Navigational templates are lil' boxes on the bottom of a wikipedia article that link it to other articles sharing a common theme. They are for the most part redundant with categories and lists, but they look pretty and lead to more right clicking and result in lots of Open Link in New Tab. Because they are easy to make, look cool, and link to articles you like/think people should click on, folks make a lot of navigational templates. That's why I make 'em. I even put pictures on mine. My navigational templates rock.
The creation of navigational templates has been getting completely out of hand. Some articles have a ridiculous number that serve more to confuse/overwhelm than to provide meaningful encyclopedic content. Check out the comical number of navigational templates for soccer coachSven-Göran Eriksson. A backlash of anti-navigational template deletionists have been overcompensating for this proliferation. Wiki folks tend to be sensitive and highly protective of their creations, and when legitimate navigational templates got caught in the deletion rampage, shit got kinda crazy. Wikipedia's open and democratic nature leads to bickering and counter rebuttals worse than you can imagine. Thousands of these guys versing thousands of these guys. Trust me, you don't want to get involved with any of these dudes.
Not sure who's gonna win the versus, but I'ma keep making navigational templates 'til the whole thing gets resolved. Been putting off making lists for some reason, but I need to get on that in order to hedge my bets and be sufficiently redundant that I won't be upset if everything gets deleted.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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