Template talk:tea room

Substing for the "required" parameters
It seems trivially easy to use subst to record the month and year for new uses of the template. Hovering over the link to see whether there was still a discussion on the Tea Room page hardly seems a burden to the removal of the templates, which problem is not terribly serious to begin with. DCDuring TALK 23:32, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It would be trivially easy if this template did not accept more than two (y and m) parameters. It is possible to make t:rft only aware of two parameters though. But I think that's confusing. --Dixtosa (talk) 17:36, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The documentation says nothing of multiple "y" and "m" parameters. Why would a user insert more than one? Why would the operation of the module require two or more variables named "y" or "m"?
 * There are some different use cases that I see:
 * Inserting a TR request (whatever template may be used) into an entry that has a discussion but no template. (nearly 90% of recent TR discussion have NO template in the applicable entry. I excluded from my sample of 55 those discussions that are not entry specific.)
 * Inserting month and year into existing and  uses in entries.
 * Starting new TR discussions using a TR template.
 * Removing TR request templates from the entry after the discussion is deemed complete.
 * Item 4 could be done periodically, even manually, for example, when a month of discussions was closed out. The "cost" of having a few templates without a discussion would probably not be high. Manual removal might be just the thing to determine whether changes discussed and agreed to (or not disagreed with) have actually been implemented.
 * You, possibly with others, have already done 2.
 * I don't know whether you have any plans with regards to 1, but it certainly would make it easier to go back and forth between a page and its discussion if there were a template and the appropriate target section on the discussion page.
 * Item 3 seems like it should be easier so the template gets used more often.
 * I hope that the automation contemplated is not so grandiose so that it renders the operation comprehensible only to a few. I further hope that some attention is paid to actually making the discussion process more effective, rather than just making closing the discussions more efficient. DCDuring TALK 20:37, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I meant this template takes parameters other than y and m, which makes substing difficult because if, say, the first unnamed parameter isn't present substing it will produce . But this is definitely not the end of story and I am trying to make it work.
 * As for use cases: 2. rft-sense is yet to be done. 3. this template already has a link to the new section creation form (the plus sign (+)). 4. User:Pengo has been working on a module that can automatically place old tea room entries in a specific category. --Dixtosa (talk) 19:08, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The communication makes it much easier for me to appreciate the effort involved. Good luck. DCDuring TALK 19:52, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Documentation structure
Why don't the required parameters appear first by default? DCDuring TALK 23:39, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * TemplateData does not yet support sorting by default. --Dixtosa (talk) 17:36, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Incomplete documentation
Why isn't the required or permitted format for month? DCDuring TALK 23:39, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * User:DCDuring, Yeah, that's doable. --Dixtosa (talk) 17:36, 7 April 2016 (UTC)