Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 October 19

By the way, I browse Wikipedia through navbox templates not categories and lists, which are in effective to me because they are too burdensome to get to in order to find out the information that I need. This is one of the biggest reasons that I am so utterly pissed off with this second nomination that is trying to be POV and trying to prove a POV to a certain editor. I could say we need to delete the categories but that would not be in the spirit of the NOTDUP rule, which means I will not! I don't understand why this nominator had to do this a second time in the course of just ten days to two weeks, but it rather confounds be as being in bad taste like I said above.The Gypsy Vagabond Man (talk) 00:21, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Stop

assuming bad faith. I am doing this because there was no consensus in the first discussion. And you are misuing the term "POV" here. Just because you find that these templates are useful, does not mean they are suitable for the project as a whole. Wikipedia ia not a TV guide. It is an encyclopedia. And providing a box of links to every single program currently on a single network is not encyclopedic.—Ryulong (竜龙) 04:51, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply

]

• Definitely Keep all!! It's a nice template and helps users navigate. TRLIJC19 (talk) 15:52, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all Whether or not a television series airs on the same network is a trivial intersection for navbox purposes; that is, the chances of someone navigating from one series to another, otherwise unrelated series whose only connection is that they aired on the same network is quite slim. Especially if they aired decades apart and are not contemporaneous in any way. This information would be far better presented as lists (some of which already exist). Navboxes are for navigation purposes, and the connections between these series are too minimal to be useful. oknazevad (talk) 17:41, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all. As Oknazevad said, "Whether or not a television series airs on the same network is a trivial intersection for navbox purposes". SchuminWeb (Talk) 08:41, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: the templates are indeed useful in an encyclopedic sense, I use them all the time, I suspect other readers do too. The connection here is not minimal, many TV viewers have network preferences and the connection between shows airing on the same network is certainly more tangible than some of the ridiculously idiosyncratic categories we use. There is more connection in the useful navboxs than in a category like Category:2011 films for instance. Granted these could work as categories, but Wikipedia should work toward ease of use for readers, extra click throughs to our silly categorization scheme doesn't work toward that goal. These navboxes do. IvoShandor (talk) 22:19, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia is not here to benefit the avid television watcher. The only thing that connects Whitney (TV series) with Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is the fact that they're both on NBC. Other than that, they have nothing in common that requires them to be placed in the same navigation box together.—Ryulong (竜龙) 22:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Right, because that's what I said. Wikipedia is here for readers, even if they are avid television watchers. Why does this bother you so much? IvoShandor (talk) 07:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep all Same reason as others that have said keep.--Yankees10 22:38, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep all While categories are indeed a useful form of categorization, many readers prefer navboxes because they allow to provide further information. Unlike Ryulong's argument, I do think that everything we do is here to benefit the reader and a set of templates makes reading Wikipedia easier for some readers, then that's a valid reason to keep them. For example, if I am an avid television watcher and I want to read all articles about primetime CBS shows, {{
  WP:DEFINING is not violated (on the contrary) since those shows are indeed partly defined by what network they run on (e.g. "The Simpsons" are clearly defined as a FOX show and that fact has been used both in the show and in sources); many sources refer to a show by the network it's running on (e.g. Fox's "The Simpsons", CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother”, NBC's "30 Rock" etc.). Regards SoWhy 11:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • But that's not a navbox for all of the primetime shows on CBS. It's a navbox for all of the shows on CBS. It might be worth only having the navboxes contain primetime programs, instead of listing The Price is Right and The Talk in the same template as CSI: Miami and How I Met Your Mother, but as it stands these do not serve any navigational purpose, in my opinion.—Ryulong (竜龙) 19:17, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unlike Category:CBS network shows, which does not distinguish between primetime and other shows, the CBS template does distinguish between them, it just lists them in the same template. Imho, it's more useful to have all shows in one template and have them separated in that template instead of having multiple templates for each category. Impartially, there is no downside to having them in the current template. And as I said above, there might be uses that some people find useful. I won't deny that you think that those templates "do not serve any navigational purpose" but imho you failed to make a successful argument why noone will find them useful. Regards SoWhy 20:10, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • A majority of the people here do not find them useful and have requested deletion, that is discounting the ABF !votes of TonyTheTiger and The Gypsy Vagabond Man and the "ZOMG KEEP I LIKE IT" of some other editors.—Ryulong (竜龙) 20:27, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I think you are experienced enough to know that
          WP:DEL#REASON); you as the nominator, given the fact that you have much experience on Wikipedia, should know better than just to nominate based on "we deleted similar pages" and "I don't think it's useful". It pains me to see that a sizeable number of people !voted with similar reasoning but that does not stop me from vehemently disagreeing; so far you have not been able to counter my arguments (the last reply I'm afraid was a classical argumentum ad populum), thus I think you have failed to make a convincing case for your proposal and the outcome should indeed be to keep them. After all, you don't have to use them, so the fact they are not useful to you is irrelevant. Regards SoWhy 21:45, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply
          ]
  • I'm not going to cite policy because I'm sure you can do a better job of it than I. Indeed, I wasn't even going to participate in this mini-debate until your comment about "pain". To me, this is a balancing test. How many people will find them useful against the clutter of having templates coming out the kazoo. In this instance, the usefulness, in my view, pales in comparison. Every time one of these templates is created, I then see Tony adding the template to articles I happen to watch. Even though I believe their usefulness is extraordinarily limited, I can't very well remove the added template because it's obviously relevant to the article. Thus, the only way to remove the template from a particular article is to delete the template. And although I agree with you that !vote numbers aren't as important as the reasoning behind the !votes, you appear to be using numbers in your argument (i.e., "sizeable number of people find them useful"), so to some extent, in this discussion, the number of people who find them useful vs. the number who don't has more relevance than it might have in another deletion debate.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:00, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The "pain" part was about !votes that are purely based on personal preference; if you manage to argue based on actual problems you perceive with the templates, as you did in your comment, then that part does not apply to you. I might still disagree with your argument but at least there is some argument to disagree with. Speaking of which, I do think you need to point out policies saying that usefulness should be measured on what the majority finds useful. I cannot find any rule that says so. Yes, I admit I used numbers as well, because it's impossible to argue about usefulness in any other way (we can't obviously keep everything that only one person finds useful but encumbers everyone else); but that does not mean that we have to remove something that 10 people find useful because 15 people disagree. For example, I personally don't find categories useful and I almost exclusively navigate using lists and navboxes. But I don't go around nominating categories for deletion because I don't find them useful. As said above by both sides, the only guideline covering this particular area is Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates and I simply cannot find anything in that guideline that would justify deleting those templates. Regards SoWhy 22:22, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Bbb23 put this very nicely. The utility of these templates is outweighed by the fact that they are collections of links that are tenuously connected. There is a reason we never had templates that contained every single television show that is currently or will be airing on any particular TV network until late September, which is because the community as a whole clearly did not think they were necessary. It was only until TonyTheTiger made a dozen of these templates and created a whole separate template to link between them (you can go from ABC to CBS in one click thanks to
        WP:NENAN, which clearly holds for these boxes. If this was a useful navigation box, we would clearly have a box for each and every major television network around the world. We don't have {{BBC One Shows (current and upcoming)}} and we don't have {{TV Asahi Shows (current and upcoming)}}, so why should we have {{ABCNetwork Shows (current and upcoming)}}?—Ryulong (竜龙) 22:32, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply
        ]
        • So is
          another fallacy I'm afraid), let me ask it this way: If we have {{ABCNetwork Shows (current and upcoming)}}, why don't we have {{BBC One Shows (current and upcoming)}} and {{TV Asahi Shows (current and upcoming)}}? You argue that the lack of similar international templates is a reason for deletion, I can (and will) just as easily argue that this lack is a reason to create them. Regards SoWhy 09:12, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply
          ]
          • Oh wonderful, another NOTDUP excuse. Categories are a software function. Navboxes require active creation beyond adding [[:Category:Category]] to a page. No one had any sort of inkling in their mind to make a template that lists every single TV show on a single network without any sort of discrimination between program types up until TonyTheTiger's Fox Network templates were put up for deletion. And that didn't deter him from making others. It would be fine if there was a template just for "Fox Primetime" or "CBS Daytime" or "Late Night Talk Shows". But these massive boxes that sometimes are not collapsed are entirely unnecessary for the project. No one wanted them until TonyTheTiger made them late last month and I nominated them for deletion, making me a terrible person and someone to ban from this and any other deletion process.—Ryulong (竜龙) 09:35, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
            • Please explain why citing NOTDUP, a guideline based on consensus, is an excuse. Just because categories are part of the software and navboxes are not, does that make categories automatically better? Again, the categories do not make any discrimination between program types (quite the contrary) but the templates, at least some of them, do. In the CBS example I mentioned, primetime shows are indeed separated from other shows, so that argument is not really based on facts. Also, at the risk of sounding condescending, please avoid bringing up the person of the creator or the person of the nominator (in this case yourself); if you and Tony want to have some kind of grudge match, do it somewhere else. My goal was to have a sensible discussion about whether those templates should be deleted based on policies and guidelines; I don't care who created them when or for what reason - and neither should you. Regards SoWhy 11:35, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
              • NOTDUP is not an end-all-be-all rule. And these templates would be fine if they were not all inclusive. What has been done to several of them has made them better. But several of these templates appear to be beyond repair, in that they feature every single program that has ever aired on a particular network without any sort of division between what type of program they are or when they air on the network (any template not defined as "current and upcoming" are the worst, atm).—Ryulong (竜龙) 19:50, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh, go ahead, SoWhy, and nominate categories for deletion. Please start with the most controversial (all categories related to religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and criminal conduct) and then move on to the remainder (are there more categories than articles?). :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 23:00, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Why should I? As I said above, just because I find them useless, does not mean that they have to be deleted. I have many faults but thinking what I think should be the rules is not one of them. On a more serious note though: I don't see why some people in favor of deletion think "delete navboxes, categories are enough" is a valid argument but would not think "delete categories, navboxes are enough" to be one. As I said above, as long as those templates don't actually cause any harm, I see no reason to have a peaceful coexistence, so everyone can use what fits their personal reading style. Regards SoWhy 09:12, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep All They are useful, which in my mind is an argument enough. Secondly, and most importantly, claiming that being on the same network does not make the shows in any way relate to one another is false. There are plenty of ways in which such grouping makes sense. Made up real life examples of proper use of those templates: (1) "I read somewhere that NBC is having financial problems. I wonder what programs they are broadcasting (are going to broadcast) that makes that so. I want to read about them"; (2) "So supposedly The CW oriented it's programming towards young women. What kind of programming is that?"; (3) "I read that more and more viewers are switching from broadcast TV to cable TV. E! Online said that USA Network and TNT are taking advantage of that with original programming. I wonder what kind of stuff they make?" In some context it makes sense to search for information regarding TV shows, while categorizing them by the channel they are on. That's a good reason for keeping them, isn't it? SWojczyszyn (talk) 17:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• NOTE: The ones who are saying that we have categories for the navbox templates are making a
  OTHERSTUFF argument in a deletion debate, which means it is not enough to advocate for the deletion of these quality navigational aids in the first place.The Gypsy Vagabond Man (talk) 22:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • The quality of these templates have been in question since the beginning.—Ryulong (竜龙) 22:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. But only the shows currently on the air. We don't need future shows on theses templates. We can always add them when they start.Farine (talk) 23:16, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • You "voted" above at 18:37, 24 October 2011 (UTC).--
    WP:FOUR) 13:31, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply
    ]

• Keep, There's nothing wrong with the templates. Just keep them. --Rayous (talk) 11:08, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep All as these are useful navigational tools that serve a different function that a separate list or a category cannot. The deletion rationale presented is thin to non-existent so rebutting directly is futile. - Dravecky (talk) 21:03, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete All as per Curb Chain's response Gsingh (talk) 18:29, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep All; until somebody comes up with a better way of doing this (grouping the info conveniently), & superceeds the current practice(s), these make sense as info-grouping for ORDINARY END-USER-TYPE-PEOPLE who are trying to research/find-something. & all the petty in-fighting/arguements/debates over this kind of trivial stuff is a giant sucking WASTE of our time & resources. -__- Lx 121 (talk) 17:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete All. I would agree to keep them if they only included the current programming. This kind of information should be included in the individual article of the network. I guess my point is that, twenty years after they are aired, there's no sensible navigation to be done among article of tv programs only because they happened to premiere on the same network.--RR (talk) 11:04, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. And I'm not a huge fan of these types of templates, but they're harmless and occasionally interesting/useful. I admit some of these are a little daunting - like the Template:FOXNetwork Shows template for example - I haven't looked at each one, but I would suggest the longer templates (like the FoxNetwork template) could possibly be split up by decade. By the way - I'm not sure if there is an "official" policy, but I don't like this business of nominating 20+ different templates all at once like this. Just for that alone this should be an automatic "keep". --- Crakkerjakk (talk) 13:03, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem with splitting it by decade is that those kind of templates were already deleted at TFD.—Ryulong (竜龙) 19:43, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, well navboxes by "decade" would definitely have been better than this FoxNetwork navbox we have now (which expands to almost twice the width of the page on my browser). I have a feeling if people had known that the result would have been that all the navboxes would simply be merged into one, then people would have voted differently. Since this has obviously been previously debated (in depth) - then what we should probably have is one definitive discussion about the creation/use of navboxes by network, period - instead of going through endless noms/votes about each template which ends up with what we have now - people voting to delete because navboxes are "too big", only to have the end result be even bigger navboxes. --- Crakkerjakk (talk) 04:19, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.