[WikiEN-l] templates boxes: multiplying like rabbits

Tue Apr 12 19:03:36 UTC 2005

Viajero wrote:

> For example, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erskine_Hamilton_Childers
>
> Five template boxes, and then of course the categories.
>
> Are all these really necessary? Given the space they take up, the 
> template boxes appear more important than the text itself.
>
> Does anyone else feel this feature is getting out of hand?

Yep. Perhaps not surprising, since it's much easier to create
templates and categories than to write original text or do
library research. It's like we have a whole little army of
people who continually rearrange the books in the library, but
who never actually open any of them. :-)

There's been a couple proposals floating around to require
multi-person agreement for category and template creation,
don't think they have a lot of support though, being rather
unwiki and all.

Ironically, the excessive templates create huge numbers of
cross-links and may thus improve page rank for Google...

Stan