Today I dealt with three very questionable templates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unencyclopedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Nonnotable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Vanity
(Template:Vanity was OK in its intention, but it was improperly placed on article pages.)
The problem with templates is that it is very easy to create them, and very hard to get rid of them. Virtually all problem templates I've seen have survived being listed on "Templates for deletion" because, usually, there are multiple passionate fans -- the people who have been using the template and who don't want to modify their existing workflows.
This has led to an abundance of pastel colored boxes, as every editor seems to want a template to call their own.
I believe we have to treat new templates in the same way we treat new policy proposals. We can keep them around as proposals, but before we actually *use* them, there has to be a consensus to do so.
That way, we fix the current asymmetry: We make it harder to *adopt* templates; then it doesn't matter so much that it's hard to *delete* them.
In practice, I suggest putting the
{{Proposed template}}
tag on top of dubious templates which do not yet have community support. That effectively locks the template from being used until the discussion page shows that people agree on what to do with it.
Hopefully, this will help to stem the tide of questionable templates.
All best,
Erik