On 11/10/05, Phil Boswell phil.boswell@gmail.com wrote:
I've been altering templates, as and when I come across them, so that the template itself is **not** included in the category to which it automagically adds articles.
I've been doing this with a cunning combination of the <includeonly> and <noinclude> tags, which enable me to add in rubric to the template warning people that it adds articles to a category, and which category.
However I've just been reverted (here: http://tinyurl.com/7b7gw ) with the explanation "rv, it's important for these templates to be a member of their category".
First off, I disagree: I think it clutters up the categories pointlessly with **self references** which are evil(TM).
Second, in this particular case, the template doesn't even appear unless you know which letter to click in the {{CategoryTOC}}.
Third, the template is already documented in the category description (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Book_covers ) perfectly adequately.
Whatever, I'm wondering whether there is a policy on this, since these tags are so new, and if so where is it?
Rather than enter into a revert war, I'd rather thrash it out properly first. Phil [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
I agree with you. I have had the same idea myself from time to time, and it is more sloth than doubt that has hindered me from doing this. It is ludicrous to say that these templates should be in the category. That implies something that just isn't true: that the template is licensed in the same way as the category. Yes, the category certainly needs to recognise that it is the table that forces the inclusion of the category, but that can easily be done with a link in the category page to the template. This seems a wholly more appropriate method of sorting this problem; one that doesn't imply something false.
Sam