For guitar model pages the speclist template is used to create a specifications table. In november 2009 a new more advanced speclist is introduced: if a parameter isn't used and/or filled out within the template code the new speclist automatically removes the complete item from the table. That means it is not longer necessary to use hyphens if an item can't be filled out.
Still, a lot of pages not edited since november 2009 have speclists with hyphens, usually if a guitar model doesn't have pickguard, mid pickup and/or neck pickup. These can be safely removed now to create a cleaner look.
If you ever come across a hyphen in a guitar model speclist, it is OK to remove them. Also make sure the rest of the article is on par with the Project guide guidelines! A lot of articles are still missing something of a lead section.
To track down pages with speclists with hyphens:
Most pages can be found now using the Pages with speclists with a hyphen category (note: this is a hidden category). It's not necessary (or possible for that matter) to remove a page out of this category manually, it is done automatically by removing the hyphens.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Brambram (talk • contribs)
- Done (for now). I've just finished cleaning up all the hyphens from the articles in the Category:Pages with speclists with a hyphen, which is currently empty. Lets hope it stays that way. \m/ Deejayk (talk) 21:20, April 19, 2016 (UTC)
- Does it still works? I've recently created a page from scratch, the ARZ400T. As you can see the "Made in" spec is missing (on purpose, I expect it to be China, like the other ARZ of the same price range). So I put a hyphen but there is no note at the end of the table to warn us something is missing. And the Category:Pages with speclists with a hyphen also remains empty. Question, is the "hyphen" a simple minus-sign (my mistake if it is not) or is the problem deeper? --KainTGC (talk) 22:02, April 20, 2016 (UTC)
- EDIT: I tried something else: adding |pg=- (hyphen) seems to behave as intended (warning at the bottom of the table). So it does work with some attributes but not all of them. --KainTGC (talk) 00:10, April 21, 2016 (UTC)
- As it's designed the "missing hyphen" thing works only with three attributes: pg (pickguard), puneck (neck pickup) and pumid (middle pickup). There is a certain logic in this in that those are all attributes that a particular model might or might not actually have, i.e. they are truly optional. As far as I can piece together, in the initial implementation of the {{speclist}} template all attributes may have been expected to be filled in with something, and so hyphens were used to denote that a model did not have one of these attributes. In a later iteration, the speclist was presumably updated to simply hide any fields which didn't contain data, so the hyphens were no longer necessary.
- At some point I may consider adding some similar hidden maintenance categories to identify pages that are missing other pieces of information in the speclist (for example, pages where the country of origin is missing), but that will be a project for another day. Deejayk (talk) 15:02, April 21, 2016 (UTC)
- Oh I see, the way I expected the hyphen to behave is not what it was intended years ago (sry for bad grammar). So nothing is wrong here. I agree that adding a feature to distinguish pages with missing fields would be nice, but far from top priority. Thanks again for the explanation. --KainTGC (talk) 19:42, April 21, 2016 (UTC)