Tables ought to made as simple and unobtrusive as possible. I hope someone finds an easy way to do this; or, at least, the easiest conceivable way. I guess it will always be an "advance" feature for power users.
I like the tables on the U.S. President articles, because it gives a consistent set of links, but the placement of the table could be varied. Also, a consistent set of links could made without a table. Someone (maybe GayCommunist?) has a system of putting a line of links at the beginning of an article, to show its relationship to a large group of similar articles.
Ed Poor
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org