and retarget to Template:More citations needed, respectively (i.e., both will point to Template:More citations needed). Numerically, there was equal support for both this course of action and deleting/deprecating both shortcuts. Clearly there was no appetite for the status quo, and little support for targeting both to Template:Medical citation needed, but beyond that, this was tricky to call consensus on. I could've invoked WP:NCRET, and the outcome would've been the same.
:Fortunately, transclusions have been dealt with during the course of discussion. My thanks to whoever helped make that happen. Notably, there are none in mainspace. --BDD (talk) 18:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
For some odd reason, Template:MCN points to Template:More citations needed, while Template:mcn points to Template:Medical citations needed. These two redirects probably should point to the same spot, given that the only difference between them is capitalization, which is confusing. I've noticed that the all-caps redirect only has less than five transclusions whereas the all-lowercase redirect has several hundred transclusions. Therefore, I propose that the all-uppercase redirect be retargeted to Template:Medical citation needed.
A small amount of cleanup will be needed to insert the appropriate templates where the the all-uppercase redirect is currently being used, though I believe that the extent of work (fixing less than five transclusions) would be so small as to not have a bearing on the decision to retarget the redirect. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:08, 31 October 2021 (UTC)
- Delete and replace both create a new one at {{tl|med cn}} and replace the other with {{tl|more cn}} -- 64.229.90.53 (talk) 21:08, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
{{resize|91%|Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.}}
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jay (talk) 04:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- {{cmt}} I've added the other discussed redirect to the nomination. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 22:30, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
- {{cmt}} Retain Template:MCN for medical use only, and use Template:Additional citation needed (or easier, Template:ACN) in place of the other. - JGabbard (talk) 02:25, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
- Both templates are used a lot. I suggest "MedCN" for "Medical citation needed" and "MCN" for "More citations needed". Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:19, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- {{cmt}} Of note; the "under discussion" notifications added to the templates is causing issues in the articles they are used in. Now to the matter at hand; I agree that both {{tl|mcn}} and {{tl|MCN}} should redirect to the same template. I am of the opinion, however, that they should point to {{tl|More citations needed}}. Although mcn does have a much higher transclusion count than MCN; a bot could be used to change the 443 (at the time of replying) instances of {{tl|mcn}} to {{tl|MEDCN}}. I note the suggestion of using {{tl|ACN}}; but the documentation on that template says its use is intentionally different to more citations needed. Little pob (talk) 13:26, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- Delete Mcn and replace with MEDCN. I'm someone who is much more likely to use the medical version of this template, and even I can agree this is ridiculous. More citations needed is a much more likely usage of this for 99.9% of users. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 12:13, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
{{resize|91%|Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.}}
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Qwerfjkltalk 11:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
- Retarget both to Template:More citations needed, the more generalizable use case. There is no reason to "delete Mcn and replace with MEDCN". If you want a template or redirect called "MEDCN", then just go make it. That has nothing to do with this discussion. There's no such thing as "replacing" one template or redirect with another; the database doesn't work that way. Edit: On re-reading, I think what was meant was to replace extant instances of calls to {{tlx|Mcn}} with calls to {{tlx|MEDCN}}, about which see comment below on why to just use the full template name when doing such cleanup. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:30, 21 November 2021 (UTC); rev'd. 20:49, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
PS: I checked, and {{tlx|MEDCN}} and {{tlx|medcn}} already exist and go to {{tlx|Medical citation needed}} as one would expect. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:14, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
- Retarget both to Template:More citations needed per above. Oshawott 12 ==()== Talk to me! 00:55, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
- Retarget to Template:More citations needed because Mcn is used relatively rarely in comparison to MCN. Before doing that, change all instances of Mcn (fewer than 500) to medcn, then add shortcuts for MCN and Mcn at the documentation to avoid confusion. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 13:21, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
- :{{cmt}} Uh, {{reply|Ftrebien}} you said "Mcn is used relatively rarely in comparison to MCN" but the opposite seems to be true, with Mcn having about 500 invocations and MCN only 5. --R. S. Shaw (talk) 01:16, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
- ::{{re|R. S. Shaw}} Right, MCN really has fewer uses. I mixed it up, I was really comparing it to More citations needed, which is what MCN points to and Mcn originally pointed to. But I still think that the MCN and Mcn shortcuts are best for the most common template More citations needed than for the much rarer Medical citations needed. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 01:32, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
- :It would be better to change the extant instances to {{tlx|Medical citation needed}}, not {{tlx|Medcn}}, since doing the latter will just end up having a bot later change it to {{tnull|Medical citation needed}}. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:46, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
- ::{{re|SMcCandlish}} Why will a bot later change {{tlx|Medcn}}to {{tlx|Medical citation needed}}? Jay (talk) 03:08, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
- :::Because there's a bot that replaces template redirects (e.g. {{tlx|fact}}) with direct links to the real template (e.g. {{tlx|citation needed}}), and we have a long history of replacing obscure template names with plain English ones so in this case {{tlx|Medical citation needed}} will be the real template not the redirect. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:24, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
- I strongly agree with 64.229.90.53 - delete both. MCN/mcn is not so much shorter to be worth causing this many issues. No matter which direction it points in, it's going to be an issue - the acronym is more commonly invoked for the medical one, but the More citations needed template is more common overall. Having it at all is contributing to the absurd impenetrability of wp jargon. What actual benefit is gained by keeping these? (genuinely it would be great if anyone could address this, no one has given a reason) --Xurizuri (talk) 12:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
- Delete both per Xuruzuri ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
- Retarget both to {{tl|more citations needed}} (a target besides here would be surprising to editors). Shorcuts are ambiguous by there very nature, more citations needed is clearly the more prevalent target, and deletion is certainly not a good solution. Moreover—"Mcn" has existed since 2012, while MCN was just created in 2018. Template:MEDCN serves sufficiently for the medical template.`One has ~10 usages, while the other has ~50 (making a comparison of their usage trivial). — Godsy (TALKCONT) 03:46, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
- Deprecate per 64.229.90.53 and Xurizuri. Most participants in this discussion may find one of the two templates as the more plausible, whereas the discrepancy between the transclusions of the two shortcuts suggests that the editors who actually use the shortcuts have mostly favoured the other target. This is a classic situation where regardless of the chosen target, the ambiguity will go on causing confusion further down the line. The suggestion to use {{tl|more cn}} and {{tl|med cn}} instead is an excellent idea, and it appears that most existing uses of the nominated templates have already been converted. We should convert the rest, and do what we normally do in such cases: create a {{tl|template disambiguation}} page that lists the two alternatives and ideally include an error message on transclusion that shows similar information. That way, anybody who's used either of the shortcuts before will be gently guided to the correct option, and so would all the future editors who will think to try those shortcuts (we agreed they were plausible, right?). – Uanfala (talk) 22:59, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
- Retarget :Template:Mcn to :Template:More citations needed, which is the more general template. That way if you guess wrong, it's not problematic. If medical citations are needed, it is true that more citations are needed. The vice versa is not true in the general sense; medical citations are only needed in a medical context. -- Tavix (talk) 00:40, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
- The uses of one of the templates are not a subset of those of the other. In fact, they've got very little in common. Template:Medical citation needed is used to tag an individual statement as requiring a WP:MEDRS-quality source. Template:More citations needed, on the other hand, is a banner sitting at the top of an article pointing out that it needs a larger number of sources. The medical template is used inline and may be employed multiple times in a given article and can end up getting incrementally added and removed to various statements as the article changes – all this justifies the need for a shortcut and probably explains why one was created early on and used widely. The other template is used once per article, typically sits there for a long time, and it's normally placed with the help of NPP tools – this makes for little need for a shortcut and is probably the reason why one wasn't created until recently and once created, wasn't used much. Frankly, of all the options on the table here – deletion, deprecation, status quo, etc. – retargeting to the banner is the least defensible. – Uanfala (talk) 14:19, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
- My apologies if my comment made it sound like one was a subset of the other, it was not what I was saying. It was merely that if someone guesses wrong, it's problematic one way but not the other. The fact that more citations needed is a big banner is another advantage to retargeting there. If someone wants an inline template, and a big banner is placed instead, that's a huge
red orange flag that you've placed the wrong template! -- Tavix (talk) 16:00, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
- Comment on a possible closure. I see consensus to keep MCN targeted to More citations needed, and to retarget Mcn to More citations needed, but need advice on the post-closure actions. How do we get a bot to replace 50(?) usages of Mcn to MEDCN, or as {{u|SMcCandlish}} suggests, to Medical citation needed directly? Or we can do this manually. There are no usages in mainspace. I assume archived talk pages and discussion logs are not to be modified, and that is how we came to a figure of 50 ({{u|Godsy}}?)? Jay (talk) 08:21, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.
