Wikipedia:Templates for discussion

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Listings

Adding a listing

Please put new listings under today's date (November 2) at the top of the section.
When listing a template here, don't forget to add {{tfd|TemplateName}} to the template or its talk page, and to give notice of its proposed deletion at relevant talk pages.

September 27

Template: Daily Show

Delete: As big, bad and gaudy as this template is, just imagine what this would do to articles about people who have been on multiple shows, if every show had a template like this one. Does nothing that a category and a list in the ahow's article wouldn't do better. Caerwine 17:16, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. Links in the article text where more can be said about the roles each of these people have played and links back from each of those articles to the article on the show are the best way to go, possibly supplemented by a category. DES ^(talk) 17:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I trimmed it down some, so it's not so unruly. It's not so bad. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- It's still atrocious, just not as atrocious, but it still doesn't accomplish anything that a category and a list in the show's article wouldn't do better. This type of template is marginally acceptable where the topic of the navbox is such that it would be the only one that would logically go at the bottom of each of the articles it referenced. However, that definitely is not the case here. Caerwine 20:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:To do (stable)

Delete: {{To do (stable)}} is redundant now that {{To do}} works properly; orphaned. —Phil | Talk 07:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete redundant Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 07:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:48, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 26

Template:Articleballot

Delete: Same functionality as {{afd3}}. --AllyUnion (talk) 15:38, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Not needed, created under misunderstanding of the AfD log page and transclusion. android79 15:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, unused relative of {{af3}}. Titoxd 05:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:52, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. In addition to above, the use of "ballot" in the title starts to again imply that we're voting. Rossami (talk) 21:53, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Citation style

Delete: There doesn't need to be a template for every incremental improvement an editor could make to the article. There are plenty of well researched, carefully written articles with references not in the Wikipedia style. Why should good articles start with an unsightly template? (I wasn't even aware there was a Wikipedia style, and I've been editing and carefully referencing articles for many months!) Joke137 15:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

delete There is a wikipedia policy to cite sources. there is no current wikipedia standard on what format to use in doing so, so this template is indiacting an alleged problem with no clear guidance for solution -- indeed it could be sued wheree editors simply disagree on prefereed styles. Wikipedia:Footnote3 is becoming more common, but cannot yet be called a standard or a guideline, IMO, and there must be a dozen differnt styles of citation in common use on wikipedia. as long as the info is clearly available, the policy is fulfilled. if it isn't, then a more specific note on the talk page would be better than this, IMO. DES ^(talk) 15:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
No vote: I have made the wording less obnoxious. There is no Wikipedia style: The citation page linked to says there is no consensus; the footnote page is tagged as a guideline. But some people have to prescribe a law for all Wikipedia <sigh>. The pages seem to be sensible suggestions; this template may be useful in telling editors that these methods do exist. Septentrionalis 15:26, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I agree with nominator. ~⌈Mar ka ci⌋ 2005-09-26 T 18:36:17 Z
Delete: The function of this should be handled with a talk page comment. We should be highlighting articles that need references, not picking at them for which style they have. Wikipedia has no single style, and I hope it never does. Every article must be verifiable and should be verified (cited), but styles are national, discipline, and cultural preferences. Geogre 11:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:VfD nomination

Not used, first and last edit in August 2004. {{Afd2}} or {{Afd3}} are used for this now. Delete. ∞Who ?¿? 09:00, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Pop song 1 and Template:Pop song 2

These are very similar to the recently deleted Template:Stillman-Allen-Four Lads, like it this template autogenerates unexpandable song substubs. If all the information that it is possible to add is song name, group name, and year released, simply creating a list would be far more useful. - SimonP 02:14, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. They generate song stubs; whether they are inexpandible depends on the song. I tried three links; two of them were Till I Waltz Again With You and A Bushel and a Peck, which seem quite respectable small articles. Using {subst} with these templates should probably be encouraged. Septentrionalis 05:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Should discourage this rubbish way to create articles. violet/riga (t) 21:29, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 25

Template:ItalyTourismCopyright

Delete, unused and unlikely to be useful in the future. JYolkowski // talk 20:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Db-spam

It is a {[tl|db}} type template - but the reason given is: "''It is [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox|patent advertisement]]'''''". This is not a WP:CSD and so there cannot be any legitimate use for this template. It should be deleted. JesseW, the juggling janitor 19:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

~~Delete~~. There is a popular misconception that "spam" or "it's an ad" is a reason for speedy deletion, and this template will only exacerbate the problem. android79 19:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. People who stretch the speedy criteria piss me off, too, but the most blatant spam - articles which are only an external link - can be speedied under case A3. I've rewritten this template to reference that case directly; perhaps this will help to slow down improper speedy tagging (and deleting). —Cryptic (talk) 22:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- The redirect to this template from {{SPAM}} should probably go, though, since it's very different from the existing template at {{spam}}. —Cryptic (talk) 22:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but a template isn't needed. Spam is a speedy criterion. If the "article" is nothing but a link out, or if all it amounts to is that link (e.g. it might be a whole sentence before the link), then it is a speedy delete. Geogre 14:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- External-link-only is a speedy delete. Some spam amounts to much more than that and must be taken to AfD, per the current CSD rules. As much as I'd like to be able to legitimately speedy obvious spam, it can't be done under current policy, and shouldn't be encouraged by such a template. Given the current rewrite, this should be moved to Template:db-a3 following the convention for other like templates listed at CAT:CSD. android79 15:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or move to {{db-a3}} (to which a new {{db-nocontent}} should perhaps redirect. Much spam (in the sense of unwanted articles apparently created primarily for promotional purposes) is not subject to speedy deletion (and a fair amount of it can be converted to an NPOV article about a product or company), and many items that are deletable under CSD A3 are not spam in any reasonable sense, so the name {{db-spam}} is misleading and will tempt people to mis-use this where it deosn't apply. If moved, do NOT' leave a redirect from the current name, for the same reason DES ^(talk) 15:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Move to {{db-nocontent}}, simply because {{db-spam}} is too misleading. Titoxd 05:09, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Directors templates

Recreations of Template:Kubrick (deleted) and Template:Steven Spielberg's films (deleted). These were previously deleted and categorified on this previous Tfd. Speilbergs was recreated against consensus and then speedied. Now they are both back again. The categories act as just as good as navigation system. Also some movies list both directors such as A.I. (film), which would look pretty silly if both templates were used. Propose redeletion, as they have already been categorified. ∞Who ?¿? 14:19, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or shrink to a managable size. Information is easily found on the directors own page. MechBrowman 20:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Convert to {{otherarticles}} and deleteSeptentrionalis 22:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: Sources

Delete: Not sure what this is supposed to be used for, but it doesn't link to anything. Was edited only twice before I placed the TFD tag on it; the last time was in March. Kamezuki 10:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: As it doesn't link to anything, and the intended usage is unclear. LiniShu 02:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think it was for adding references/sources to an article, but it really doesn't make it easier. Delete. ∞Who ?¿? 04:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)q[reply]

Template: Oldvfdfull

Delete: Obsolete template, not even needed for historical reasons due to the fact that all uses of this havee been using substitution so keeping this template leaves no purpose. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 04:54, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the nomination delete. Zach (Sound Off) 04:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep! What?! Have you seen the whatlinkshere? It's only obsolete in the first letter of its name. Much better just to turn it into a redirect to {{oldafdfull}}, surley? -Splash^talk 04:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Splash. Think this is a very useful and used template. Redirects are cheap. ∞Who ?¿? 05:02, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I only realized that after I put this nom up and after Zscout370 had already voted thus making it so I couldn't remove the nomination. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 05:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Used by, many, many pages. No redirects, as this is for the old VfD system, redirects to a newer version would corrupt the links in it. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 08:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Quite obvious, really, both for the reasons above and to comply with the GFDL (history) for the AFD equivalent. violet/riga (t) 09:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I was one user of that template, and never used subst: with it. It's better to keep it (instead of going to every page and subst:ing it) so any future changes on the talk page colored boxes will affect uses of this template. --cesarb 14:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It wasn't just used by substitution, and therefore should be kept. Ral315 W_S 18:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It is still useful and has a place. It has more than just substitution uses, and is valuable for preventing frequently recurring VfD's by pointing out when an article has already been decided to be relevant enough to warrant an article. --Wingsandsword 04:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as current as per Dread Lord above. —Phil | Talk 08:06, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, because the alternative is mind-boggling. No redirects, unless we move the VfD subpages to AfD, which is mind-boggling as well. Titoxd 05:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 24

Template:Past

If a product is no longer produced, this can be stated in the article. There's no need for a {{current}} equivalent here. --fvw * 01:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Agree that if a product has ceased to be produced it should be incorporated into the prose. Evil Monkey∴Hello 01:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per fvw. CDC (talk) 03:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Poster

Delete, too vague to fit in with our future direction on fair use tags, replaced with five other poster tags, now unused. JYolkowski // talk 22:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete other tags are listed for use. ∞Who ?¿? 04:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. No longer necessary, wasn't a good idea originally, encouraged lot of sloppy thinking about copyright. --Fastfission 02:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Virginia Higher Education

Delete: Unwieldy monstrosity with natural representation as categories Fawcett5 15:54, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Before someone gets the bright idea to do the same thing for California institutions of higher learning where the template will be four time as large and four times as ugly. BlankVerse ∅ 08:29, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unnecessary; if any template is needed, use {{otherarticles}} Septentrionalis 19:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but not in its current form. Split three ways along the lines of "Virginia Public Universities", "Virginia Private Colleges and Universities", and "Virginia Community and Technical Colleges". The current all-in-one format is too large and unwieldy. Schuminweb 23:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Not necessary... wouldn't want to see the same thing for New York, Calfornia, Texas, etc. Uris 12:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete naveboxes are generally undesireable, IMO. Only the very best of them are worthwhile, which this isn't. DES ^(talk) 15:27, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: Infobox Canada

Delete: Unused template (Canada seems to have switched to Template:Infobox country). Sortan 15:28, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: Infobox alienaa

Delete: Looks like the creation of someone who misunderstood the point of templates. This "infobox" is hardcoded with info about one particular webgame, and it's not actualy used anywhere. See no point in keeping this. Sherool 02:34, 24 September 2005 (UTC) Delete agree with nom. Image used in template just got killed too - which is yet another reason to delete Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 09:27, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 23

Template: Edmonton Eskimos , Template:Calgary Flames, Template:Toronto Maple Leafs, Template:Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Template:San Jose Sharks, Template:Washington Capitals, Template:New Jersey Devils, Template:Vancouver Canucks, Template:British Columbia Lions, Template:NY Islanders, Template:Ottawa Renegades, Template:NY Rangers and Template:Buffalo Sabres, Template:Toronto_Maple_Leafs

Delete: These templates are mostly not in use (British Columbia Lions and Edmonton Eskimos have one page using them each, all others zero), and are too specific; they would very likely never be used on any other articles than the teams they represent. Ongoing use of current players list across various articles is similar to Buffalo_Sabres#Current_Squad, rather than using these templates. I've listed what templates I've found in this group; there may be other similar ones. --Durin 22:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Subst: anything that's used; delete the rest. JYolkowski // talk 23:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete any similar template associated with a NHL team: Yeah, these templates were a stain on a few NHL team pages (Template:NY Islanders, Template:NY Rangers, Template:New Jersey Devils, and Template:Buffalo Sabres) for a while. They were noted as "todo" at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ice_Hockey/Team_pages_format#The new "Current Squad", but recently an anonoymous user burdened himself with propagating it throughout the NHL and CFL. We seem to have come to a compromise of sorts and these templates no longer needed. ccwaters 23:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, just added those two to the grouping as well. Let's catch them all so we don't have to revisit this if we find any more in the future. --Durin 23:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Looking... it was a busy day... I'll search for NHL templates and add any I find, feel free to look through my contribs that day for more background. ccwaters 23:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think I got all the NHL templates... Thanks ccwaters 00:03, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Subst: and then delete. ∞Who ?¿? 04:58, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Masterhatch 12:32, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Turkey footer

Loosely associated topics and unused template. CG 17:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete ill-conceived. But for context, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countries#Compressing footers. CDC (talk) 18:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Replace with a footer modelled on {{UK ties2}}. - SimonP 15:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Notable Wikipedian

Violates avoid self-reference both by creating an internal link and in mentioning they're wikipedians at all. There are a few wikipedians that should have a link to their user page in their article's external links section (Jimbo springs to mind), but for most people who've edited wikipedia it just isn't that notable a thing about them and shouldn't be in the article at all (like User:Eric S. Raymond). --fvw * 06:37, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Unnecessary self-promotion (of Wikipedia, or maybe also of the person in question). Also, being a Wikipedian isn't what I'd call a noteworthy fact. Furthermore, people worth an encyclopedia entry not necessarily are "noteable wikipedians" in the sense that they'd be outstanding contributors. And even if they are, mentioning it in the encyclopedia entry would be needless promotion again. Lupo 06:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. If you'll refer to the CfD log for Category:Wikipedians with Article (which I found out about just now), the general consensus was against the category but in favor of a template. Admittedly it shouldn't apply to people who just happen to have a username but haven't actually made any substantive contributions; I may have been hasty in slapping it on all the articles. —Keenan Pepper 07:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Reading that discussion, I don't see a consensus for a template, just someone proposing it and someone else going ahead and creating it. Lupo 07:36, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- The discussion there seems to suggest having the template on talk pages, which would be fine (though slightly pointless) to me. --fvw * 08:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is a warning to the reader that the person in question could influence the article about him/her. It's like Wikinews marking the news related to Wikimedia Foundation in a special way. Grue 07:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Assume people have played nicely. If someone has been influencing their article for the worse we can always tag it as such (and stop them from influencing their article for the worse of course). --fvw * 08:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Actually the fact that they openly created a wikipedia account is evidence that they are playing nicely, they could just as easily edit it anonymously or with a different user name. Kappa 09:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion: convert to standard format and apply to the appropriate Talk Page instead...actually if I have time later I'll try that. —Phil | Talk 08:12, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I have done as much as I can before my weekend commences. When I return Monday morning, I shall be interested to see whether all my work has been undone, or someone has completed it. Have a nice one, folks...Phil | Talk 17:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep if used only on talk pages, abstain from use on articles. WP:FAITH exists to promote harmony among editors, not to prevent users from knowing possibly relevant facts. Having said that, I'm not too sure it is relevant. Kappa
Delete. I was surprised to see it appear on the page about me (which I have never edited, despite it not being up to the standard I would like), and don't like the implication that a casual reader may get that I have been editing my own page. I also think that as a Wikipedian I'm not particularly notable, so making it appear as a huge banner across the page is just weird. -dmmaus 10:11, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Iff a notable person is also a Wikipedian of note it might be worth a sentence in the articles "trivia" section, nothing more. We defenently don't need a huge banner template for this. I would't mind a category though, asuming it's only applied to the userpages and not the actual articles, but that's another matter. --Sherool 10:41, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- ~~We've got one of those I think, it's called Wikipedians with articles I think.~~ --fvw* 10:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - We used to have one of those but it was deleted, we now have Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles. --fvw * 10:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. -- Dominus 12:55, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Sherool. ~~ N (t/c) 14:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I like the general idea. If there's any further conflict over the template, though, might I suggest that alterations to the template be discussed? Cjmarsicano 15:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but only apply this template to discussion pages. Its an interesting piece of trivia and most fairweather visitors will never locate this information at Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles. Hall Monitor 16:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per Lupo. --File:Ottawa flag.png Spinboy 16:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I find this very useful. --NDP logo Earl Andrew - talk 16:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Confine to talk pages. I can think of four articles in which the fact that the subject edits Wikipedia is even worthy of mention (Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger, Angela Beesley, Florence Nibart-Devouard). In all these cases that should be dealt with in the article text, not a template. Imagine how this flag would look if the articles were reproduced elsewhere, say in a print edition; would the fact that Chip Berlet, Richard Stallman, and Sheldon Rampton edit Wikipedia seem relevant to the articles? Do such articles mention the subjects' contribution to any other well-known websites? Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. —Charles P. (Mirv) 17:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 18:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages and standardize. I don't think mentioning the fact that they are an editor on the biography is encyclopedic, this is just a side note for talk purposes only. ∞Who ?¿? 19:02, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages. bogdan | ^Talk 19:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages. Seems like a good compromise to me. —Keenan Pepper 22:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep if it eschews the word "notable". I must say, Mirv, I can't imagine how it would look in a print version, on account of Wikipedia's not being paper and all. Having it on a talkpage so that the more interested visitor can see that the article's about a Wikipedian doesn't seem too dangerous but I don't like the notion of "notability"'s being involved, because of the possibility of bickering over who is, who isn't "notable". Grace Note 22:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
But that's exactly the criterion for article-worthiness in the first place, isn't it? If somebody else writes an article about you which is not deleted, then you have de facto notability. —Keenan Pepper 22:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It was a hypothetical situation; if a print edition doesn't work for you, try imagining a WikiReader or DVD, which of course would not include the back-channel Wikipedia: and User: namespaces. (Eric S. Raymond and Richard M. Stallman, in fact, are included in the Free Software and Free Contents WikiReader.) —Charles P. (Mirv) 17:57, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep this is freaking annoying, fine we got rid of the category, ... lets not get rid of this as well. We do need SOME WAY to mark these types of articles. ALKIVAR™ 22:23, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Definetly needed, since there are a fair no. of people who have edited their own pages.
Keep for article's talk pages, but remove "notable". -- User:Docu
Keep, as per Docu. Sarge Baldy 19:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, if it stays in the Talk: namespace, it wouldn't cause any problems at all. Titoxd 05:19, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Why self-referential? Why not Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles? Why have this? --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:07, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 22

Template:Infobox Biography

Delete - This template is a constant source of dispute between Wikipedians. Its inclusion/exclusion on individual biography pages has been argued over several pages including Talk:John Vanbrugh, Talk:Charles Darwin, Talk:Mark Twain, Talk:Douglas Adams and probably a number of others. Over the last year or so at least 8 editors including me have commented on the talk page that they don't like it. I don't think it adds anything useful to most articles, and makes some look positively ugly. Jooler 22:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per nom. The facts in fhis info box are better in article prose, IMO. DES ^(talk) 22:34, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete its only function is to make Wikipedia look more like Boy's Life or HiLites magazines. "If you can't read the birth and death dates, here is a box to tell you what they are." Further, the "infobox" idea (inasmuch as there is an idea behind infoboxes) is that they present either "interesting side lights" or "the most important 'bite' of information." Following that logic would say that all you really need to know about a biography is when the subject was born and died. Heaven help us if that's what people get out of history. Geogre 23:37, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Personally I think it's a pointless eyesore. Ugliness may be in the eye of the beholder, but surely everybody will agree it's causing ugly edit wars—look at this. --Bishonen | talk 23:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think the fact that it 'causes' edit wars is reason to delete. One could apply that logic to any edit war or conflict and say "we should just decide this unilaterally my way, because we have argued about it too much." -Kwh 21:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Useless. Rivarez 00:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Geogre's reasoning. Some infoboxes are useful: countries and elements, for example, have a certain common set of vital facts that are probably better presented in a table than in prose. Biographies don't: birth and death dates work just as well in the first sentence, and the locations for each can be dealt with in the relevant prose; they're not the most important facts about the subject. Get rid of this. —Charles P. (Mirv) 00:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
DeleteUgly. Detracts from the lead. Adds no new information. Giano | talk 06:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I don't really see what's ugly about this, and it seems to reside usefully on many pages without dispute. It's nice to create a consistent style in which key quick facts are presented in a central place. Generally, no compelling reason to delete. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- N.b. there is a consistent place already: the lead. I'm not being sarcastic: it is biographical style to give dates right after the name. Why bust up the text to have a box to reiterate what's there in words 3 and 4? Geogre 10:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm aware of that standard, but at worst, placing the dates in the infobox as well can only help the reader. The infobox also features place of birth and death, which most WP biographies don't include in the lead, so not all the information is redundant in that sense. But more importantly, the "consistent place" at issue here applies not just to biographies but to all articles. The expansion of infoboxes means that it's fairly typical here for key facts and statistics to be presented in a condensed list format in the upper right of the screen. I don't see why we shouldn't have that for people articles as well; indeed for some types of people we do have uncontroversial infoboxes. Perhaps we can take a hint from those and add some more useful fields; one that comes to mind look at the President infobox is a spouse field. The arguments that this infobox is harmful seem weak to me, and I think it is helpful now and will become more helpful over time, so it seems worth keeping. Then again, I don't believe it "busts up the text"; as far as I see it sits harmlessly in the corner, and certainly disrupts the text less than the standard style, which places (sometimes substantial) parentheticals two or three words into the first sentence. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Such would be the argument for redundancy. "It can only help" to repeat and repeat and repeat, too -- to repeat with pictures, with colors, with blinking text, etc. The words are there. They're quire unambiguous. The misinfobox just breaks up the flow of the article, dislodges the hard work of editors who have found portraits and have those beside the lead, etc. The makers of infoboxes should not have the anti-democratic gall to try to dictate to scholars how biographies must look because they happen to have an idle moment and draw up a box with reiterative information. Geogre 13:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - - If the creators of the infobox shouldn't dictate to scholars how biographies should look, why should you? Why can't the editors of the article choose whether or not to use this template? Christopher Parham (talk) 04:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - It's called redundancy, and it's not good. When the lead has the birth and death dates and place, if known, then the box is just a violation of the space of the article to say what is said just beside it. That amounts to redundancy, not digestion or highlighting. "Duplicate material" is a violation of the deletion policy in articles. It should be in the case of templates, too. If there is no gain by the visual information of the big box, then there is no value. In this case, it's just a big way to destroy the pictures and other forms of illustration to put in, instead, an entirely redundant box. Geogre 12:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        In considering this, I looked through the first fifteen articles on what links here for the template. Zero of them included all this information in the lead (though three did not have a traditional lead seciton). It's thus a stretch to say that this template replicates information that appears right beside it. In 6 of the articles, the template included information that was found nowhere at all in the text (Ayn Rand, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Douglas Adams, Dave Brubeck, Erwin Rommel, Friedrich Nietzsche). "Entirely redundant" is thus a mischaracterization. This also suggests that if the template is deleted, it will have to be very carefully removed from each article on which it appears to ensure no loss of information. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        Did it ever occur to you that someone might be bold enough to just move the info from the infoboxes to the text? Holy crap, what a poor argument! Peter ^Isotalo 06:44, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        Did it also occur to Christopher Parham that someone might have removed the information when they installed the infobox, as was done here?
    - IMO we are way overdoing the use of infoboxes, adn i thgink many of them tend to overly make arricl;es into cookie-cutter replicas. This one is IMO a particularly egrigious example. DES ^(talk) 15:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. This is used on some ~400 pages so there does seem to be a considerable population of editors who like/accept it. Also, I am inclined to think that general decisions for how biographies are presented are better decided by improving Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(biographies), than trying to confront the specific widget that people have been using. Dragons flight 08:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Be aware that the box's proponents (creator and editors, I assume) have been industrious in going around to insert it into every article they can find. The fact that 300 articles (generated by a 1911 dump, e.g.) have editors who aren't kicking the box out doesn't mean that there is a reason to keep it. Also, to use your own logic, it would be better to reform the style than to circumvent that by inserting a box to accomplish the same thing. It's the box that is attempting to make all biographies reduce to birth and death. It's less than useless, a typographical monstrosity, and is, on its best day, redundant. If someone thinks that all biographies should state the subject's love of sneakers vs. hard soled shoes, that someone should have to slog it out on the style pages, not create a silly infobox, insert it into every article conceivable, and then have people defend it here; it's the infobox that is attempting a content and style change without discussion. Geogre 10:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because people use it. Grue 09:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Since this template is in active use on just under 400 articles at present, I believe its clear that this infobox has become a clear standard. This infobox not only serves a stylistic purpose (it looks really sharp on printed versions kids may use in school), but can and should be used later as a method of gathering metadata on our biographical articles, much like what the German Wikipedia had the foresight to put into place (description in English). -- Netoholic @ 08:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The fact that people use it is not a sufficient reason for keeping it, just as ugliness is not for deleting. The only real question is, doe it add value? As per Geogre, Bishonen and others above, I cannot honestly see that it does. In fact it may well do the opposite by inviting the casual reader to imagine that by reading the infobox they have read all the facts worth knowing in the biography. Filiocht | The kettle's on 10:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Filiocht and others. Ambi 14:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Absolutely. -- Vít Zvánovec 15:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, birth/death dates may fit nicely into prose in the lead sentence, but places don't. Kappa 15:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Why not? In cs: it is a established practice. -- Vít Zvánovec 15:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Sure they do. "She was born in Fooville, Somestate." DES ^(talk) 15:40, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Some do, most don't. Either way there's no standard place to fit these facts into the lead, let alone into the first couple sentences. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:44, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: this serves several useful purposes. Firstly it serves to provide a standard format for displaying useful information which will apply to all subjects of biographical articles (no more "how am I supposed to include this info in the lede?"). Second, it provides space for a more meaningful introduction to an article: information on when and where someone was born or died is usually less valuable than what they did in between (no more "how do I spatchcock this info into the lede?"). Thirdly, it does actually make the biography articles look more uniform and professional, which is something we ought to consider for those who have to read the damn things. Furthermore, the fact that various editors are unable to restrain themselves from conducting edit wars over such trivia might well say a lot more about them than about this template. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
comment Take a look at Gilbert de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford - this is possibly the worst example of over-use of templated infoboxes I have ever seen. 17:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Now that is really horrible. Who could possible think that improves an article? Perhaps (and just perhaps) on some scientific and mathematical pages these "facts thrust in your face" templates are useful, but on biographies and pages concerning literature and the arts, they are just a distraction that are of no use whatsoever. Giano | talk 17:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I don't see how using this template is any different from other infoboxes with much more information such as {{Infobox Company}}, {{taxobox}} or any of a number of others. It helps present biographical information common to all people in one standard format. slambo 18:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the dates and places of a person's birth and death are basically never the most important information about a person, so shouldn't be highlighted like this. Putting the person's name there is unnecessary too - it's in big letters at the top of the page, where it belongs! CDC (talk) 18:43, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This template provides no new information to the reader. It merely repeats information already present in the article. That information is not even the most important, it's merely the most amenable to being mechanically put in a box. By using a frame and a standard caption, authors have complete flexibility. With this infobox they're stuck in a Playskool straitjacket. I also deplore the way this template is being forced on articles as if it is mandatory that it be used. PRiis 19:27, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Although I don't really like this template, it is used on a large number of articles (see [1]). The decision on whether to use, or not use, the Infobox Biography template is NOT something that should be decided by a TFD vote, but should, instead, be done through a proper survey of the consensus opinion of Wikipedia editors (Wikipedia:Infobox Biography template survey?). BlankVerse ∅ 21:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per BlankVerse. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:08, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - unnecessary duplication of information. The fact that it's used on 400 articles shows that some users favour it, but 400 uses out of however many biographical articles exist, seems to be very small percentage. I agree with User:PRiis that the infobox has far less flexibility than a simple image caption box. It's standardised format often prevents the use of the most appropriate image or more importantly, the most appropriate caption. Rossrs 01:31, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep You guys have nothing better to do? How about offer a better template. Please do not delete this one... again, Wikipedians never cease to amaze me.. FranksValli 04:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The point is: No template at all is required. Giano | talk 09:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and Enhance This infobox would be quite useful if general biographical information other than birth/death dates were available in it. Plus, it provides a nice neat and consistent way to display a picture of the person in question. -- Tyler 07:53, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If that was to be the case, why bother with an article at all - just have one big text box or table. Giano | talk 09:23, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, but do not make standard. This must not be considered mandatory for any article. It should only be used when it enchances the article in some way. I doubt this will be often, but there might be occasions. Nothing in writing articles should be mandatory. [[Sam Korn]] 14:01, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. A bandwidth hogger, when the same info can be put in 2 to 3 words. Pamri • Talk 14:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- You are going to fit April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, 30 April 1945, Berlin Germany into 2 to 3 words? Kappa 15:27, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. All info in this template can easily be found in the text. --Matjlav^(talk) 17:33, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I find it useful. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 19:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This template is a fast and useful source as reference for people looking forward to brief information from someone, instead reading the whole article.HappyApple 19:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There is a danger in summarily deleting these "infoboxes" that important data might be deleted as well. The issue of whether or not an "infobox" looks nice in a specific entry should be done case by case, not as a wholesale deletion. There are some instances in which the infobox looks OK. Even though data can be placed in the article itself, the infobox provides a medium by which the reader of Wikipedia can get concise information along with the picture of the person in question. I vote to keep; however, I do feel that individual instances in which the infobox looks unsightly should be kept or deleted ON A CASE BY CASE EXAMINATION. drboisclair 20:49, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So who decides? Or do we have an edit wars, as this thing causes at present? Giano | talk 21:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Editing wars are inevitable, the price that is paid for the free flow of ideas: editing freedom requires eternal vigilance. Editors are encouraged to consult and respond to discussion pages, which promote consensus and harmony: give a little, take a little. drboisclair 14:36, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I've also watched idly as this gained some ground, but I never really supported it. The factoids from these can and should be integrated into article text, and they mean very little as such. The quotation thingy is mildly amusing, but irrelevant. --Joy [shallot] 22:45, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I also need to comment on the number 400 - that's simply peanuts. When we started demolishing the people stubs category, it included almost 16,000 articles. Even if we round it very generously, this template is probably used on less than one percent of the articles it's meant to be relevant for, so wide acceptance really cannot be a criterion for keeping it. --Joy [shallot] 22:51, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
comment - it looks like despite the fact the the majority of people dislike and even detest this box the number of people voting keep here means that it is not going to get deleted. That can't be right can it. Really we should have voted on its inclusion in the first place. Jooler 23:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. If people want to use it in a bio, let them. Shanes 00:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for the reasons stated by Phil, Christopher Parham, Slambo, et al. Wikipedia mentality must advance more beyond a paper analog than just hyperlinks. The goal is to convey information in an understandable manner. Infoboxes (which many of those who oppose this one seem to oppose in general) are a professional way to abstract information buried within the article and to summarize and standardize the presentation of FAQ about that person. Substitute geography for biography and see if the purge argument makes sense: One can describe the location of Winfield, Illinois in words (it is at the Very Center of the Universe) but a map (so one can see it in relation to our eastern suburb, Chicago) helps quick understanding. Yes the GPS coordinates are somewhere in the text, but a map would give it quickly and concisely. So does a biographical infobox. I use the Wikipedia many times just to get a quick birthdate or deathdate. The dates should be in the lead, but sometimes are not. An infobox gives a form-to-fill-in that will help make articles comprehensive. I think this type of infobox should not only be kept, but enhanced to include burial places, spouses, etc. Will those who want to purge this infobox next want to remove the tables of descendants that appear near the bottom of many bio articles? By adding the biobox as a standard, instead of trying to purge it via this TfD process, we can take care of those editors who use their prejudices for sola logis to vandalize(!) articles containing a biobox. The template itself can be protected against them. Please don't dumb-down bios by removing helpful aids. --StanZegel 05:33, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All right, this is just irking me too much to avoid responding... you say that it abstracts information buried within the article - no, it does not, because dates and places of birth are noted at the top and at the end of biographies, and quotations are in the quotes subsection whose placement is obvious from the table of contents. This is not buried, unless someone actually can't read. WordNet defines an abstract as a "sketchy summary of of the main points of an argument or theory". Surely someone's date and place of birth and death are not their main points?! You also said that it's the presentation of FAQ about that person - how are the dates and places of birth and death, let alone quotations, so frequently asked questions about people? Do semi-random places and dates really matter that much to a lot of people that they just absolutely need to have it all in one place and avoid reading the actual article? "I've no idea who John Doe is, but I must know where and when he was born in a gray box next to that silly biography of his!!" --Joy [shallot] 19:17, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Biographical infoboxes that contain images of paintings and photographs contain helpful information on the paintings and photographs themselves. Infoboxes make use of the diversity of web format as opposed to text only. There is a need for more diversity in presenting information not less. drboisclair 14:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, cool, I get to copy&paste a sentence I already used here. One does not need a separate template in order to include a right-aligned picture of a person in a biography. Read Wikipedia:Images for help on doing that. --Joy [shallot] 17:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep- it contains information that cannot be obtained at a "glance" otherwise, especially in large articles such as Mahatma Gandhi. The danger of it being deleted is that some of the articles (most probably stubs) may not have that info elsewhere. Again, as I understand it, the infobox is not a standard requirement. So, if some people do feel that the infobox is redundant in a particular article let them thrash it out on that article's talkpage. People entering edit wars on the info box issue in some articles should not be reason enough for template deletion. And people would enter edit wars only if they feel strongly about something - this does not apply to the infobox on lots of articles. ---Gurubrahma 05:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Ugly and unnecessary for biographies, and will likely continue to be the object of edit wars. Tupsharru 06:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, Improve, and Make Standard- About 380 articles show that it does have value. If it's ugly, make it pretty. The info given is very useful in immediately informing the reader of the subject's era and geographical location, which can aid the reader's understanding in reading by thinking about contemporary people and events. I think this sort of "contextual prompting" is something WP ought to do more of, not less. And let me say that I'm a little dumbfounded by the amount of rancor being exuded in some of these Delete votes ("make[s] Wikipedia look more like Boy's Life or HiLites magazines", "stuck in a Playskool straitjacket", "less than useless, a typographical monstrosity", "A bandwidth hogger"). I think it's a laudable thing if Wikipedia were to make itself readable and usable to the "Boy's Life" or even the "Playskool" set, even if these elitists don't agree. -Kwh 06:54, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, its not ugly, it looks good and summarises everything clearly. - Aaron Hill 12:49, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Vaoverland 12:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The result of deletion will be that biographies will use normal tools to put an image up rather than a template, and so will be encouraged to shape the article, images and so on to fit the needs of the subject rather than shoehorning it all into potentially irrelevant templates. — ciphergoth 16:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It's a useful tool and makes for some consistency on biography pages (a better solution than having editors create their own version on a page-by-page basis. I wouldn't object to seeing some sort of enhancement (color, additional ainfo...).--Lordkinbote 17:18, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. What has it ever done to anyone? Why not have a portrait with a biography? Isn't that standard? Portraits HELP, especially in the case of multiple people with similar names, so readers know which person's file they're viewing. Plus, portraits give us glimpses of someone's personality. MERR 14:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah, that's all fine and well, but one does not need a separate template in order to include a right-aligned picture of a person in a biography. Read Wikipedia:Images for help on doing that. --Joy [shallot] 19:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I think it generally looks a lot better than a simple thumbnail, and it's an easy reference for birth/death information. Sarge Baldy 19:23, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Huh? Keeping a template just so people can see birth and deaths next to each other at the top of the article? Completely useless. / Peter ^Isotalo 20:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This should be used or not used on an article-by-article basis. Consensus not to use it will be demonstrated by its not being used. In the meantime, Wikipedia is inconsistent. Septentrionalis 19:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unneeded, pretty much pointless. Private Butcher 19:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Biographies do not need infoboxes. All info in them can be summarized in the article (all of it does not have to go in the first paragraph of the lead). / Peter ^Isotalo 20:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Absolutely useless, all the information is located in template is usually found within the intro paragraph. Articles without template looks alot nicer and is the perfect example of overuse of templates. MechBrowman 20:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, it is in used in may pages but could be improved. Andreww 21:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete pretty ugly and doesn't and it doesn't add useful information -- the date of birth and death of someone are not often the most important facts, imo, and they're always contained in the article anyway chowells 21:26, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
keep. Improve as necessary, but no reason for deletion. --Irpen 02:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. If you look up a name in a paper encyclopedia, what's listed first? The person's name, dates of birth & death, quick description of why he's important, and a picture. A two-second source of this info can't hurt. --zenohockey 03:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- CommentThat information is found is almost always found in the first scentence of all articles, which is why the template is useless, what people say this template is useful for is already there. MechBrowman 00:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Adds nothing but redundant clutter. Nuke this eyesore. Fawcett5 03:47, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Anyone else notice that the people who are voting "delete" are the people who write biographies, and the people who are voting "keep" are, largely (not universally), not? Imagine taking a month to make a FA of a biography, worrying over every element of the look and readability of the thing, making sure information is presented logically and clearly, getting it voted an FA, and then having someone add his kazoo part to the symphony so he can "improve" the article with a box that dislodges the photos, oversizes the text, reduces the whole to "two second information" and rips up the format of the whole article. When the "keep" voters make some carefully constructed articles, I hope they are just as glib when their own edit-warrior comes along to shove in an infobox that destroys all they've done. Geogre 14:46, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- If your point is that editors should dictate the content of the articles they write, I wholly agree, which is why I oppose your destructive actions in this case. You transparently don't care what the editors of biographies want; the edit-warriors you decry want it in every biography, and you want it in no biographies. Apparently none of you are prepared to let the editors of biography articles make their own choices. I'd ask voters to imagine an alternate situation in which a user creates a biography, gets it voted an FA, and then has someone delete a major part of the article's presentation. Hopefully, as I would, you would sympathize with the editors in both cases. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:15, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually, my delete vote was justified on the grounds that the box is redundant and that it is not functional (does not fulfill the mission of the infobox). However, I notice that this moronic template has generated more votes than anything else on TFD. Why? Have the troops been rallied? Why? Look at the number of "keep: name" votes. Look at the numbers of people who appear to have been bused in from VfD. I know why so many delete voters have shown up: there are a lot of folks ticked off at the edit wars generated by this one particular box and its particular supporters, who have been willing to get blocked repeatedly to fight for shoving this into every article (and thereby generate that "in use in 300 articles" number). Why, though, are people who don't write careful biographies (or much of anything, so far as I can tell) suddenly here? Why are they suddenly impassioned that these edit wars continue? It was just a comment and an observation. If those folks ever do decide to write a long, careful article, I hope that they find their very own Netoholic to shove a massive template on them over and over again. Geogre 11:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - - No conspiracy with me - I have a couple bio pages on watch. One day I went to the page and it clearly says at the top of the template box "The template below has been proposed for deletion" and it includes a link here. Also, I'm amazed by the elitism here on Wikipedia. If there are so many numbskulls like me who actually like the use of the template, then why not keep it? The point of Wikipedia is to make all this information accessible to EVERYONE in terms they can understand. This is supposed to be a majority vote, not just votes from users who've written featured articles (and presumably are the only ones who really know how to write articles). FranksValli 15:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I think these boxes are pretty useless. In the case of bios, probably the least interesting parts to me are the birth and death dates, so why enshrine them in a special box? Hal Jespersen 19:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, many people clearly prefer it. Mac Domhnaill 22:13, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. And many people don't, so that's irrelevant. What's relevant is that they're redundant (therefore useless), a form of dumbing-down, and ugly. --Calton | Talk 00:35, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just out of interest, is it possible to calculate how many of the "keep" voters here, have actually written at least one biography which is a featured article? Giano | talk 12:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, so in other words anyone who hasn't started something that has become a featured article doesn't know what the heck it is they're talking about? :P. FranksValli 15:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your words, not mine. I was just thinking that sometimes it pays to keep the labourers happy. Giano | talk 17:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - redundant and encourages the wrong information to be highlighted. --G Rutter 14:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Seems pretty useful to me as it summarises all of the info in one place--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| r 3 $ |-| t |-|) 14:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The birth/death dates + places do not fit well into the leading sentance, they break the flow horrendously. Yes, this template shouldn't be used everywhere as it wrecks some pages, but its widespread use means it shouldn't be simply deleted. Finally, the reason it only features birth/death dates is that those are two things (besides a name) that everyone has. Any other info would make this template too specialized. -Lommer | ^talk 20:33, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. If there's something important, put it in the intro. Dates are not that hard to read. --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:35, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:LedZeppelin

Since I had two versions (the second of which should have been left alone under normal Wikipedia guidelines since it was smaller and nonredundant) of a Mike Watt template deleted, then let's see if there's any double standards in Wikipedia or not. With that in mind, I say... Delete. This template is certainly oversized and redundant, since the great majority of the links are in the article itself. Cjmarsicano 06:13, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - could do with some trimming, but it is useful, and ties together a logical group of articles. sjorford #£@%&$?! 14:02, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- That's exactly how I felt about Template:Watt, but certain people did not see it that way. Cjmarsicano 16:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Well, you win some, you lose some, don't you? sjorford #£@%&$?! 19:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This vote is based solely on the fact that nomination seems to be an admitted violation of WP:POINT. -- Norvy (talk) 16:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Having read that page thoroghly, let me say for the record that the accusation of my "distrupting" Wikipedia is a pile of this. How is pointing out such a horrible double-standard a 'disruption'? Cjmarsicano 17:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- You might also see my talk page. -Splash^talk 16:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - While you're there, you might also want to see how quickly Mr. Splash responds to messages he is sent. Cjmarsicano 17:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - Oh, the apparent lack of replies is because I usually, but not always, respond on the poster's talk page, unless my reply is something insubstantive. I think I answered this particular comment in something like 20 minutes. -Splash^talk 17:55, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This nomination does seem to be a case of WP:POINT and that should not normally be rewarded. OTOH, I do tend to oppose all but the most clear-cut of nav templates, and this does seeem over-large to me. Had the nomination argued the case on the merits, I would probably have voted to delete, but as things stand No Vote unless better argumetns are made later in the disucssion. DES ^(talk) 17:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Stbalbach 18:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Led Zeppelin is one of the most popular rock bands of all time. They have many articles on Wikipedia about themselves, their songs, albums etc. and this template makes navigation easier and quicker for anyone researching the band. Andrew 20:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I had the same argument for the second Watt template, and it was bounced rather hastily. Hence my concern that double standards were afoot. Cjmarsicano 01:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - It could use a tad bit of tidying eventually, before every single song ends up on the template, but if anything, somebody should take a few pointers from the Pink Floyd template. Actually, I think I might just remove the song line from the template. - Cooleyez229 06:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - this is a band, Watt was an individual musician (who was not notable, IIRC, for solo work). Now, if there were a template for some member of Led Zeppelin, I would vote to delete that. ~~ N (t/c) 14:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - It can be used to unify all of those articles (except maybe more generic ones, like heavy metal music), and provide links from any one to any of the others. I agree with the deletion of the "songs" portion, though. Justin (koavf) 15:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The difference between this and the Mike Watt template is that this template links a series of articles, and the Watt template linked disparate articles with a common factor (a musician). The former is good, the latter is bad. - A Man In Black (Talk | Contribs) 08:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep: If anyone deserves a template, it is Led Zeppelin. I will leave this website if this template is deleted. RENTASTRAWBERRY ^{FOR LET?} röck 22:32, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: poke-creature-cleanup

Delete: Redundant with Template:poke-cleanup, and not currently in use. - A Man In Black (Talk | Contribs) 06:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - I am the creator. It was an attempt to get a template that would go to the left of the infobox, but it didn't work and I forgot about it. Please delete. --Celestianpower ^hab 10:00, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy delete, template is a G7. Aecis 21:34, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Prettytable

Delete: The template was nominated for deletion (at least) once before. The situation has changed since: The template can now be substituted by class="wikitable". This class has been added to common.css and generates (almost) the same look as {{prettytable}} did before it was changed to merely include this very class. This also applies to several other templates that are based upon this one:

— Christoph Päper 11:05, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional Delete: delete, but only after we are sure that no pages reference it anymore. −Woodstone 12:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Of course a bot should replace all instances first. — Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Meanwhile I have put in a request for such a bot at Wikipedia:Bot requests. −Woodstone 20:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - very widely used, and in regular use - it's on loads of pages, and probably will be on a few more even before I finish typing this vote. Okay, so it's not exactly much of a shortcut in terms of length, but it is more easy to remember and because of its widespread appeal will take quite a bit of work to stop people from wanting to use it. Grutness...wha? 13:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Currently used on around 5,200 pages. Grutness...wha? 13:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ouch! Yeah, I'd theoretically vote delete, as a class is the way to go here, but it's clearly going to be a while before everybody moves over to the new method. sjorford #£@%&$?! 13:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - If we keep the template almost nobody will abandon it, despite its impact on the servers. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - Absolutely, but at the very least somebody needs to run a bot on 5000 documents first. sjorford #£@%&$?! 19:25, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        First someone has to decide the replacement should be done. At present, 5000 editors decided to use {{prettytable}} and did not decide to use a replacement. (SEWilco 20:53, 22 September 2005 (UTC))[reply]
        Well, there wasn't a replacement until a few days ago! (and it's not 5000 authors, it's 5000 pages, but I know what you mean). sjorford #£@%&$?! 22:41, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep Besides being used on lots and lots of pages, I believe this template is one of the default ones included with the wiki software which means that users who cut their teeth on wiki editting elsewhere will be expecting to make use of this template. I have no objection to having people making efforts to subst this on the templates and pages that currently use it, but deletion will make wiki editting less friendly to the casual editor. Caerwine 13:46, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Um, how would those “default templates” work? Anyhow, I cannot see Prettytable being one of them. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - All I know is that I use several other minor wiki's besides Wikipedia and on all them, I've found {{prettytable}} available for use. I find it highly unlikely that someone has independently created the template on each wiki, so I presume that it was included with the software. At the very least, this template is going to need a long period of deprecation before being eventually removed. Caerwine 20:18, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, too well known, easy to remember and widely used. Dragons flight 14:03, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- P.S. Let me add that if you do delete this, you are going to have a lot of mysteriously confused users. Think about it, it appear inside the <table> specifier in the rendered page image, so one is going to get the redlink stuffed inside the table tag, i.e.<table Template:prettytable> which won't even show the redlink to users. This means that if you break this thing that everyone has been trained to use, then when people try to use it they won't even have any obvious way of knowing the template has been deleted. Dragons flight 14:17, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don’t see how it’s harder to learn class="wikitable" than {{prettytable}}. If I thought it was, I would have lobbied more for the style to be made the default one for tables nstead of an extra class. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - You're missing the point. If it's deleted, someone accustomed to using it will be confused. They'll try and it simply won't work (won't do anything readily apparent). They'll probably think they mistyped the name. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Probably delete. It's not really hurting anything, unless you're paranoid about meta-templates, but it's been intentionally obsoleted by the new class. Yeah, typing {{prettytable}} is a little easier to remember than class="wikitable", but after we've subst'ed them all, it will be easy for people to learn. You are free to suggest other class names, too. Originally was called class="prettytable". Obviously the ideal is to use templates for everything, but until someone writes better template caching, it's (apparently) a strain on the servers. User:Omegatron/sig 14:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Keep. Widely used (though mostly as subst:). Its presence doesn't hurt anything. We should just note that it is deprecated on the talk page. We should only delete it after it hasn't been used for a while, not while it's being actively used. Nohat
- If it was used with subst, I would have no problem with it. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This is used on a TON of pages. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- No-one's debating that. Templates are never deleted until they've been removed from all pages. We're arguing whether it should be deleted in principle. sjorford #£@%&$?! 13:28, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (obviously). Dunc|☺ 13:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep - I use it all the time and will probably go on doing so. Class="prettytable" makes less sense to non-HTMLers --Celestianpower ^hab 20:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment How about adding a message like "<noinclude>'''Depreciated, please subst: or use class="wikitable" instead'''</noinclude>" right on the template page (and on the talkpage (minus the noinclude tags)) at least. Then we can revist this some months down the road once people have hopefully started using the alternative. --Sherool 00:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I strongly oppose this suggestion. Templates should not be permanently tagged, and this applies twice to article templates. The alternative should be explained on the talk page for the template, and referred to on Wikipedia:template messages; but editors should not be chivvied into using it in this fashion. Septentrionalis 20:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep people must be able to edit Wikipedia without knowing HTML. Grue 19:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per Grue. Septentrionalis 19:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 20

Template:Fairuseunknownsource

And redirect at Template:Fuus. It's really, really difficult, if not impossible, to claim fair use without a source. I think that this template is dangerous because it rationalizes images without sources, and encourages laziness (instead of researching where an image came from, or coming up with an iron-clad rationale, people seem to just tag it it as {{fuus}}). As well, I've been re-tagging everything that uses this template, so as of later this evening there won't be any uses. Delete. JYolkowski // talk 21:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Without this template, all images claimed as "fair use" but with unknown sources will be tagged as {{fairuse}}, and will blend in with the mass. With this template, some of them will be tagged {{fuus}}, and will be much easier to find and either fix or delete. It serves the same purpose as {{permission}}, {{noncommercial}}, and the noncommercial Creative Commons tags: it provides a way of finding images that shouldn't have been uploaded in the first place. --Carnildo 22:18, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- No they won't. There are no images tagged as {{fuus}} as I've tagged them all as {{no source}}. JYolkowski // talk 23:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Provisional keep. Carnildo makes a good point. However, it needs to be noted that all images tagged with this template are now basically speedy-tagged, since Jimbo added a new speedy deletion criterion. In fact, since there is talk of completely revamping image tagging due to copyright reasons, this template will eventually need to be deleted. Titoxd 22:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Redundant with {{no source}}. BlankVerse ∅ 23:30, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per BlankVerse. ∞Who ?¿? 04:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to {{no source}} - if anyone uses this tag and gets a redlink, they'll use fairuse. If they use it and get a "find the source or this gets deleted after a week", maybe they'll think twice. - SoM 23:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to {{no source}}, per SoM. Superm401 | Talk 08:33, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Reuters

Blanked by creator, and subsequently edited to point to Template:Unverified. Also an orphan now that unverified images are CSDs. Delete. JYolkowski // talk 02:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. IceKarma ॐ 19:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. ∞Who ?¿? 05:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:AssociatedPress

Very misleading; Associated Press photos are probably not good fair use candidates because we could be construed as competing with them. Not used too much either. Delete. JYolkowski // talk 02:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Fairuse-ESA

Despite its name, it didn't say anything about fair use at all (until I added the bit at the end about how the image may or may not be usable in Wikipedia); rather, it appears to be a noncommercial-use-only tag, which is depreciated. Since there's only one use, let's delete it before it gets used any more. JYolkowski // talk 01:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. IceKarma ॐ 19:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
KEEP IT! It's a very helpful and necessary feature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.88.184 (talk • contribs) 02:05, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
keep. If deleted, the users who upload these images will just mark them "fairuse" with or without reason. Better have then categorized to check for fairuse than have them all lumped under one label. I know, I know... But still keep. --Irpen 05:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Font sample

'Strong Delete': The template is actually much more confusing than helping. It only works if users have the proper font installed (and the proper browser settings), and images work a lot better to illustrating them. Consider the entries Univers, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Antiqua, Calibri (font) and compare them with Garamond, AMS Euler, Gill Sans which feature pictures. -- (☺drini♫|☎) 19:02, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Um, don't see why this could be considered useful in any way. -- grm_wnr Esc 19:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Speechless. — mendel ☎ 19:13, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Utterly useless. I have a wide variety of fonts installed, yet all I see for any of the above samples is boring old Courier. IceKarma ॐ 19:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Delete. Proved useless beyond any reasonable doubt. Titoxd 23:25, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I have more font than most and I can't see anything. Anonymous user.
Delete. Agree completely with Drini's concerns. Jgm 11:26, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Too much potential to mislead. Susvolans ⇔ 12:02, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional delete. I only agree to the deletion of this template if and only if all the articles that use it have replacement images. Nohat 16:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I am in the process of doing this. -- Thorpe ^talk 21:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Delete. Even without all the replacement images in place, I am in favor of deleting this template. For most users, it's worse than unhelpful - it's actively misleading. --Bob Schaefer 04:46, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Ditto what others said. It's confusing. Images are more effective. --Lendorien 15:42, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for time being. I agree with Nohat – the template should only be removed once sample images of the fonts that use it have been created. I created this template originally because many font pages had their own 'font sample' section, which I just regularised with a template. I believe deleting this will only cause the font articles to start using {{Lipsum}} directly again. Nicholas 23:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't mean to sound thick, but what is the point in keeping this template when it won't show the typical visitor what the font looks like? It seems unreasonable to expect users to purchase a font in order to read the Wikipedia article about that font. I agree that font sample images would be great, but the current template makes it look like we have a serious misunderstanding of how fonts work on the Web. (In the meantime we could replace this template with one that explains that we don't have a sample, and optionally contains an external link to a sample on the font vendor's website.) — mendel ☎ 00:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Holding cell

Move templates to the appropriate subsection here to prepare to delete if process guidelines are met. Anything listed here or below should have its discussion moved to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log.

To orphan

These templates need to be deleted, but may still be in use on some pages. Somebody (it doesn't need to be an admin, anyone can do it) should fix and/or remove significant usages from pages so that they can be deleted. Note that simple references to them from Talk: pages need not (and in fact should not) be removed.

Template:FR-location. Just needs orphaning. Discussion. -Splash^talk 13:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To convert to category

Templates for which the consensus is that they ought to be converted to categories get put here until the conversion is completed.

Template:VA_Highways. To be listified and categorified, then orphaned and deleted. Discussion. -Splash^talk 02:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I started merging the template into List of Virginia numbered highways- the unfinished part is commented out. The links should be Virginia State Highway xx, not VA xx. --Rschen7754 03:05, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ready to delete

Templates for which consensus to delete has been reached, have been orphaned, and the discussion logged to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted, can be listed here for an admin to delete.

(none right now)

Listings

Template:Sfd-current

Adding a listing

Please put new listings under today's date (November 2) at the top of the section.
When listing a template here, don't forget to add {{tfd|TemplateName}} to the template or its talk page, and to give notice of its proposed deletion at relevant talk pages.

September 27

Template: Daily Show

Delete: As big, bad and gaudy as this template is, just imagine what this would do to articles about people who have been on multiple shows, if every show had a template like this one. Does nothing that a category and a list in the ahow's article wouldn't do better. Caerwine 17:16, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. Links in the article text where more can be said about the roles each of these people have played and links back from each of those articles to the article on the show are the best way to go, possibly supplemented by a category. DES ^(talk) 17:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I trimmed it down some, so it's not so unruly. It's not so bad. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- It's still atrocious, just not as atrocious, but it still doesn't accomplish anything that a category and a list in the show's article wouldn't do better. This type of template is marginally acceptable where the topic of the navbox is such that it would be the only one that would logically go at the bottom of each of the articles it referenced. However, that definitely is not the case here. Caerwine 20:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:To do (stable)

Delete: {{To do (stable)}} is redundant now that {{To do}} works properly; orphaned. —Phil | Talk 07:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete redundant Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 07:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:48, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 26

Template:Articleballot

Delete: Same functionality as {{afd3}}. --AllyUnion (talk) 15:38, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Not needed, created under misunderstanding of the AfD log page and transclusion. android79 15:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, unused relative of {{af3}}. Titoxd 05:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:52, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. In addition to above, the use of "ballot" in the title starts to again imply that we're voting. Rossami (talk) 21:53, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Citation style

Delete: There doesn't need to be a template for every incremental improvement an editor could make to the article. There are plenty of well researched, carefully written articles with references not in the Wikipedia style. Why should good articles start with an unsightly template? (I wasn't even aware there was a Wikipedia style, and I've been editing and carefully referencing articles for many months!) Joke137 15:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

delete There is a wikipedia policy to cite sources. there is no current wikipedia standard on what format to use in doing so, so this template is indiacting an alleged problem with no clear guidance for solution -- indeed it could be sued wheree editors simply disagree on prefereed styles. Wikipedia:Footnote3 is becoming more common, but cannot yet be called a standard or a guideline, IMO, and there must be a dozen differnt styles of citation in common use on wikipedia. as long as the info is clearly available, the policy is fulfilled. if it isn't, then a more specific note on the talk page would be better than this, IMO. DES ^(talk) 15:21, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
No vote: I have made the wording less obnoxious. There is no Wikipedia style: The citation page linked to says there is no consensus; the footnote page is tagged as a guideline. But some people have to prescribe a law for all Wikipedia <sigh>. The pages seem to be sensible suggestions; this template may be useful in telling editors that these methods do exist. Septentrionalis 15:26, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I agree with nominator. ~⌈Mar ka ci⌋ 2005-09-26 T 18:36:17 Z
Delete: The function of this should be handled with a talk page comment. We should be highlighting articles that need references, not picking at them for which style they have. Wikipedia has no single style, and I hope it never does. Every article must be verifiable and should be verified (cited), but styles are national, discipline, and cultural preferences. Geogre 11:27, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:VfD nomination

Not used, first and last edit in August 2004. {{Afd2}} or {{Afd3}} are used for this now. Delete. ∞Who ?¿? 09:00, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Pop song 1 and Template:Pop song 2

These are very similar to the recently deleted Template:Stillman-Allen-Four Lads, like it this template autogenerates unexpandable song substubs. If all the information that it is possible to add is song name, group name, and year released, simply creating a list would be far more useful. - SimonP 02:14, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. They generate song stubs; whether they are inexpandible depends on the song. I tried three links; two of them were Till I Waltz Again With You and A Bushel and a Peck, which seem quite respectable small articles. Using {subst} with these templates should probably be encouraged. Septentrionalis 05:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Should discourage this rubbish way to create articles. violet/riga (t) 21:29, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 25

Template:ItalyTourismCopyright

Delete, unused and unlikely to be useful in the future. JYolkowski // talk 20:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Db-spam

It is a {[tl|db}} type template - but the reason given is: "''It is [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox|patent advertisement]]'''''". This is not a WP:CSD and so there cannot be any legitimate use for this template. It should be deleted. JesseW, the juggling janitor 19:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

~~Delete~~. There is a popular misconception that "spam" or "it's an ad" is a reason for speedy deletion, and this template will only exacerbate the problem. android79 19:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. People who stretch the speedy criteria piss me off, too, but the most blatant spam - articles which are only an external link - can be speedied under case A3. I've rewritten this template to reference that case directly; perhaps this will help to slow down improper speedy tagging (and deleting). —Cryptic (talk) 22:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- The redirect to this template from {{SPAM}} should probably go, though, since it's very different from the existing template at {{spam}}. —Cryptic (talk) 22:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but a template isn't needed. Spam is a speedy criterion. If the "article" is nothing but a link out, or if all it amounts to is that link (e.g. it might be a whole sentence before the link), then it is a speedy delete. Geogre 14:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- External-link-only is a speedy delete. Some spam amounts to much more than that and must be taken to AfD, per the current CSD rules. As much as I'd like to be able to legitimately speedy obvious spam, it can't be done under current policy, and shouldn't be encouraged by such a template. Given the current rewrite, this should be moved to Template:db-a3 following the convention for other like templates listed at CAT:CSD. android79 15:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or move to {{db-a3}} (to which a new {{db-nocontent}} should perhaps redirect. Much spam (in the sense of unwanted articles apparently created primarily for promotional purposes) is not subject to speedy deletion (and a fair amount of it can be converted to an NPOV article about a product or company), and many items that are deletable under CSD A3 are not spam in any reasonable sense, so the name {{db-spam}} is misleading and will tempt people to mis-use this where it deosn't apply. If moved, do NOT' leave a redirect from the current name, for the same reason DES ^(talk) 15:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Move to {{db-nocontent}}, simply because {{db-spam}} is too misleading. Titoxd 05:09, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Directors templates

Recreations of Template:Kubrick (deleted) and Template:Steven Spielberg's films (deleted). These were previously deleted and categorified on this previous Tfd. Speilbergs was recreated against consensus and then speedied. Now they are both back again. The categories act as just as good as navigation system. Also some movies list both directors such as A.I. (film), which would look pretty silly if both templates were used. Propose redeletion, as they have already been categorified. ∞Who ?¿? 14:19, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or shrink to a managable size. Information is easily found on the directors own page. MechBrowman 20:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Convert to {{otherarticles}} and deleteSeptentrionalis 22:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: Sources

Delete: Not sure what this is supposed to be used for, but it doesn't link to anything. Was edited only twice before I placed the TFD tag on it; the last time was in March. Kamezuki 10:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: As it doesn't link to anything, and the intended usage is unclear. LiniShu 02:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think it was for adding references/sources to an article, but it really doesn't make it easier. Delete. ∞Who ?¿? 04:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)q[reply]

Template: Oldvfdfull

Delete: Obsolete template, not even needed for historical reasons due to the fact that all uses of this havee been using substitution so keeping this template leaves no purpose. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 04:54, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the nomination delete. Zach (Sound Off) 04:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep! What?! Have you seen the whatlinkshere? It's only obsolete in the first letter of its name. Much better just to turn it into a redirect to {{oldafdfull}}, surley? -Splash^talk 04:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Splash. Think this is a very useful and used template. Redirects are cheap. ∞Who ?¿? 05:02, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I only realized that after I put this nom up and after Zscout370 had already voted thus making it so I couldn't remove the nomination. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 05:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Used by, many, many pages. No redirects, as this is for the old VfD system, redirects to a newer version would corrupt the links in it. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 08:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Quite obvious, really, both for the reasons above and to comply with the GFDL (history) for the AFD equivalent. violet/riga (t) 09:13, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I was one user of that template, and never used subst: with it. It's better to keep it (instead of going to every page and subst:ing it) so any future changes on the talk page colored boxes will affect uses of this template. --cesarb 14:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It wasn't just used by substitution, and therefore should be kept. Ral315 W_S 18:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It is still useful and has a place. It has more than just substitution uses, and is valuable for preventing frequently recurring VfD's by pointing out when an article has already been decided to be relevant enough to warrant an article. --Wingsandsword 04:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as current as per Dread Lord above. —Phil | Talk 08:06, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, because the alternative is mind-boggling. No redirects, unless we move the VfD subpages to AfD, which is mind-boggling as well. Titoxd 05:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 24

Template:Past

If a product is no longer produced, this can be stated in the article. There's no need for a {{current}} equivalent here. --fvw * 01:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Agree that if a product has ceased to be produced it should be incorporated into the prose. Evil Monkey∴Hello 01:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per fvw. CDC (talk) 03:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Poster

Delete, too vague to fit in with our future direction on fair use tags, replaced with five other poster tags, now unused. JYolkowski // talk 22:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete other tags are listed for use. ∞Who ?¿? 04:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. No longer necessary, wasn't a good idea originally, encouraged lot of sloppy thinking about copyright. --Fastfission 02:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Virginia Higher Education

Delete: Unwieldy monstrosity with natural representation as categories Fawcett5 15:54, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Before someone gets the bright idea to do the same thing for California institutions of higher learning where the template will be four time as large and four times as ugly. BlankVerse ∅ 08:29, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unnecessary; if any template is needed, use {{otherarticles}} Septentrionalis 19:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but not in its current form. Split three ways along the lines of "Virginia Public Universities", "Virginia Private Colleges and Universities", and "Virginia Community and Technical Colleges". The current all-in-one format is too large and unwieldy. Schuminweb 23:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Not necessary... wouldn't want to see the same thing for New York, Calfornia, Texas, etc. Uris 12:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete naveboxes are generally undesireable, IMO. Only the very best of them are worthwhile, which this isn't. DES ^(talk) 15:27, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: Infobox Canada

Delete: Unused template (Canada seems to have switched to Template:Infobox country). Sortan 15:28, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: Infobox alienaa

Delete: Looks like the creation of someone who misunderstood the point of templates. This "infobox" is hardcoded with info about one particular webgame, and it's not actualy used anywhere. See no point in keeping this. Sherool 02:34, 24 September 2005 (UTC) Delete agree with nom. Image used in template just got killed too - which is yet another reason to delete Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 09:27, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 23

Template: Edmonton Eskimos , Template:Calgary Flames, Template:Toronto Maple Leafs, Template:Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Template:San Jose Sharks, Template:Washington Capitals, Template:New Jersey Devils, Template:Vancouver Canucks, Template:British Columbia Lions, Template:NY Islanders, Template:Ottawa Renegades, Template:NY Rangers and Template:Buffalo Sabres, Template:Toronto_Maple_Leafs

Delete: These templates are mostly not in use (British Columbia Lions and Edmonton Eskimos have one page using them each, all others zero), and are too specific; they would very likely never be used on any other articles than the teams they represent. Ongoing use of current players list across various articles is similar to Buffalo_Sabres#Current_Squad, rather than using these templates. I've listed what templates I've found in this group; there may be other similar ones. --Durin 22:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Subst: anything that's used; delete the rest. JYolkowski // talk 23:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete any similar template associated with a NHL team: Yeah, these templates were a stain on a few NHL team pages (Template:NY Islanders, Template:NY Rangers, Template:New Jersey Devils, and Template:Buffalo Sabres) for a while. They were noted as "todo" at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ice_Hockey/Team_pages_format#The new "Current Squad", but recently an anonoymous user burdened himself with propagating it throughout the NHL and CFL. We seem to have come to a compromise of sorts and these templates no longer needed. ccwaters 23:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, just added those two to the grouping as well. Let's catch them all so we don't have to revisit this if we find any more in the future. --Durin 23:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Looking... it was a busy day... I'll search for NHL templates and add any I find, feel free to look through my contribs that day for more background. ccwaters 23:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think I got all the NHL templates... Thanks ccwaters 00:03, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Subst: and then delete. ∞Who ?¿? 04:58, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Masterhatch 12:32, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Turkey footer

Loosely associated topics and unused template. CG 17:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete ill-conceived. But for context, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countries#Compressing footers. CDC (talk) 18:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Replace with a footer modelled on {{UK ties2}}. - SimonP 15:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Notable Wikipedian

Violates avoid self-reference both by creating an internal link and in mentioning they're wikipedians at all. There are a few wikipedians that should have a link to their user page in their article's external links section (Jimbo springs to mind), but for most people who've edited wikipedia it just isn't that notable a thing about them and shouldn't be in the article at all (like User:Eric S. Raymond). --fvw * 06:37, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Unnecessary self-promotion (of Wikipedia, or maybe also of the person in question). Also, being a Wikipedian isn't what I'd call a noteworthy fact. Furthermore, people worth an encyclopedia entry not necessarily are "noteable wikipedians" in the sense that they'd be outstanding contributors. And even if they are, mentioning it in the encyclopedia entry would be needless promotion again. Lupo 06:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. If you'll refer to the CfD log for Category:Wikipedians with Article (which I found out about just now), the general consensus was against the category but in favor of a template. Admittedly it shouldn't apply to people who just happen to have a username but haven't actually made any substantive contributions; I may have been hasty in slapping it on all the articles. —Keenan Pepper 07:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Reading that discussion, I don't see a consensus for a template, just someone proposing it and someone else going ahead and creating it. Lupo 07:36, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- The discussion there seems to suggest having the template on talk pages, which would be fine (though slightly pointless) to me. --fvw * 08:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is a warning to the reader that the person in question could influence the article about him/her. It's like Wikinews marking the news related to Wikimedia Foundation in a special way. Grue 07:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Assume people have played nicely. If someone has been influencing their article for the worse we can always tag it as such (and stop them from influencing their article for the worse of course). --fvw * 08:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Actually the fact that they openly created a wikipedia account is evidence that they are playing nicely, they could just as easily edit it anonymously or with a different user name. Kappa 09:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion: convert to standard format and apply to the appropriate Talk Page instead...actually if I have time later I'll try that. —Phil | Talk 08:12, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I have done as much as I can before my weekend commences. When I return Monday morning, I shall be interested to see whether all my work has been undone, or someone has completed it. Have a nice one, folks...Phil | Talk 17:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep if used only on talk pages, abstain from use on articles. WP:FAITH exists to promote harmony among editors, not to prevent users from knowing possibly relevant facts. Having said that, I'm not too sure it is relevant. Kappa
Delete. I was surprised to see it appear on the page about me (which I have never edited, despite it not being up to the standard I would like), and don't like the implication that a casual reader may get that I have been editing my own page. I also think that as a Wikipedian I'm not particularly notable, so making it appear as a huge banner across the page is just weird. -dmmaus 10:11, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Iff a notable person is also a Wikipedian of note it might be worth a sentence in the articles "trivia" section, nothing more. We defenently don't need a huge banner template for this. I would't mind a category though, asuming it's only applied to the userpages and not the actual articles, but that's another matter. --Sherool 10:41, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- ~~We've got one of those I think, it's called Wikipedians with articles I think.~~ --fvw* 10:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - We used to have one of those but it was deleted, we now have Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles. --fvw * 10:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. -- Dominus 12:55, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Sherool. ~~ N (t/c) 14:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I like the general idea. If there's any further conflict over the template, though, might I suggest that alterations to the template be discussed? Cjmarsicano 15:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but only apply this template to discussion pages. Its an interesting piece of trivia and most fairweather visitors will never locate this information at Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles. Hall Monitor 16:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per Lupo. --File:Ottawa flag.png Spinboy 16:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I find this very useful. --NDP logo Earl Andrew - talk 16:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Confine to talk pages. I can think of four articles in which the fact that the subject edits Wikipedia is even worthy of mention (Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger, Angela Beesley, Florence Nibart-Devouard). In all these cases that should be dealt with in the article text, not a template. Imagine how this flag would look if the articles were reproduced elsewhere, say in a print edition; would the fact that Chip Berlet, Richard Stallman, and Sheldon Rampton edit Wikipedia seem relevant to the articles? Do such articles mention the subjects' contribution to any other well-known websites? Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. —Charles P. (Mirv) 17:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 18:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages and standardize. I don't think mentioning the fact that they are an editor on the biography is encyclopedic, this is just a side note for talk purposes only. ∞Who ?¿? 19:02, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages. bogdan | ^Talk 19:06, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on talk pages. Seems like a good compromise to me. —Keenan Pepper 22:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep if it eschews the word "notable". I must say, Mirv, I can't imagine how it would look in a print version, on account of Wikipedia's not being paper and all. Having it on a talkpage so that the more interested visitor can see that the article's about a Wikipedian doesn't seem too dangerous but I don't like the notion of "notability"'s being involved, because of the possibility of bickering over who is, who isn't "notable". Grace Note 22:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
But that's exactly the criterion for article-worthiness in the first place, isn't it? If somebody else writes an article about you which is not deleted, then you have de facto notability. —Keenan Pepper 22:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It was a hypothetical situation; if a print edition doesn't work for you, try imagining a WikiReader or DVD, which of course would not include the back-channel Wikipedia: and User: namespaces. (Eric S. Raymond and Richard M. Stallman, in fact, are included in the Free Software and Free Contents WikiReader.) —Charles P. (Mirv) 17:57, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep this is freaking annoying, fine we got rid of the category, ... lets not get rid of this as well. We do need SOME WAY to mark these types of articles. ALKIVAR™ 22:23, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Definetly needed, since there are a fair no. of people who have edited their own pages.
Keep for article's talk pages, but remove "notable". -- User:Docu
Keep, as per Docu. Sarge Baldy 19:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, if it stays in the Talk: namespace, it wouldn't cause any problems at all. Titoxd 05:19, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Why self-referential? Why not Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles? Why have this? --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:07, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 22

Template:Infobox Biography

Delete - This template is a constant source of dispute between Wikipedians. Its inclusion/exclusion on individual biography pages has been argued over several pages including Talk:John Vanbrugh, Talk:Charles Darwin, Talk:Mark Twain, Talk:Douglas Adams and probably a number of others. Over the last year or so at least 8 editors including me have commented on the talk page that they don't like it. I don't think it adds anything useful to most articles, and makes some look positively ugly. Jooler 22:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per nom. The facts in fhis info box are better in article prose, IMO. DES ^(talk) 22:34, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete its only function is to make Wikipedia look more like Boy's Life or HiLites magazines. "If you can't read the birth and death dates, here is a box to tell you what they are." Further, the "infobox" idea (inasmuch as there is an idea behind infoboxes) is that they present either "interesting side lights" or "the most important 'bite' of information." Following that logic would say that all you really need to know about a biography is when the subject was born and died. Heaven help us if that's what people get out of history. Geogre 23:37, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Personally I think it's a pointless eyesore. Ugliness may be in the eye of the beholder, but surely everybody will agree it's causing ugly edit wars—look at this. --Bishonen | talk 23:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think the fact that it 'causes' edit wars is reason to delete. One could apply that logic to any edit war or conflict and say "we should just decide this unilaterally my way, because we have argued about it too much." -Kwh 21:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Useless. Rivarez 00:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Geogre's reasoning. Some infoboxes are useful: countries and elements, for example, have a certain common set of vital facts that are probably better presented in a table than in prose. Biographies don't: birth and death dates work just as well in the first sentence, and the locations for each can be dealt with in the relevant prose; they're not the most important facts about the subject. Get rid of this. —Charles P. (Mirv) 00:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
DeleteUgly. Detracts from the lead. Adds no new information. Giano | talk 06:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I don't really see what's ugly about this, and it seems to reside usefully on many pages without dispute. It's nice to create a consistent style in which key quick facts are presented in a central place. Generally, no compelling reason to delete. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- N.b. there is a consistent place already: the lead. I'm not being sarcastic: it is biographical style to give dates right after the name. Why bust up the text to have a box to reiterate what's there in words 3 and 4? Geogre 10:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm aware of that standard, but at worst, placing the dates in the infobox as well can only help the reader. The infobox also features place of birth and death, which most WP biographies don't include in the lead, so not all the information is redundant in that sense. But more importantly, the "consistent place" at issue here applies not just to biographies but to all articles. The expansion of infoboxes means that it's fairly typical here for key facts and statistics to be presented in a condensed list format in the upper right of the screen. I don't see why we shouldn't have that for people articles as well; indeed for some types of people we do have uncontroversial infoboxes. Perhaps we can take a hint from those and add some more useful fields; one that comes to mind look at the President infobox is a spouse field. The arguments that this infobox is harmful seem weak to me, and I think it is helpful now and will become more helpful over time, so it seems worth keeping. Then again, I don't believe it "busts up the text"; as far as I see it sits harmlessly in the corner, and certainly disrupts the text less than the standard style, which places (sometimes substantial) parentheticals two or three words into the first sentence. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:32, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Such would be the argument for redundancy. "It can only help" to repeat and repeat and repeat, too -- to repeat with pictures, with colors, with blinking text, etc. The words are there. They're quire unambiguous. The misinfobox just breaks up the flow of the article, dislodges the hard work of editors who have found portraits and have those beside the lead, etc. The makers of infoboxes should not have the anti-democratic gall to try to dictate to scholars how biographies must look because they happen to have an idle moment and draw up a box with reiterative information. Geogre 13:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - - If the creators of the infobox shouldn't dictate to scholars how biographies should look, why should you? Why can't the editors of the article choose whether or not to use this template? Christopher Parham (talk) 04:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - It's called redundancy, and it's not good. When the lead has the birth and death dates and place, if known, then the box is just a violation of the space of the article to say what is said just beside it. That amounts to redundancy, not digestion or highlighting. "Duplicate material" is a violation of the deletion policy in articles. It should be in the case of templates, too. If there is no gain by the visual information of the big box, then there is no value. In this case, it's just a big way to destroy the pictures and other forms of illustration to put in, instead, an entirely redundant box. Geogre 12:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        In considering this, I looked through the first fifteen articles on what links here for the template. Zero of them included all this information in the lead (though three did not have a traditional lead seciton). It's thus a stretch to say that this template replicates information that appears right beside it. In 6 of the articles, the template included information that was found nowhere at all in the text (Ayn Rand, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Douglas Adams, Dave Brubeck, Erwin Rommel, Friedrich Nietzsche). "Entirely redundant" is thus a mischaracterization. This also suggests that if the template is deleted, it will have to be very carefully removed from each article on which it appears to ensure no loss of information. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        Did it ever occur to you that someone might be bold enough to just move the info from the infoboxes to the text? Holy crap, what a poor argument! Peter ^Isotalo 06:44, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        Did it also occur to Christopher Parham that someone might have removed the information when they installed the infobox, as was done here?
    - IMO we are way overdoing the use of infoboxes, adn i thgink many of them tend to overly make arricl;es into cookie-cutter replicas. This one is IMO a particularly egrigious example. DES ^(talk) 15:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. This is used on some ~400 pages so there does seem to be a considerable population of editors who like/accept it. Also, I am inclined to think that general decisions for how biographies are presented are better decided by improving Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(biographies), than trying to confront the specific widget that people have been using. Dragons flight 08:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Be aware that the box's proponents (creator and editors, I assume) have been industrious in going around to insert it into every article they can find. The fact that 300 articles (generated by a 1911 dump, e.g.) have editors who aren't kicking the box out doesn't mean that there is a reason to keep it. Also, to use your own logic, it would be better to reform the style than to circumvent that by inserting a box to accomplish the same thing. It's the box that is attempting to make all biographies reduce to birth and death. It's less than useless, a typographical monstrosity, and is, on its best day, redundant. If someone thinks that all biographies should state the subject's love of sneakers vs. hard soled shoes, that someone should have to slog it out on the style pages, not create a silly infobox, insert it into every article conceivable, and then have people defend it here; it's the infobox that is attempting a content and style change without discussion. Geogre 10:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep because people use it. Grue 09:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Since this template is in active use on just under 400 articles at present, I believe its clear that this infobox has become a clear standard. This infobox not only serves a stylistic purpose (it looks really sharp on printed versions kids may use in school), but can and should be used later as a method of gathering metadata on our biographical articles, much like what the German Wikipedia had the foresight to put into place (description in English). -- Netoholic @ 08:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The fact that people use it is not a sufficient reason for keeping it, just as ugliness is not for deleting. The only real question is, doe it add value? As per Geogre, Bishonen and others above, I cannot honestly see that it does. In fact it may well do the opposite by inviting the casual reader to imagine that by reading the infobox they have read all the facts worth knowing in the biography. Filiocht | The kettle's on 10:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Filiocht and others. Ambi 14:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Absolutely. -- Vít Zvánovec 15:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, birth/death dates may fit nicely into prose in the lead sentence, but places don't. Kappa 15:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Why not? In cs: it is a established practice. -- Vít Zvánovec 15:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Sure they do. "She was born in Fooville, Somestate." DES ^(talk) 15:40, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Some do, most don't. Either way there's no standard place to fit these facts into the lead, let alone into the first couple sentences. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:44, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: this serves several useful purposes. Firstly it serves to provide a standard format for displaying useful information which will apply to all subjects of biographical articles (no more "how am I supposed to include this info in the lede?"). Second, it provides space for a more meaningful introduction to an article: information on when and where someone was born or died is usually less valuable than what they did in between (no more "how do I spatchcock this info into the lede?"). Thirdly, it does actually make the biography articles look more uniform and professional, which is something we ought to consider for those who have to read the damn things. Furthermore, the fact that various editors are unable to restrain themselves from conducting edit wars over such trivia might well say a lot more about them than about this template. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
comment Take a look at Gilbert de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford - this is possibly the worst example of over-use of templated infoboxes I have ever seen. 17:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Now that is really horrible. Who could possible think that improves an article? Perhaps (and just perhaps) on some scientific and mathematical pages these "facts thrust in your face" templates are useful, but on biographies and pages concerning literature and the arts, they are just a distraction that are of no use whatsoever. Giano | talk 17:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I don't see how using this template is any different from other infoboxes with much more information such as {{Infobox Company}}, {{taxobox}} or any of a number of others. It helps present biographical information common to all people in one standard format. slambo 18:35, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the dates and places of a person's birth and death are basically never the most important information about a person, so shouldn't be highlighted like this. Putting the person's name there is unnecessary too - it's in big letters at the top of the page, where it belongs! CDC (talk) 18:43, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This template provides no new information to the reader. It merely repeats information already present in the article. That information is not even the most important, it's merely the most amenable to being mechanically put in a box. By using a frame and a standard caption, authors have complete flexibility. With this infobox they're stuck in a Playskool straitjacket. I also deplore the way this template is being forced on articles as if it is mandatory that it be used. PRiis 19:27, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Although I don't really like this template, it is used on a large number of articles (see [2]). The decision on whether to use, or not use, the Infobox Biography template is NOT something that should be decided by a TFD vote, but should, instead, be done through a proper survey of the consensus opinion of Wikipedia editors (Wikipedia:Infobox Biography template survey?). BlankVerse ∅ 21:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per BlankVerse. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:08, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - unnecessary duplication of information. The fact that it's used on 400 articles shows that some users favour it, but 400 uses out of however many biographical articles exist, seems to be very small percentage. I agree with User:PRiis that the infobox has far less flexibility than a simple image caption box. It's standardised format often prevents the use of the most appropriate image or more importantly, the most appropriate caption. Rossrs 01:31, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep You guys have nothing better to do? How about offer a better template. Please do not delete this one... again, Wikipedians never cease to amaze me.. FranksValli 04:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The point is: No template at all is required. Giano | talk 09:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and Enhance This infobox would be quite useful if general biographical information other than birth/death dates were available in it. Plus, it provides a nice neat and consistent way to display a picture of the person in question. -- Tyler 07:53, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If that was to be the case, why bother with an article at all - just have one big text box or table. Giano | talk 09:23, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, but do not make standard. This must not be considered mandatory for any article. It should only be used when it enchances the article in some way. I doubt this will be often, but there might be occasions. Nothing in writing articles should be mandatory. [[Sam Korn]] 14:01, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. A bandwidth hogger, when the same info can be put in 2 to 3 words. Pamri • Talk 14:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- You are going to fit April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, 30 April 1945, Berlin Germany into 2 to 3 words? Kappa 15:27, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. All info in this template can easily be found in the text. --Matjlav^(talk) 17:33, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I find it useful. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 19:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This template is a fast and useful source as reference for people looking forward to brief information from someone, instead reading the whole article.HappyApple 19:29, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There is a danger in summarily deleting these "infoboxes" that important data might be deleted as well. The issue of whether or not an "infobox" looks nice in a specific entry should be done case by case, not as a wholesale deletion. There are some instances in which the infobox looks OK. Even though data can be placed in the article itself, the infobox provides a medium by which the reader of Wikipedia can get concise information along with the picture of the person in question. I vote to keep; however, I do feel that individual instances in which the infobox looks unsightly should be kept or deleted ON A CASE BY CASE EXAMINATION. drboisclair 20:49, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So who decides? Or do we have an edit wars, as this thing causes at present? Giano | talk 21:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Editing wars are inevitable, the price that is paid for the free flow of ideas: editing freedom requires eternal vigilance. Editors are encouraged to consult and respond to discussion pages, which promote consensus and harmony: give a little, take a little. drboisclair 14:36, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I've also watched idly as this gained some ground, but I never really supported it. The factoids from these can and should be integrated into article text, and they mean very little as such. The quotation thingy is mildly amusing, but irrelevant. --Joy [shallot] 22:45, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I also need to comment on the number 400 - that's simply peanuts. When we started demolishing the people stubs category, it included almost 16,000 articles. Even if we round it very generously, this template is probably used on less than one percent of the articles it's meant to be relevant for, so wide acceptance really cannot be a criterion for keeping it. --Joy [shallot] 22:51, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
comment - it looks like despite the fact the the majority of people dislike and even detest this box the number of people voting keep here means that it is not going to get deleted. That can't be right can it. Really we should have voted on its inclusion in the first place. Jooler 23:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. If people want to use it in a bio, let them. Shanes 00:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for the reasons stated by Phil, Christopher Parham, Slambo, et al. Wikipedia mentality must advance more beyond a paper analog than just hyperlinks. The goal is to convey information in an understandable manner. Infoboxes (which many of those who oppose this one seem to oppose in general) are a professional way to abstract information buried within the article and to summarize and standardize the presentation of FAQ about that person. Substitute geography for biography and see if the purge argument makes sense: One can describe the location of Winfield, Illinois in words (it is at the Very Center of the Universe) but a map (so one can see it in relation to our eastern suburb, Chicago) helps quick understanding. Yes the GPS coordinates are somewhere in the text, but a map would give it quickly and concisely. So does a biographical infobox. I use the Wikipedia many times just to get a quick birthdate or deathdate. The dates should be in the lead, but sometimes are not. An infobox gives a form-to-fill-in that will help make articles comprehensive. I think this type of infobox should not only be kept, but enhanced to include burial places, spouses, etc. Will those who want to purge this infobox next want to remove the tables of descendants that appear near the bottom of many bio articles? By adding the biobox as a standard, instead of trying to purge it via this TfD process, we can take care of those editors who use their prejudices for sola logis to vandalize(!) articles containing a biobox. The template itself can be protected against them. Please don't dumb-down bios by removing helpful aids. --StanZegel 05:33, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All right, this is just irking me too much to avoid responding... you say that it abstracts information buried within the article - no, it does not, because dates and places of birth are noted at the top and at the end of biographies, and quotations are in the quotes subsection whose placement is obvious from the table of contents. This is not buried, unless someone actually can't read. WordNet defines an abstract as a "sketchy summary of of the main points of an argument or theory". Surely someone's date and place of birth and death are not their main points?! You also said that it's the presentation of FAQ about that person - how are the dates and places of birth and death, let alone quotations, so frequently asked questions about people? Do semi-random places and dates really matter that much to a lot of people that they just absolutely need to have it all in one place and avoid reading the actual article? "I've no idea who John Doe is, but I must know where and when he was born in a gray box next to that silly biography of his!!" --Joy [shallot] 19:17, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Biographical infoboxes that contain images of paintings and photographs contain helpful information on the paintings and photographs themselves. Infoboxes make use of the diversity of web format as opposed to text only. There is a need for more diversity in presenting information not less. drboisclair 14:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, cool, I get to copy&paste a sentence I already used here. One does not need a separate template in order to include a right-aligned picture of a person in a biography. Read Wikipedia:Images for help on doing that. --Joy [shallot] 17:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep- it contains information that cannot be obtained at a "glance" otherwise, especially in large articles such as Mahatma Gandhi. The danger of it being deleted is that some of the articles (most probably stubs) may not have that info elsewhere. Again, as I understand it, the infobox is not a standard requirement. So, if some people do feel that the infobox is redundant in a particular article let them thrash it out on that article's talkpage. People entering edit wars on the info box issue in some articles should not be reason enough for template deletion. And people would enter edit wars only if they feel strongly about something - this does not apply to the infobox on lots of articles. ---Gurubrahma 05:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Ugly and unnecessary for biographies, and will likely continue to be the object of edit wars. Tupsharru 06:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, Improve, and Make Standard- About 380 articles show that it does have value. If it's ugly, make it pretty. The info given is very useful in immediately informing the reader of the subject's era and geographical location, which can aid the reader's understanding in reading by thinking about contemporary people and events. I think this sort of "contextual prompting" is something WP ought to do more of, not less. And let me say that I'm a little dumbfounded by the amount of rancor being exuded in some of these Delete votes ("make[s] Wikipedia look more like Boy's Life or HiLites magazines", "stuck in a Playskool straitjacket", "less than useless, a typographical monstrosity", "A bandwidth hogger"). I think it's a laudable thing if Wikipedia were to make itself readable and usable to the "Boy's Life" or even the "Playskool" set, even if these elitists don't agree. -Kwh 06:54, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, its not ugly, it looks good and summarises everything clearly. - Aaron Hill 12:49, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Vaoverland 12:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The result of deletion will be that biographies will use normal tools to put an image up rather than a template, and so will be encouraged to shape the article, images and so on to fit the needs of the subject rather than shoehorning it all into potentially irrelevant templates. — ciphergoth 16:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It's a useful tool and makes for some consistency on biography pages (a better solution than having editors create their own version on a page-by-page basis. I wouldn't object to seeing some sort of enhancement (color, additional ainfo...).--Lordkinbote 17:18, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. What has it ever done to anyone? Why not have a portrait with a biography? Isn't that standard? Portraits HELP, especially in the case of multiple people with similar names, so readers know which person's file they're viewing. Plus, portraits give us glimpses of someone's personality. MERR 14:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah, that's all fine and well, but one does not need a separate template in order to include a right-aligned picture of a person in a biography. Read Wikipedia:Images for help on doing that. --Joy [shallot] 19:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I think it generally looks a lot better than a simple thumbnail, and it's an easy reference for birth/death information. Sarge Baldy 19:23, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Huh? Keeping a template just so people can see birth and deaths next to each other at the top of the article? Completely useless. / Peter ^Isotalo 20:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This should be used or not used on an article-by-article basis. Consensus not to use it will be demonstrated by its not being used. In the meantime, Wikipedia is inconsistent. Septentrionalis 19:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unneeded, pretty much pointless. Private Butcher 19:57, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Biographies do not need infoboxes. All info in them can be summarized in the article (all of it does not have to go in the first paragraph of the lead). / Peter ^Isotalo 20:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Absolutely useless, all the information is located in template is usually found within the intro paragraph. Articles without template looks alot nicer and is the perfect example of overuse of templates. MechBrowman 20:46, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, it is in used in may pages but could be improved. Andreww 21:16, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete pretty ugly and doesn't and it doesn't add useful information -- the date of birth and death of someone are not often the most important facts, imo, and they're always contained in the article anyway chowells 21:26, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
keep. Improve as necessary, but no reason for deletion. --Irpen 02:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. If you look up a name in a paper encyclopedia, what's listed first? The person's name, dates of birth & death, quick description of why he's important, and a picture. A two-second source of this info can't hurt. --zenohockey 03:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- CommentThat information is found is almost always found in the first scentence of all articles, which is why the template is useless, what people say this template is useful for is already there. MechBrowman 00:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Adds nothing but redundant clutter. Nuke this eyesore. Fawcett5 03:47, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Anyone else notice that the people who are voting "delete" are the people who write biographies, and the people who are voting "keep" are, largely (not universally), not? Imagine taking a month to make a FA of a biography, worrying over every element of the look and readability of the thing, making sure information is presented logically and clearly, getting it voted an FA, and then having someone add his kazoo part to the symphony so he can "improve" the article with a box that dislodges the photos, oversizes the text, reduces the whole to "two second information" and rips up the format of the whole article. When the "keep" voters make some carefully constructed articles, I hope they are just as glib when their own edit-warrior comes along to shove in an infobox that destroys all they've done. Geogre 14:46, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- If your point is that editors should dictate the content of the articles they write, I wholly agree, which is why I oppose your destructive actions in this case. You transparently don't care what the editors of biographies want; the edit-warriors you decry want it in every biography, and you want it in no biographies. Apparently none of you are prepared to let the editors of biography articles make their own choices. I'd ask voters to imagine an alternate situation in which a user creates a biography, gets it voted an FA, and then has someone delete a major part of the article's presentation. Hopefully, as I would, you would sympathize with the editors in both cases. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:15, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually, my delete vote was justified on the grounds that the box is redundant and that it is not functional (does not fulfill the mission of the infobox). However, I notice that this moronic template has generated more votes than anything else on TFD. Why? Have the troops been rallied? Why? Look at the number of "keep: name" votes. Look at the numbers of people who appear to have been bused in from VfD. I know why so many delete voters have shown up: there are a lot of folks ticked off at the edit wars generated by this one particular box and its particular supporters, who have been willing to get blocked repeatedly to fight for shoving this into every article (and thereby generate that "in use in 300 articles" number). Why, though, are people who don't write careful biographies (or much of anything, so far as I can tell) suddenly here? Why are they suddenly impassioned that these edit wars continue? It was just a comment and an observation. If those folks ever do decide to write a long, careful article, I hope that they find their very own Netoholic to shove a massive template on them over and over again. Geogre 11:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - - No conspiracy with me - I have a couple bio pages on watch. One day I went to the page and it clearly says at the top of the template box "The template below has been proposed for deletion" and it includes a link here. Also, I'm amazed by the elitism here on Wikipedia. If there are so many numbskulls like me who actually like the use of the template, then why not keep it? The point of Wikipedia is to make all this information accessible to EVERYONE in terms they can understand. This is supposed to be a majority vote, not just votes from users who've written featured articles (and presumably are the only ones who really know how to write articles). FranksValli 15:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I think these boxes are pretty useless. In the case of bios, probably the least interesting parts to me are the birth and death dates, so why enshrine them in a special box? Hal Jespersen 19:17, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, many people clearly prefer it. Mac Domhnaill 22:13, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. And many people don't, so that's irrelevant. What's relevant is that they're redundant (therefore useless), a form of dumbing-down, and ugly. --Calton | Talk 00:35, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Just out of interest, is it possible to calculate how many of the "keep" voters here, have actually written at least one biography which is a featured article? Giano | talk 12:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, so in other words anyone who hasn't started something that has become a featured article doesn't know what the heck it is they're talking about? :P. FranksValli 15:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Your words, not mine. I was just thinking that sometimes it pays to keep the labourers happy. Giano | talk 17:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - redundant and encourages the wrong information to be highlighted. --G Rutter 14:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Seems pretty useful to me as it summarises all of the info in one place--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| r 3 $ |-| t |-|) 14:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The birth/death dates + places do not fit well into the leading sentance, they break the flow horrendously. Yes, this template shouldn't be used everywhere as it wrecks some pages, but its widespread use means it shouldn't be simply deleted. Finally, the reason it only features birth/death dates is that those are two things (besides a name) that everyone has. Any other info would make this template too specialized. -Lommer | ^talk 20:33, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. If there's something important, put it in the intro. Dates are not that hard to read. --Lord Vold e mort ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:35, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:LedZeppelin

Since I had two versions (the second of which should have been left alone under normal Wikipedia guidelines since it was smaller and nonredundant) of a Mike Watt template deleted, then let's see if there's any double standards in Wikipedia or not. With that in mind, I say... Delete. This template is certainly oversized and redundant, since the great majority of the links are in the article itself. Cjmarsicano 06:13, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - could do with some trimming, but it is useful, and ties together a logical group of articles. sjorford #£@%&$?! 14:02, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- That's exactly how I felt about Template:Watt, but certain people did not see it that way. Cjmarsicano 16:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Well, you win some, you lose some, don't you? sjorford #£@%&$?! 19:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This vote is based solely on the fact that nomination seems to be an admitted violation of WP:POINT. -- Norvy (talk) 16:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Having read that page thoroghly, let me say for the record that the accusation of my "distrupting" Wikipedia is a pile of this. How is pointing out such a horrible double-standard a 'disruption'? Cjmarsicano 17:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- You might also see my talk page. -Splash^talk 16:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - While you're there, you might also want to see how quickly Mr. Splash responds to messages he is sent. Cjmarsicano 17:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - Oh, the apparent lack of replies is because I usually, but not always, respond on the poster's talk page, unless my reply is something insubstantive. I think I answered this particular comment in something like 20 minutes. -Splash^talk 17:55, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This nomination does seem to be a case of WP:POINT and that should not normally be rewarded. OTOH, I do tend to oppose all but the most clear-cut of nav templates, and this does seeem over-large to me. Had the nomination argued the case on the merits, I would probably have voted to delete, but as things stand No Vote unless better argumetns are made later in the disucssion. DES ^(talk) 17:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Stbalbach 18:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Led Zeppelin is one of the most popular rock bands of all time. They have many articles on Wikipedia about themselves, their songs, albums etc. and this template makes navigation easier and quicker for anyone researching the band. Andrew 20:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I had the same argument for the second Watt template, and it was bounced rather hastily. Hence my concern that double standards were afoot. Cjmarsicano 01:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - It could use a tad bit of tidying eventually, before every single song ends up on the template, but if anything, somebody should take a few pointers from the Pink Floyd template. Actually, I think I might just remove the song line from the template. - Cooleyez229 06:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - this is a band, Watt was an individual musician (who was not notable, IIRC, for solo work). Now, if there were a template for some member of Led Zeppelin, I would vote to delete that. ~~ N (t/c) 14:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - It can be used to unify all of those articles (except maybe more generic ones, like heavy metal music), and provide links from any one to any of the others. I agree with the deletion of the "songs" portion, though. Justin (koavf) 15:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The difference between this and the Mike Watt template is that this template links a series of articles, and the Watt template linked disparate articles with a common factor (a musician). The former is good, the latter is bad. - A Man In Black (Talk | Contribs) 08:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep: If anyone deserves a template, it is Led Zeppelin. I will leave this website if this template is deleted. RENTASTRAWBERRY ^{FOR LET?} röck 22:32, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template: poke-creature-cleanup

Delete: Redundant with Template:poke-cleanup, and not currently in use. - A Man In Black (Talk | Contribs) 06:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - I am the creator. It was an attempt to get a template that would go to the left of the infobox, but it didn't work and I forgot about it. Please delete. --Celestianpower ^hab 10:00, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy delete, template is a G7. Aecis 21:34, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Prettytable

Delete: The template was nominated for deletion (at least) once before. The situation has changed since: The template can now be substituted by class="wikitable". This class has been added to common.css and generates (almost) the same look as {{prettytable}} did before it was changed to merely include this very class. This also applies to several other templates that are based upon this one:

— Christoph Päper 11:05, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional Delete: delete, but only after we are sure that no pages reference it anymore. −Woodstone 12:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Of course a bot should replace all instances first. — Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Meanwhile I have put in a request for such a bot at Wikipedia:Bot requests. −Woodstone 20:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - very widely used, and in regular use - it's on loads of pages, and probably will be on a few more even before I finish typing this vote. Okay, so it's not exactly much of a shortcut in terms of length, but it is more easy to remember and because of its widespread appeal will take quite a bit of work to stop people from wanting to use it. Grutness...wha? 13:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Currently used on around 5,200 pages. Grutness...wha? 13:38, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ouch! Yeah, I'd theoretically vote delete, as a class is the way to go here, but it's clearly going to be a while before everybody moves over to the new method. sjorford #£@%&$?! 13:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - If we keep the template almost nobody will abandon it, despite its impact on the servers. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      - Absolutely, but at the very least somebody needs to run a bot on 5000 documents first. sjorford #£@%&$?! 19:25, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
        First someone has to decide the replacement should be done. At present, 5000 editors decided to use {{prettytable}} and did not decide to use a replacement. (SEWilco 20:53, 22 September 2005 (UTC))[reply]
        Well, there wasn't a replacement until a few days ago! (and it's not 5000 authors, it's 5000 pages, but I know what you mean). sjorford #£@%&$?! 22:41, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep Besides being used on lots and lots of pages, I believe this template is one of the default ones included with the wiki software which means that users who cut their teeth on wiki editting elsewhere will be expecting to make use of this template. I have no objection to having people making efforts to subst this on the templates and pages that currently use it, but deletion will make wiki editting less friendly to the casual editor. Caerwine 13:46, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- Um, how would those “default templates” work? Anyhow, I cannot see Prettytable being one of them. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - All I know is that I use several other minor wiki's besides Wikipedia and on all them, I've found {{prettytable}} available for use. I find it highly unlikely that someone has independently created the template on each wiki, so I presume that it was included with the software. At the very least, this template is going to need a long period of deprecation before being eventually removed. Caerwine 20:18, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, too well known, easy to remember and widely used. Dragons flight 14:03, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- P.S. Let me add that if you do delete this, you are going to have a lot of mysteriously confused users. Think about it, it appear inside the <table> specifier in the rendered page image, so one is going to get the redlink stuffed inside the table tag, i.e.<table Template:prettytable> which won't even show the redlink to users. This means that if you break this thing that everyone has been trained to use, then when people try to use it they won't even have any obvious way of knowing the template has been deleted. Dragons flight 14:17, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don’t see how it’s harder to learn class="wikitable" than {{prettytable}}. If I thought it was, I would have lobbied more for the style to be made the default one for tables nstead of an extra class. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    - You're missing the point. If it's deleted, someone accustomed to using it will be confused. They'll try and it simply won't work (won't do anything readily apparent). They'll probably think they mistyped the name. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Probably delete. It's not really hurting anything, unless you're paranoid about meta-templates, but it's been intentionally obsoleted by the new class. Yeah, typing {{prettytable}} is a little easier to remember than class="wikitable", but after we've subst'ed them all, it will be easy for people to learn. You are free to suggest other class names, too. Originally was called class="prettytable". Obviously the ideal is to use templates for everything, but until someone writes better template caching, it's (apparently) a strain on the servers. User:Omegatron/sig 14:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Keep. Widely used (though mostly as subst:). Its presence doesn't hurt anything. We should just note that it is deprecated on the talk page. We should only delete it after it hasn't been used for a while, not while it's being actively used. Nohat
- If it was used with subst, I would have no problem with it. Christoph Päper 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This is used on a TON of pages. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 00:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- No-one's debating that. Templates are never deleted until they've been removed from all pages. We're arguing whether it should be deleted in principle. sjorford #£@%&$?! 13:28, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (obviously). Dunc|☺ 13:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep - I use it all the time and will probably go on doing so. Class="prettytable" makes less sense to non-HTMLers --Celestianpower ^hab 20:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment How about adding a message like "<noinclude>'''Depreciated, please subst: or use class="wikitable" instead'''</noinclude>" right on the template page (and on the talkpage (minus the noinclude tags)) at least. Then we can revist this some months down the road once people have hopefully started using the alternative. --Sherool 00:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I strongly oppose this suggestion. Templates should not be permanently tagged, and this applies twice to article templates. The alternative should be explained on the talk page for the template, and referred to on Wikipedia:template messages; but editors should not be chivvied into using it in this fashion. Septentrionalis 20:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep people must be able to edit Wikipedia without knowing HTML. Grue 19:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per Grue. Septentrionalis 19:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

September 20

Template:Fairuseunknownsource

And redirect at Template:Fuus. It's really, really difficult, if not impossible, to claim fair use without a source. I think that this template is dangerous because it rationalizes images without sources, and encourages laziness (instead of researching where an image came from, or coming up with an iron-clad rationale, people seem to just tag it it as {{fuus}}). As well, I've been re-tagging everything that uses this template, so as of later this evening there won't be any uses. Delete. JYolkowski // talk 21:53, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Without this template, all images claimed as "fair use" but with unknown sources will be tagged as {{fairuse}}, and will blend in with the mass. With this template, some of them will be tagged {{fuus}}, and will be much easier to find and either fix or delete. It serves the same purpose as {{permission}}, {{noncommercial}}, and the noncommercial Creative Commons tags: it provides a way of finding images that shouldn't have been uploaded in the first place. --Carnildo 22:18, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- No they won't. There are no images tagged as {{fuus}} as I've tagged them all as {{no source}}. JYolkowski // talk 23:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Provisional keep. Carnildo makes a good point. However, it needs to be noted that all images tagged with this template are now basically speedy-tagged, since Jimbo added a new speedy deletion criterion. In fact, since there is talk of completely revamping image tagging due to copyright reasons, this template will eventually need to be deleted. Titoxd 22:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Redundant with {{no source}}. BlankVerse ∅ 23:30, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per BlankVerse. ∞Who ?¿? 04:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to {{no source}} - if anyone uses this tag and gets a redlink, they'll use fairuse. If they use it and get a "find the source or this gets deleted after a week", maybe they'll think twice. - SoM 23:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to {{no source}}, per SoM. Superm401 | Talk 08:33, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Reuters

Blanked by creator, and subsequently edited to point to Template:Unverified. Also an orphan now that unverified images are CSDs. Delete. JYolkowski // talk 02:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. IceKarma ॐ 19:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. ∞Who ?¿? 05:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:AssociatedPress

Very misleading; Associated Press photos are probably not good fair use candidates because we could be construed as competing with them. Not used too much either. Delete. JYolkowski // talk 02:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Fairuse-ESA

Despite its name, it didn't say anything about fair use at all (until I added the bit at the end about how the image may or may not be usable in Wikipedia); rather, it appears to be a noncommercial-use-only tag, which is depreciated. Since there's only one use, let's delete it before it gets used any more. JYolkowski // talk 01:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. IceKarma ॐ 19:00, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
KEEP IT! It's a very helpful and necessary feature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.247.88.184 (talk • contribs) 02:05, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
keep. If deleted, the users who upload these images will just mark them "fairuse" with or without reason. Better have then categorized to check for fairuse than have them all lumped under one label. I know, I know... But still keep. --Irpen 05:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Font sample

'Strong Delete': The template is actually much more confusing than helping. It only works if users have the proper font installed (and the proper browser settings), and images work a lot better to illustrating them. Consider the entries Univers, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Antiqua, Calibri (font) and compare them with Garamond, AMS Euler, Gill Sans which feature pictures. -- (☺drini♫|☎) 19:02, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Um, don't see why this could be considered useful in any way. -- grm_wnr Esc 19:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Speechless. — mendel ☎ 19:13, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Utterly useless. I have a wide variety of fonts installed, yet all I see for any of the above samples is boring old Courier. IceKarma ॐ 19:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Delete. Proved useless beyond any reasonable doubt. Titoxd 23:25, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I have more font than most and I can't see anything. Anonymous user.
Delete. Agree completely with Drini's concerns. Jgm 11:26, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Too much potential to mislead. Susvolans ⇔ 12:02, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional delete. I only agree to the deletion of this template if and only if all the articles that use it have replacement images. Nohat 16:42, 22 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I am in the process of doing this. -- Thorpe ^talk 21:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Delete. Even without all the replacement images in place, I am in favor of deleting this template. For most users, it's worse than unhelpful - it's actively misleading. --Bob Schaefer 04:46, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Ditto what others said. It's confusing. Images are more effective. --Lendorien 15:42, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for time being. I agree with Nohat – the template should only be removed once sample images of the fonts that use it have been created. I created this template originally because many font pages had their own 'font sample' section, which I just regularised with a template. I believe deleting this will only cause the font articles to start using {{Lipsum}} directly again. Nicholas 23:55, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't mean to sound thick, but what is the point in keeping this template when it won't show the typical visitor what the font looks like? It seems unreasonable to expect users to purchase a font in order to read the Wikipedia article about that font. I agree that font sample images would be great, but the current template makes it look like we have a serious misunderstanding of how fonts work on the Web. (In the meantime we could replace this template with one that explains that we don't have a sample, and optionally contains an external link to a sample on the font vendor's website.) — mendel ☎ 00:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Holding cell

Move templates to the appropriate subsection here to prepare to delete if process guidelines are met. Anything listed here or below should have its discussion moved to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log.

To orphan

These templates need to be deleted, but may still be in use on some pages. Somebody (it doesn't need to be an admin, anyone can do it) should fix and/or remove significant usages from pages so that they can be deleted. Note that simple references to them from Talk: pages need not (and in fact should not) be removed.

Template:FR-location. Just needs orphaning. Discussion. -Splash^talk 13:42, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To convert to category

Templates for which the consensus is that they ought to be converted to categories get put here until the conversion is completed.

Template:VA_Highways. To be listified and categorified, then orphaned and deleted. Discussion. -Splash^talk 02:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
- I started merging the template into List of Virginia numbered highways- the unfinished part is commented out. The links should be Virginia State Highway xx, not VA xx. --Rschen7754 03:05, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ready to delete

Templates for which consensus to delete has been reached, have been orphaned, and the discussion logged to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted, can be listed here for an admin to delete.

(none right now)