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January 17

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. 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.

The result of the discussion was Delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Actors in Law and Order (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Per current consensus, actors should not be included in template boxes. However, this template is nothing but a list of actors who have been regulars or recurring in Law & Order. A removal of all actors names from this template would leave a completely blank template. Therefore, the only reasonable course of action is deletion. See also Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 January 7#Template:Actors in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Redfarmer (talk) 21:11, 17 January 2010 (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.
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The result of the discussion was delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Islamic Solidarity Games (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Only navigates three articles, which are all easily navigable from one another. —Justin (koavf)TCM19:13, 17 January 2010 (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.
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The result of the discussion was delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:MLB pitching coaches by team (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

This template is along the lines of many previously deleted MLB templates which link together articles that are only tangentially related. There were templates for Yankees' outfielders, Tigers' second basemen, and so forth. They were determined to be unnecessary because there is no lead article linking them all together. This is even less relevant because there are no "lists of pitching coaches" to link together either. The format here was taken from the template about team managers, but this template, which links merely to the team articles, doesn't have nearly as much utility. KV5 (TalkPhils) 17:00, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are templates for offensive/defensive coordinators, so it's not unprecedented.--Levineps (talk) 17:11, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say it was unprecedented; I said that there's precedent to delete this one. That precedent would likely also apply to the aforementioned templates of OCs and DCs because I don't see a "List of [x team] offensive coordinators" anywhere. Though I don't like succession boxes much at all, this is a point where they are useful: when a navbox is overkill and where no list exists to supplement said navbox. KV5 (TalkPhils) 21:08, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, along with {{MLB bench coaches by team}}. This is all sports-geek fancruft that doesn't actually aid navigationm (it's a "trivial intersection" in WP:OVERCAT's terminology). If the nominator feels the managers one is markedly different, I'll defer - I don't edit baseball much. I am principally a sports-geek WPian, however; my contribs will demonstrate that I spend most of my time here editing in that topic area). I mean "fancruft" in the nicest possible way. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 12:35, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I concur with the inclusion of the bench coaches template; the reason that I feel that the managers template is different is because it links together not only the current managers, but also the historical lists of team managers for both current and defunct teams, which means that the manager navbox provides a lot more utility. That particular navbox will also later be used to facilitate a featured topic, the lead article of which is currently living here. KV5 (TalkPhils) 21:06, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds eminently reasonable. :-) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 09:48, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone more knowledgeable about the XfD process than I would care to add the bench coaches template to this nomination, I would be grateful. KV5 (TalkPhils) 13:21, 19 January 2010 (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.
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The result of the discussion was delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 17:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Redirectpeople (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

It can be sufficiently replaced by {{redirect}}. I found only 3 tranclusions and one was this. Unnecessary and now orphan. Magioladitis (talk) 13:07, 17 January 2010 (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.
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The result of the discussion was Delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:WikiProject Templates (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

A template to put on the talk page of every single template on the system is pointless (and that is what this is for - see it's own documentation - and is being used that way, since I found it on a random template's talk page). It is a complete duplication of the function of Category:Wikipedia templates (there would ultimately be an exact 1:1 overlap), and the goal is effectively impossible to achieve (even if a bot tagged every template talk page, creating such pages where they were missing, a zillion templates are created per day and most editors of them would never both to tag the new ones).

This is very distinct from Template:WikiProject Inline Templates, since those templates are all of-a-piece and should not be modified by editors who do not understand their workings, consensus about minimizing the distractingness of their appearance, etc.; it is valuable to direct editors to a project about them. By contrast, Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates is almost as vague as a WikiProject Articles, and won't serve any such function for average visitors to any given template's talk page. Anyway, not every internal-process WikiProject needs a banner. In fact, most of them do not. This one isn't one of the few exceptions.

PS: Assuming that the project even survives (I suspect that it will prove to be too general for useful collaboration), I can see the pagename at issue here eventually being populated by a special project banner that is only for use on "Wikpedia talk:"-namespace pages, so that pages like Wikipedia:Template messages can have their talk pages tagged as within the scope of a template-management project, and with code in the new template to put up screaming-red warnings if anyone attempts to use it in any other namespace, especially the "Template talk:" namespace. But that isn't this template, which should be deleted before someone wastes a bunch of time AWBing or bot'ing it onto tens of thousands of template talk pages and annoying every editor with a template in their watchlist.

PPS: The talk page of the template's creator, User talk:16@r is a truly unbelievable litany of deletion notices of every kind. In over 4 years, I have never seen anything like it. It's as if the user is intentionally creating articles, templates, file uploads, redirects, etc., etc., that have no value and in many cases negative value. Not sure that's technically relevant to this particular TFD, but there's a very clear disruptive editing pattern here, and actually deploying this template as it is intended to be deployed would indeed be disruptive. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 11:43, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. I don't see this as any different than any other WikiProject template: it should be placed on every article or non-article talk page under the scope of the project. This template is hardly disruptive (at least no more so than any other project template), and if an editor gets annoyed that a project banner is placed on the talk page of a page they are watching, then maybe they need to get a new hobby and stop owning the templates. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:49, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Delete unless it is used for some sort of assessment, though I'm not sure what assessment would apply. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Please re-examine the nomination more closely. I covered in some detail why this banner's use is not like other project templates. If something in particular is unclear, then I'll be happy to re-explain it. I have taken a stab at this below. Perhaps the nomination was poorly worded or something — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 09:59, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - I do see this as different from other WikiProject banners. Other WikiProjects tag pages so that they can keep track of and assess pages under the scope of the project, where those pages constitute a percentage of the total number of pages in the various namespaces. WikiProject Templates does not carry out assessments and the scope of its project is the entire template namespace (i.e., 100% of pages in one namespace). In other words, the scope of the project is already clearly-defined as any page in the template namespace and there is nothing gained by adding this tag to ~200,000 template talk pages. –Black Falcon (talk) 19:23, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Commment: Even if this banner were only placed on "Wikipedia templates" by which I am guessing that you mean internal, self-referential templaets instead of those used in the article namespace, that would still be thousands and thousands of taggings and talk page creations for no reason, and there would not be any effective way of enforcing this - editors would continually be tagging articlespace templates' talk pages with the banner. The nomination already said why not to keep this: The bad template at issue here is intended specifically for use on "Template talk:" pages and says so very plainly, and is being abused in that fashion right now. It is not proposed that the name at which this template resides be SALTed. If the project wakes up and wants to create a new banner at that pagename, that doesn't lend itself to (much less directly encourage) misuse, then they can. There's a lot of "if" latent in all that, and how many "Template talk" pages are going to be needlessly created and slapped with this template before then? Are you going to run AWB for hours and hours cleaning it up, or spend even more time writing and testing a bot to deal with it? I'm sure not.
Not every page needs a tag, and not every project needs to tag pages with a banner. The more internal it is, less topical it is and the less article-focused, then the less a project needs to even have a banner at all. This project is very far along the wikigeeky and WP-self-referential side of that spectrum. There is no particular reason that Wikipedia-namespace pages like guidelines need to have their talk pages tagged by a project like this except in unusual cases of very close collaboration (thus the WP:WPFT banner at WT:MOSICON). Venues like Wikipedia talk:Substitution or Wikipedia talk:Template messages or Help talk:Magic words are about templates, generally, but nothing bad has resulted from WikiProject Templates not asserting tagged scope over those pages. Show me the collaborative and encyclopedia improving purpose of such tagging. Which isn't even the issue here: Template talk tagging is, the expressed purpose of the deletion candidate. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 11:48, 18 January 2010 (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.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. 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.

The result of the discussion was Keep. There is (as yet) no guideline for how many links a navbox needs to contain. So while the practice at TFD may include past deletions of templates with a similar number of links, there is no policy basis for discounting the majority of comments in favor of keeping this one. Additionally, seven links is within the gray area of TFD precedent, with some navboxes having as few as five links being kept in recent history. RL0919 (talk) 17:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Avatar (film) (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Only really navigates six articles related to Avatar (along with James Cameron) and all of them are easily navigable from the main article. —Justin (koavf)TCM07:53, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Prose exists for a reason, and fancruft exists just to irritate us. >;-) PS: A right-hand sidebar nav template might be more viable, but still, 6–7 articles seems too few to justify something like that. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 11:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: (full disclosure: I'm the template's creator) Maybe the articles are easily navigable from the main article. However, they are not from the other articles, where it's largely only James Cameron and Avatar (2009 film) which are linked. Also, the template has considerable room to grow. There are three books that might have articles or subsections about them (a novelisation, a book about the art design and a book about the design of the history of Pandora) and a potential of (at least) two more movies (and the games and books associated with them). --ThejadefalconSing your songThe bird's seeds 16:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. These kinds of navigation templates are very common, and the point about them being easily navigable from the main article is a red herring. The point of the template (and why it should be kept) is because it makes it easy to navigate from/to any of the articles under the template's scope regardless of which article you're viewing. The potential for expansion is also worth noting due to the movie's success; it's very likely there will be more movies since this one has made well over $1 billion USD. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Such templates are common for complex topics with a great number of articles, not for micro-subjects like this that are popular because the movie just came out (such templates are very regularly deleted here). The category is plenty sufficient. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 12:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I should note that I haven't seen the film as of yet, so attempts to dismiss my opinion as WP:ILIKEIT are completely disingenuous. Six articles is enough, I believe, to make a navigation template such as this completely viable, and it's not WP:CRYSTALBALLism to state that additional articles will be likely given the success of the film. The movie even apparently (as I haven't seen it, I don't know for sure) leaves things open for a sequel. The category alone is not necessarily sufficient, either, as it requires additional work to locate and go to, whereas the template allows the visitor who may not be familiar with categories (or even notice them, for that matter) to easily find the related articles. I can understand not having one for, say, 2 or 3 articles, but six is sufficient to make the template useful and ease navigation between closely related articles such as this. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:26, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I think it helps navigation. They're articles that might not be founf other wise. There's no reason why prose should cancel out the usefulness of this. Both can exist. I think the amount links only barely justify it, but the possibility for expansion resolves this (IMO, at least), Lord Spongefrog, (I am Czar of all Russias!) 18:59, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - This template helps people navigate multiple articles that are avatar-related. December21st2012Freak Talk to me at ≈ 19:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I feel its a great template that helps with navigation of "Avatar" related articles; and in time, as the franchise grows even further, it will prove even more of a necessity. DrNegative (talk) 19:24, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Cameron has said there will probably be sequels. Plus, there's a language, books, characters, a lot of pages that can be added to the template.71.178.226.55 (talk) 20:12, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Multi-party reply: As for future book articles and stuff, WP:NOT#CRYSTAL. "It might get improved later" could be used as a "keep" rationale in every single TfD ever filed, if it were valid. :-) Almost all of the "keep" !votes above, from the template author on down, simply echo this invalid point, so I'll address all of them at once: We don't care what James Cameron says he may do; he could drop dead tonight. Of course there are characters. It would be a dull movie without them. But there aren't character articles to put in this template and hopefully there...won't...ever...be. That there's a language (sorta) isn't relevant, since that's already in the template (not to mention that it's not necessarily viable long-term as a separate article). Books? If they were original non-fanfic stories, maybe. But even books exactly like the three you mention, for the world's most popular and enduring fictional universes from Middle Earth to Star Wars to Marvel Comics, do not have articles and never will, because they are not notable in their own right; so, the books thing is a handwave. Look, I'm as much of a sci-fi fan as the next geek [I even picked "handwave" over "red herring" because it's a Jedi mind trick reference] and even a fan of this film, but please read WP:AADD, folks. Every "keep" reason given here so far is covered there, under interesting keywords like "CRYSTAL" (a matter of policy), "ILIKEIT", "OTHERSTUFF", "ITSUSEFUL", and hints of "INTHENEWS" and "NOHARM", with the sole exception of the template maybe actually aiding in navigation. It's a question of whether a near-empty but huge template like this actually does so, when there are so few topics to cover that all six articles could easily link to all 5 of their siblings, and every one of them will be in the same category (we do have categories for a reason, namely navigation). Prose and category are plenty, otherwise every single topic with two or more articles could have a template like this. There's just not enough complexity here to necessitate a navbox. That's all I feel inclined to say on the matter. I don't hate this template or whatever and my life will be neither richer nor poorer without it, I'm just not inclined to let "arguments to avoid in deletion discussions" drown out clearer rationales in a deletion discussion, as often happens when something comes for XfD and happens to be related to a presently popular media phenomenon. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 12:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep to improve navigation between articles about Avatar. I was not sure about this template at first, but I realized that we have director templates with fewer articles than this. Ultimately, I think the template helps highlight the articles where they are sometimes buried in the article body. There are enough articles currently for the template, so I do not believe the question of future growth is an issue here. My only request is to exclude James Cameron from the template. While he directed Avatar, he is more than the film and its franchise and should not be put under that particular umbrella. Erik (talk) 13:19, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Not really necessary. I see a widespread assumption among many, many editors that every film is automatically entitled to its own dedicated template (even if one doesn't actually get created, a template redlink is very commonly added to the new article for any film regardless of its utility or lack thereof). But they're not all automatically entitled to their own templates, and until there are far more articles than there currently are for aspects of this film, this one isn't needed either. Bearcat (talk) 00:01, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Every film" is an exaggeration. This film has numerous articles related to it, such as the video game article and the fictional universe sub-article. We usually see franchise templates in films that are part of franchises, which is a much smaller number than "every film". Of course not all films are entitled to their own templates, but why do you think a navigation template is unnecessary for this particular group of articles? Erik (talk) 21:19, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update: I have to observe for both !voters and closing admin that a large percentage of ongoing TfDs, including on Jan 17, Jan 18, and Jan 19 archives are of precisely the same type as this: A page-bottom navbox with only a handful of entries, for a topic contained all in a single, simple category. I'm going forward only from this nomination, but there are innumerable past examples of such navboxes with 2 to 10 entries in them being deleted for the same reasons this one was nominated, and remarkably few counterexamples. The reason this one has some "keep" !votes is simply that Avatar is an hot new topic, and fans tend to reflexively resist deletion of anything related to what they are a fan of, be it about a movie or about barnstars or whatever, regardless of the strength of the deletion rationales and precedents. PS: An important aspect of this TfD to keep in mind by the closer is that if the template is kept, this will be seen as a blanket precedent for keeping such a template, no matter how few entries it has in it, as long as a case can be made that the movie or book or album or whatever is popular (right now) and might eventually generate some more articles. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō Contribs. 10:06, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The template could have many more articles linked within it if we wanted, similar to Template:WALL-E for example, however the cast was chosen to be ommitted. Just about every cast member, the production company, and James Cameron himself confirmed a trilogy with many verfied sources, in addition to books, spinoffs, etc. I agree with the case by case basis and in my opinion this template passes that test. Giving this particular template discussion the weight of a "blanket precedent" is a very bold statement as well. DrNegative (talk) 20:07, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep due to common sense. It would seem extremely likely for this particular film that there will be considerably more than 6 articles, & we'd just have to recreate it. More generally, based on my experience in teaching the use of Wikipedia, I don't think most users actually see categories or , if they do, understand them. Seeing this is immediately clear. I think this is a good case to consider for the purpose of slowing the trend to removing them in similar cases. As a compromise , I'd accept for now SMCandishe's use of the word "handful" : 6 or more merit a template. DGG ( talk ) 16:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - this film is already the second-biggest film in history, and by the time you read this it may be the biggest. It may be the most profitable artwork in any medium in history, spawning works in multiple other media. No doubt it will still be talked about 20 years from now, win a swag of awards, people will purport to learn and study the Navi language, the studio will beg for a sequel, there'll be fan fiction, and so on. It's analogous to Template:Star Trek. - Richard Cavell (talk) 10:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I agree to keep, I have to disagree with this argument. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and a speculated future should not have bearing on keeping this template. We should work with what exists currently. For example, if there was just the film article and the language article, then as popular as the film would be, it does not warrant a template because it is so famous. As it stands, though, this film has enough related articles to put together a navigation template that is more than bare-bones. Erik (talk) 13:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. It's not a complex topic like serotonergic drugs, or an overwhelming multitude of articles like subgenres of electronic music, and I had no trouble finding the articles I wanted before the template existed. The Avatar franchise as it currently exists is one film and a bunch of fan extrapolation about its alien language (both of which I enjoyed, make no mistake). Let it get bigger than the Jurassic Park franchise (i.e., at a minimum four distinct creative works and a Weird Al parody) and a template might start to be a little worth considering. (No, individual permastubs about Pandoran species or locations or human aircraft models or supporting characters don't count.) And really I'm looking for more than a dozen articles more than a page long. eritain (talk) 07:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. 7 articles are already included in the template. I think it's more than enough to keep it. -- deerstop. 23:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, and don't be silly. The number of articles in the template doesn't really matter as long as it's not literally just one or two, and the suggestion that the ones that are there are just as easily navigable from a 120 KB (!) page surely has to be a joke. -- Schneelocke (talk) 11:08, 23 January 2010 (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.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. 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.

The result of the discussion was delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Otherhurricaneuses3 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Too narrow and orphan. All hurricanes use {{Otherhurricaneuses}}. Magioladitis (talk) 00:14, 17 January 2010 (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.
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The result of the discussion was Delete Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Template:For url (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

External links should be on the bottom and not as dablinks on the top. Moreover, this one is orphan Magioladitis (talk) 00:04, 17 January 2010 (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.