Personally, I'd rather see no further time wasted on templates, and editors time spent removing the need for these templates on as many different articles as possible. It's endless discussions on colours, decisions on changes and time editing these templates that could be much better spent adding references, fixing POV issues, dredging Flickr for free images and what not that has been wasted, in my opinion, on designing new templates.
There's also a defeatist attitude here. There's some sort of bizarre thought that these templates are going to remain on articles for ever, maybe they are, but that's not the attitude we need here. Get them off pages as quickly as possible.
I seem to keep repeating myself over and over again, but instead of tagging a dozen pages, why not fix half a dozen pages. I remind our newer users that references can be really, really quickly created with http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/makeref.php and I heartily recommend this for anybody who would like to help with referencing but can't. I blitzed British Airways a couple of weeks ago and was able to remove all but one of the citation needs tags with five or ten minutes, only one point took little longer to reference. So, don't tag when you can reference, wikify or dePOV-ify something yourself within the amount of time you have available.
</rant>
On 07/10/2007, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Does it not drive anyone else up the wall the incessant templates jammed onto the top of our articles? Sure some of the articles have issues that readers as well as editors should be aware of, but it's really ridiculous having these Vogonic bureaucratic Wiki-speak instructions/jargon stamped before the article text for all and sundry to enjoy. Half the time the templates aren't even warranted, or at the least the issue is not important enough to demand anything other than a note on the talk page. It's far too easy for people just to slap on templates onto articles in a sort of wiki-process-allowed defacement of content.
I mean the trivia section warning for one thing. I consider myself firmly in the anti-trivia camp, and indeed I'd nearly support removing offending sections to talk pages as well when asking people to integrate the brainless factoids; but really, there's no need to give instructions on the situation to all our readers. It's just not that important! Templates in fact compound the problem by highlighting the trivia sections! It makes no sense!
As regards the templates that are somewhat necessary (don't use our second-hand info about hurricanes in your area, etc) can a specific area separate from the article content be used for the message? Something like how the fundraising message is displayed?
Zoney
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l