Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 September 11

September 11

Template:Bernard Nathanson films

Template:Bernard Nathanson films (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

There is no reason for a template with only two films and no possibility of expansion (Nathanson is deceased) to exist. Navigation is taken care of by mentioning each film in the text and/or see-also of the article on the other, particularly since one is a "sequel" to the other. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:44, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

• Keep WP:CLN does not specify a minimum number of links for a nav box, nor does it say anything about expansion. However it does state "Navigation templates are particularly useful for a small, well-defined group of articles." Well, this certainly qualifies under that requirment. Also, the nav box passes all 4 tests. Nav boxes are designed to be complimentary to other nav methods: the best articles utilize multiple nav options. There's no policy rationale for deletion. – Lionel ^(talk) 01:59, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Dictionary of National Biography contributor templates

All 731 templates in the category Category:Dictionary of National Biography contributor templates

Previously nominated at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 June 9#Template:DNB_AA, which was closed on procedural grounds.

1. Many of these templates are used in one place only (the article List of contributors to the Dictionary of National Biography). They should be substituted into that article and subsequently deleted. As stated by R'n'B in the prior TFD, "This would also have the benefit of making the List article editable, which it effectively isn't now."
2. They are not suitable for use in article references, as they contain unneeded verbosity. The initials of the contributor are not necessary to have in each article citing the DNB, as it does not add information that helps a reference checker or interested reader find the given reference - one merely has to look up the DNB at the appropriate entry.
3. Indeed, the DNB citation template, {{Cite DNB}}, does not use, or mandate the use of, these templates.
4. There is currently a problem of ambiguity among the current templates, both in terms of two poeple signing with the same initials ({{DNB JTB}}) and ambiguous wikilinks ({{DNB RA}}). These problems would go away if plain wikilinks were used (although the links to dab pages would still have to be fixed on the list article).
5. A suggestion was made in the previous TFD by Rich Farmbrough: "[If] you want to remove the 'signing as' part feel free." This defeats the purpose of having the templates in the first place - it would be much clearer to use a plain wikilink rather than a template generating such a link.

These templates are not useful and not needed. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:53, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

1. Conversely many are used in more than one place, and that usage is increasing. The list of contributors is editable, maybe there are specific changes which would be non-trivial, however the present scheme provides data integrity.
2. "Unneeded verbosity", according to you, but interesting detail, helping to understand links between DNB articles, when people are working with a multitude of sources. Besides which the suggestion of mine hat you later dismiss under point 4 deals with that point, if it is anything but supernumery.
3. The precise advantage of the current system is that it allows both JTB to be clearly marked as ambiguous, and hence disambiguated to {{DNB JTB Black}} or {{DNB JTB Brown}}, and disambiguations to authors to be fixed in one place, rather than every reference to every single article they wrote.
4. A plain wikilink would not be a easy to use. It would mean chasing the initials on the DNB to the author name then finding the equivalent Wikipedia article and checking it is about the same person, then copying the article name, going back to the place you were coming from and making a link there with the necessary pipe tricks . No one is obliged to use the simpler method but it should be available.

Further there is no value in deleting these templates. They make life easier, for me at least, and deleting them does not do any good. There's no problem with name-space pollution, no disc space issues, no rendering time issues. I find it unfortunate that there seems to have been a "what can we delete" movement over the last six months or so, that does not seem to be based on any actually useful principles. Rich Farmbrough, 21:39, 3 September 2011 (UTC).

The "value in deleting these templates" would seem to be that every time an editor invents a new citation system it makes it more difficult for new users to add content. It's not obvious to me why simple text-substitution templates like these aren't being substituted. If they were substituted as a matter of course that would seem to help considerably here. Before that happened it would of course be worth addressing whether or not to strip off the "signing as" per the previous discussion. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 08:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see it makes anything harder for anyone. They can use cite book, cite web, cite DNB, plaintext, whatever they wish. If they are doing a lot of DNB work they might find this system saves them a lot of time. Rich Farmbrough, 00:38, 5 September 2011 (UTC).

• Delete. 700+ templates used by one editor for his convenience in script-generated poor quality articles. Take e.g. John Dunstall, created early today. No effort has been put in this article, making it rather poor. Just take a look at the linked terms: the majority of them point to disambiguation pages instead of the correct one (Charles I, William III, John Carter, Hollar, ...) or to completely unrelated articles (Samuel Clarke, Custom House). The same happens on all these articles, it is not a one-off: Jeffrey Dunstan even links to Jeffrey. That article only has one category, the blatantly incorrect "Category:Living people" (the same is true for John Dunstall and Joannes Scotus Duns by the way). Other articles only have the cateories for year of birth and death, not for profession or other reason of notability, making them nearly impossible to find through categorization. The poor level and lack of effort put into these articles makes them rather useless, and these templates are one of the symptoms of this "let's bot-generate articles" approach which doesn't improve Wikipedia (quantity of articles isn't the only thing that counts). Fram (talk) 08:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The quality of the articles in which this template is used has nothing to do with whether the template itself should be kept. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

They are both symptoms of the script-based creation of these articles, which should instead be created manually, to improve and check the quality. This user uses templates to facilitate his article creation script. Anything that can be done to stop him creating these articles in this fashion is welcome. It is not as if these templates are used by other people. 08:25, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

The article Fram mentions (John Dunstall) is a good example of how the templates add superfluous information to the citation templates, as I mentioned in point 2 above. A plain wikilink suffices. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:46, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:33, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

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