space = counter to discussion

Editor Thumperward keeps disabling this template for main article space usage. Per the last deletion discussion for this template this is 100% counter to what editors have discussed and come to a consensus to. This template was designed to be used anywhere it has been deemed useful by the editors needing such functionality. 79.81.5.185 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:30, 14 March 2013‎

No, the result was just keep, not keep and allow in mainspace. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:37, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, read what people said in the discussion. People specifically address using this tool in mainspace. Kindly refrain from reverting. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 02:38, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Denying its use everywhere because it can sometimes be misused is grossly inappropriate. The use of the template can be discussed, mediated, or arbitrated where it is controversial. Does anyone have a legitimate beef with its use on a standard user page or user-talk page? —SlamDiego 11:00, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong Keep - one of the most useful templates there is - for userpages, disambig and other circumstances. If we deleted everything that can be abused or even is sometimes abused we'd delete every template and policy. That argument has no merit —The preceding unsigned comment was added by WilyD (talk • contribs) 17:25, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

There were also plenty of Delete !votes. There's absolutely no consensus there that this should be usable in mainspace. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:42, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it's obvious that you (81.64.167.10) are also 81.64.167.161, 85.170.167.60, and 89.159.152.225 (per WHOIS), the only IPs to ever try to re-enable that on this template. You're the one against consensus. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion points you cited centered on a potential usage for abuse. Where has this tool been abused? Disabling for mainspace usage is unnecessary. Usage of this template in mainspace is as valid as it is anywhere. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 02:46, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Given that both of those examples cited legitimate uses as things other than articles, I'd say they both imply that any use on articles is unwanted. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah but you've neglected to cite other contributions in that discussion:

Keep In any case, the open TOC is being forced upon us as a default! As editors, we should be able to reach consensus to have the TOC hidden as a default for a given article. This template gives us the ability to do so. Of course, if the consensus is otherwise, we can always use the default TOC --Cerejota 00:46, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep - until a better solution is found. I also have reservations with the "TOC hidden" method, but less than with the existing extemely unwieldly, cumbersome and 'imposed by default' TOC template. An optimal solution would be to create a "TOC top-level contents only" - would this be possible? Since we can't tweak the php, it will have to be an "after-apparition" javascript... I'll try to find the time to look into it. In the meantime, the "TOC hidden" template is practical for the overly-long articles it is in and it should stay until we can a) somehow modify the existing TOC to lessen its disruption of long articles or b) find a better TOC solution than the abovementioned template. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 07:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

What you are doing is called cherry picking though you have cited 'keep' arguments. There is no reason to block usage of this template in mainspace. It is a practical tool when the need arises. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 02:52, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The two you selected were "cherry-picked" just as much as mine were. Anyway, the focus of the discussion wasn't that it should be allowed in mainspace, and the closer didn't indicate that it should be allowed in mainspace, so I don't see at all how you see consensus that it should be allowed in mainspace. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:54, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, look at some of the pages that use it: Great Basin Brewing Company: only 8 entries. Michael John Hurdzan: only 15 entries. Steven D. Waldman: only 6 entries. There's virtually no legitimate use for this in mainspace (in fact, since monitors today are so much larger than they were in 2007, I don't see much of a point to this at all anymore). Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:54, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What you are writing here was actually covered in the deletion discussion. The conclusion was that just like other aspects of editing given articles such usages would be dealt with on the corresponding article's talk pages. Again, it is not necessary to disable this template in mainspace. It just is not. 02:56, 4 April 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.64.167.10 (talk)

Where, specifically, was it indicated that there was consensus that it should be allowed in mainspace in the deletion discussion? There were arguments both ways, and neither side had a clear majority. The only consensus was not to delete. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:58, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, have you actually read what the purpose of the creations of this template was about? Disabling mainspace usage is actually directly killing the original purpose of this template's creation (which is thereby defacto deleting it to a large degree). Unnecessary. The consensus was keep in the deletion discussion and the arguments in support of its universal usage factored significantly there. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 03:04, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That may have been its purpose of creation, but it's obviously no longer its purpose. Look at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:TOC hidden. It has about 163 transclusions total, and only 15 from article space, and almost all, if not all, of those articles have short ToC's and shouldn't be using it at all. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:06, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gee one wonders why? Because editors have unecessarily disabled its usage in mainspace whereby discovery of the potential usefulness of this tool has been limited. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 03:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That argument would hold water if all of its current mainspace uses were appropriate, but most of them are not, indicating that if it were widely used, many of its uses would still be inappropriate. With monitors as big as they are today, an article with 50 ToC entries isn't that bad. What's bad are the project and user pages with hundreds of entries. That's where this template belongs today. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:10, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your view is too simple. You're finding 'inappropriate' usages that just so happen to fallen on little trafficked articles, essentially articles that have been hardly maintained. The reason for this is that at one point prior to the unnecessary disabling of usage in mainspace this template was more widely used including on significantly more trafficked articles. Once mainspace usage was disabled editors on those 'main' articles just removed the template rather than pursue the reason that it became disabled. I'm going to leave this discussion for today but I will make one final point. The fact that this template has been adopted crosswiki in 16 other projects should tell us something namely that people want to have a tool like this to be able to use as necessary. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 03:15, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My point is a high proportion of the articles it is used on is inappropriate. If it were used on 1500 articles instead of 15, that would still be true. Anyway, I'll start an RfC on the matter. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:17, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you feel that this issue is worth pursuing further than yes, an RfC sounds like a very sensible idea. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 03:19, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Should Template:TOC hidden work in mainspace?

The consensus of this RFC is to prevent the use of {{TOC hidden}} in the mainspace. The main arguments for its prevention centered around the fact that there are multiple other, often better, ways of handling TOC issues. The sole allow argument was based solely on cherry-picked comments that were made in a seven-year-old deletion discussion, with no actual relevance to whether or not the template is currently necessary or usable. Cheers, TLSuda (talk) 18:23, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should Template:TOC hidden contain a check to prevent it from working in mainspace, or should it work normally in mainspace? In its history, it has switched between allowing and preventing in mainspace several times.

Allow in mainspace

Support The last deletion discussion about this template had quite a number of editors express the universal usefulness of this template in the keep arguments. Nothing has changed, long articles with long TOCs are long. Editors should have an option like Template:TOC_hidden as a tool at their disposal to turn to should a need for it be recognized. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 03:23, 4 April 2014 (UTC) Addendum: Relative to the original stated purpose of this template, disabling its usage in mainspace will be a de facto deletion of a significant portion of the template which again is counter to the deletion discussion. 81.64.167.10 (talk) 03:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Prevent in mainspace

Support Most uses of it in mainspace now are inappropriate, and it looks different enough that it may cause confusion, and it causes the contents header to be displayed twice. Also, since monitors are so big these days, there's little advantage to it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:20, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support, agree that this should be generally discouraged. better to limit the TOC if it is too long, or float it, or make it horizontal. Frietjes (talk) 16:18, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RFCs are not polls

Not every random dispute needs an RFC anyway. Regardless, this plainly isn't necessary these days: of its fifteen articlespace transclusions, most are plainly inappropriate and the rest have better workarounds than this inaccessible JS-only hack. I've no idea why this random IP is invoking a TfD from seven years ago as some sort of permanent consensus, especially as iot doesn't actually seem to have any arguments in favour of the template other than "it's generically useful in theoretical cases". But I suppose that now we've set aside an entire month for this debate, it gives me the impetus to clean up the various neglected messes that this is still presently trancluded on. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:24, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.