Talk:Xenon

Why does article text not show up in the edit box?

Why does the text of the article not show up in the edit box? Peter Jackson 09:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Good question, Peter ...and one that has bothered me for some time. The answer is that the little bit of text shown in the main article (and not in the edit page) is somehow generated by the {{Basic elemental info}} template at the top of the edit page...which also creates the "info box" in the main article.

If you want to add or revise the "info box", you need a degree in computer Science to find out how to do so ... and I have never been able to do that. As matters stand now, that template is used for most of the elements. We can add more text to the article but we cannot edit/revise/expand the template-generated stuff.

Look at the "Properties" subpage ... it has a table of info that is also not editable and is also generated by some hidden method. That subpage further contains a hyperlink to http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/54.html which leads to a "Not found" error message. But that hyperlink cannot be deleted or changed because it is also created by some hidden method.

Personally, I think that the {{Basic elemental info}} template on the main article edit box and the hidden method used on the Properties subpage was a cockamamie (screwy) idea ... but I don't know what to do about it. Perhaps you can make more sense of it all than I can. - Milton Beychok 18:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

If there is a problem with the template contents and no technical person to fix it the template could be removed from the article and the details input manually, like with phosphorus (as far as I know). David Finn 19:14, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The information is "hidden" in several subpages. Last year there was a long discussion of this in connection with the Period table. David Yamakuchi defended his approach vehemently while most(?) disagreed. But, of course, this did not change the pages ... --Peter Schmitt 19:48, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I have added the back our original Elem_Infobox template which I have always favored. These cascading information type of templates just seem to lead to troubles. Some data is still missing from the box, feel free to add in the missing elements. David E. Volk 20:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

(Unindent)David, the result of what you did does indeed display the info box in the article's edit page and make it editable. But it resulted in two info boxes on the main article display page. If the {{Basic elemental info}} in the edit box is deleted (which you did not delete), then the article's display page has only one info box. However, the display page no longer has what little actual text was there (since that is also removed when the template is deleted.)

The only really good method is to provide a blank, tabular info box made available by using a template and let each author fill it in to the best of their abilities. This attempt to automate things using a single data base hidden somewhere just is not workable. - Milt