Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 September 11

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September 11

Template:A Day to Remember singles

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 merge Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:02, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:A Day to Remember singles (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Template:A Day to Remember main (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Propose merging Template:A Day to Remember singles with Template:A Day to Remember main.
There's plenty of room in the main template to include a line for singles, as only 7 of the titles have articles. A singles navbox isn't intended to serve as a discography of all released singles. A split such as this is unnecessary for so few articles. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 18:02, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• merge, no need for two navboxes here. Frietjes (talk) 18:53, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Merge, per nom. Insulam Simia (talk · contribs) 06:04, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
• Merge, per nom. Keep the release dates in the merge, and add to other entries where appropriate. Lentower (talk) 13:59, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

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.

Template:R from move

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 no consensus. Clearly there is agreement that blocking a reverse move is not always a good idea, if it was not part of a consensus move. However, no consensus on the best way to handle the problem. And, there is some support for making reverse moves harder when the move was per consensus. Feel free to continue the discussion elsewhere concerning the best solution to the problem (for example, changing the backend software so that the template/category is left automatically when the page is moved, which would avoid the problem that the move cannot be easily reversed Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 18:42, 28 September 2013 (UTC))  Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:30, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:R from move (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

This template unnecessarily disrupts the moving process, with its application making it completely impossible to revert minor unneeded moves per WP:MOR. It is basic Wikipedia etiquette that you do not edit redirects as a result of a move in the first place so there is no reason that this particular template should ever be used. —Ryulong (琉竜) 13:54, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Question: can this template be applied automatically at every page move (by editing something in the MediaWiki: namespace or similar) and would that not make a hypothetical move back impossible? If yes, perhaps we should enable that. Otherwise, I agree with you. Keφr 16:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree that this is problematic since adding it prevents undoing a move. We should do something about this problem. Frietjes (talk) 16:21, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Pretty sure that this has been requested before, and denied. See for example Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 83#R from move (January 2011), Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 74#Moving pages and categories (June 2011), and related thread at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 98#Move tool needing an update? (April 2012). --Redrose64 (talk) 20:22, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Although Ryulong's reasoning is compelling at first glance—especially to any editor inexperienced in the realm of redirect categorization—it is far from enough to justify the deletion of {{R from move}}, or any other redirect template for that matter. One could make the same argument for any commonly used redirect template: {{R to section}}, {{R to subpage}}, {{R from modification}}, {{R from alternative name}}, and {{R to project}}, for example, are each highly unlikely to be currently used on the majority of the redirects requiring them. In fact, adding redirect templates disrupts the processes of creating and maintaining redirects tremendously! Does this mean they should all be deleted for their crime of slowing Wikipedia's progress down just a bit? Why not just get rid of them all, down to every last template and category associated with the categorization of redirects?

I admit that I often wish that the redirect classification/categorization system on Wikipedia had never been established in the first place, and that some other method of automatic categorization, if necessary, would greatly simplify and enhance the project. However, the system has long been in place, and at this point, completing the project of categorizing redirects would be far easier than erasing it entirely from existence. With the help of various bots (whose creation I intend to propose in the future), the RCAT project will speedily become nearly complete and, at last, convenient for editors who regularly create redirects. If and when this day comes, redirect templates will no longer slow down the processes of moving pages, merging pages, creating subpages, and maintaining redirects in general. Such efforts will not be of concern. — |J~Pæst|  22:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Why the hell did you add this additional comment right under my rationale?—Ryulong (琉竜) 19:33, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Just like Keφr's comment, mine was a direct response to your initial statement, and therefore it needed to be placed after it with only one level of indentation. It is so far the last such singly indented direct response; the rest are bulleted. Move it if you want to—is that really so relevant? — |J~Pæst|  01:22, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• This template has been TfDd before, see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 January 10#Template:R from move. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:22, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • ? – "The result of the discussion was delete BUT not until the software can be rewritten to leave this template behind automatically during the move process."

    So the software can automatically leave behind red links to a deleted template? Maybe the Foundation can implement some separate system for categorizing redirects along the lines of Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5, so that the one editor who thinks these are vital to the project can be satisfied. I'd like to see less energy wasted on ensuring that the correct "R from" template was on each redirect and more energy devoted to helping WikiProject Merge reduce their backlog. Redirects are cheap and usually harmless, so in general the more the merrier! Each one reduces the risk of another unintentional content fork being created. This insight was made a long time ago:

    The creation of duplicate articles, and the wasted effort this causes, can be avoided by creating lots of redirects.

    — MartinHarper, (diff)

    – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:22, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

• Delete with regret because it's useful to categorise redirects in this way, but Ryulong's right, under the current system it causes more problems than it solves. If it could be added without preventing non-admins from undoing the move (or if the 'move over redirect' ability was available to non-admins in the first place), it would be worth keeping, but at the moment it isn't. Robofish (talk) 22:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

  (Alternatively, Rename as proposed by 70.24.244.158 directly below. Robofish (talk) 23:24, 16 September 2013 (UTC))

• Rename to {{R from consensus move}}, and only apply it when it is a consensus outcome move (like from an RM, or AfD). If it was a consensus move, a new consensus would be required to move the article back to this point. It will also show people that there's a reason that they can't move something atop the redirect, and they should check the talk page. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 06:43, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

  Personally, I'd be OK with this as an alternative to deletion, but it might be difficult to enforce. If it's actually workable, though, it could be the best solution. Robofish (talk) 23:23, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with Keφr; I've always thought it would be nice if the move process would automatically apply this. Otherwise, as the nom says, it can be used to lock a move into place. --BDD (talk) 16:02, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Delete Having arrived here based on exactly that scenario (someone complaining about a move they could not revert due to the addition of the template), I think the value of the categorization is outweighed by the disruption it causes. A rename would be fine I guess, as long as its clear this should not be used on moves made without discussion. Monty₈₄₅ 00:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

  How could you possibly justify that its disruption to absolute simplicity "outweighs" its importance? The importance of a template is irrelevant to its level of convenience to editors. — |J~Pæst|  01:22, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• Weak delete in its present state. As I said, it would be great if this could be automatically applied, although even then, I guess the best you could do is an admonition in the documentation not to apply it manually; it could still be abused. But moves are logged, so a separate template someone has to manually add to indicate a move was performed just isn't necessary. Caveat, though: people will continue to be able to abuse other R templates, which, as a whole, are here to stay. --BDD (talk) 00:39, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

  In fact this template can be applied to redirects from former moved pages automatically, BDD; have you forgotten completely about bots? All it takes is a small team of bots to finish "just about anything" automatically on Wikipedia, and their utilization does by no means exclude applying Rcats. Within a relatively short period of time, a bot can be proposed, created, tested, and released to carry out enormous tasks such as this, thus solving the issue. Where is the inevitable flaw you speak of? — |J~Pæst|  22:57, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

  Bot edits do not solve the problem that editing a redirect created following a move produces.—Ryulong (琉竜) 23:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

  Right. What you describe just amounts to a bot locking a page in place. --BDD (talk) 23:23, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Strong keep. The argument to delete this Rcat has always pretty much been the same. Editors (some editors) have a problem with having to ask an admin for help to move a page. They say that it's some kind of convention to not categorize recently-moved redirects. And they have always been proven wrong. One reason I don't think the devs will do an "auto-move" categorization is because it is completely unnecessary. I categorize a lot of redirects and every time I have come across redirects from moves that needed to be tagged with {{R from move}}, those redirects always needed to be tagged with at least one, usually more than one, other category. I've also moved many pages, and I have always had to tag the redirect left behind with more than one category. So the "convention" or "ettiquette" concern flies out the window in the face of reality. This is a very useful redirect category template that is transcluded to many, many redirect pages (nearly 3,000). It's category Redirects from moves is a useful administrative category. This Rcat should stay put as actually one of the more important project administration tools we have for tracking page moves. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 21:38, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

  If it's always been the same, then maybe there is a problem. Redirects made from moves should not really ever be edited unless a new article is made or another move happens and the double redirect needs to be fixed. Adding a tag to something created after a move only complicates things unnecessarily.—Ryulong (琉竜) 03:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

  Adding a tag to something created after a move only complicates things unnecessarily.

  Please elaborate. Maybe I'm being naive, because all I can see that tagging a redirect and sorting it into one or more maintenance/tracking categories does is to help and improve the Wikipedia project. If the complications of which you speak mean that I am not improving Wikipedia whenever I sort redirects into categories, then please tell me what those complications are, so that I may stop sorting redirects into useful tracking categories. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 15:48, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

  I simply do not see any utility in having this particular categorization of redirects. Saying "this redirect is an alternate spelling" or "this redirect is unprintworthy" works. But there should simply be no reason to do anything to a redirect created after a move because it only complicates matters when trying to undo moves. Such edits are not liked by the community and this template which I honestly had never come across before I saw it used on a particular page only promotes these edits.—Ryulong (琉竜) 17:18, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

  I simply do not see any utility in having this particular categorization of redirects.

  Thank you for your response. The utility lies in Wikipedia's ability to track and maintain redirects in specific categories. For example, printworthy and unprintworthy redirects are useful and tracked because there might someday be a full, printed version of Wikipedia. Some redirects would be useful in such a printed version and some would not be useful. Since the project still has many redirects that are not sorted as printworthy or unprintworthy, then it is also useful to track typos, incorrect names, dab-related redirects and, yes, renamed pages. Another reason to track moves is the "vandal-move issue". Yet another reason would be to ensure that a glaring error has not been made by a good-faith page move. Just like the categories you mentioned, it is prudent to track and maintain page moves for several reasons.

  ...it only complicates matters when trying to undo moves.

  Frankly, the only complication I can see is that it calls for an admin to come in and make a decision. If this were not necessary, in other words, if it did not matter if there were only one edit or two-or-more edits, and editors could revert a move without admin intervention, then would you mind if this Rcat continued to do its job?

  Such edits are not liked by the community...

  How can you judge what the community likes or dislikes? All it takes to suggest the removal of a template is one disgruntled editor. This particular template has survived Tfd before, so it would seem that it is correct to say that the community either likes this template or is not particularly concerned whether or not this template continues to do its job. There are several types of edits that can only be performed by admins, and controversy has persisted, continues to persist and will probably persist long into the future. Sorry, but I fail to understand how the deletion of a perfectly good and useful Rcat will change that. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 18:18, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

  We do not need to track and maintain the redirects created as a result of moves. Doing so prevents established editors from disagreeing and requires going through WP:RM. The only reason anyone ever edits a redirect after a move is to prevent it from being undone outside of a requested move. Because your rhetorical situation does not exist, this template gets in the way. Many a time have there been discussions concerning people being dicks and editing redirects to get their way until a requested move restores what was previously status quo. And the only reason this template survived TFD previously is because the technical capability to add this automatically to all moved pages has not been implimented, thereby getting rid of the need to edit the page to add it in the first place. This time around we should not end with that condition, or we should at least place a moratorium on its usage.—Ryulong (琉竜) 19:20, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

  Well, I intend to continue what's left of my wikiholiday, and I suggest you take one, too. It's the best thing to do when editing Wikipedia stops being fun and rewarding. When things get so bad that one has to set one's sights on reducing the useful tools of the project, then it's time to get away for awhile. Joys! – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 19:36, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

• Delete it only makes it harder for editors and I fail to see any use for it. Garion96 (talk) 17:02, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

  If the move is a result of a consensus discussion, it should be harder for editors to move the page. (however the template would then need to be renamed to indicate a more restricted purpose, "consensus move" ) -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 20:05, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

  If you fail to see any use for the template, Garion96, then it is likely that you are not aware of the importance of the WikiProject of Redirect Categorization. Along with hundreds of other redirect templates, this one is essential to the project; it is necessary for maintaining the category of redirects from moves, which provides information to Wikipedians about redirects' move histories. After many years of advantageous usage of such templates and their corresponding redirect categories, {{R from move}} remains just one template among many with the general purpose of supporting history-related categories of redirects. — |J~Pæst|  01:22, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• Rename and mark for consensus moves only per IP, and renominate later if that does not work. (If this name is redirected to the new one, it could be the first marked, actually...) -PC-XT+ 05:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

  If automatically done, without counting as an edit that keeps moves from being undone, I'd say keep. Otherwise, for redirect categorization preserving move histories, I think there should at least be a time period before applying these templates on redirects from moves, in which case I would also change to keep for now. If the time limit didn't work, though, it should be renamed to consensus move as I voted above. -PC-XT+ 06:03, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Keep Though I prefer to so the software do this automatically. Lentower (talk) 10:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep without a doubt. For the same reasons why we continue to use and keep {{R from merge}}, this template must also remain in use. Whether "slow" and "difficult to use" or not, {{R from move}} is an essential element of the >210 other redirect templates that classify redirects and place them into categories. This is nothing new; the project of redirect categorization has been around for years. The reason to keep such redirect templates does not stem from their convenience to use, but rather from their utter essentiality to the grand puzzle in progress that is redirect categorization on the English Wikipedia. If the goal were absolute simplicity, the project would have been discontinued long before now. And although it may create extra work for editors, using this one redirect template and every other cannot be simply abandoned, as the majority of redirect templates—including, very notably, {{R from move}}—are necessary for the project to succeed.

Complain about inconvenience all you want, but redirect templates remain essential to the progress of Wikipedia. They can't just be suddenly deleted due to such a small setback. — |J~Pæst|  22:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure the comparison to {{R from merge}} is apt. Along with certain talk page templates, {{R from merge}} is one of the only ways to indicate a merge has been performed, which is required by our attribution license. Moves are automatically logged, though, so {{R from move}} is essentially ornamental. As I said above, the essential problem identified in the nomination really wouldn't be solved by the deletion of this template, but it's still redundant to MediaWiki software. --BDD (talk) 23:23, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Is it really redundant? Moves have been logged for a long time. Redirect categorizing has been around for a long time. They've both been around so long, in fact, that I'm not sure which came first. If redirect categorizing has been here longer (I find that doubtful), then {{R from move}} should have been deleted or modified long ago. If move logging has been here longer, then there may have been another reason for initially creating this Rcat known only by administrators. Are you saying that there is no longer a reason to administratively track moves by the use of Category:Redirects from moves, which is the category that is populated by this Rcat? – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 17:34, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I do find the category useful. But it would be much more so if it were automatically populated during the course of a move instead of waiting for an editor (or even a bot) to come along and tag something. As for relative ages, this template is relatively green; its creation dates to 22 December 2009. I'm quite certain moves have been logged longer than that. So yes, the template itself is redundant. I think the previous TfD was correct and we should abide by it: this template should be deleted pending a software tweak. Now if only we could get that to happen. --BDD (talk) 18:01, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, that wasn't "quite" what the previous Tfd suggested – it suggested to "delete, but not until" the software tweak was in place. And what about that part about the misuse of this template? As I mentioned above, the move cat is not the only one that needs to be populated after a move. It depends on the redirect, but there is usually either {{R from alternative name}}, or {{R from typo}}, {{R from "lots of possibilities"}}, and when the redirect is in mainspace, then there is always {{R printworthy}} or {{R unprintworthy}}. There are so many administrative/maintenance/tracking cats to populate after a move that it seems to me to be just some editors letting off steam and picking on this one Rcat. If it is indeed redundant and no administrator can come up with a good reason to keep both the {{R from move}} Rcat and its populated category, Redirects from moves, then they both should be taken out. If they are both redundant then I cannot imagine how they would have lasted so long as to be populated by nearly three thousand redirects. It appears that there really must be a good reason to keep them and to use them. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 20:08, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

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.

Template:WikiProject United States

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 no consensus to delete, but it appears there is significant support for a "controlled demerger". Feel free to continue the discussion elsewhere. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:27, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject United States (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

This template is used on some 350,000 talk pages[1] and is over 180K large (coming from 220K at its height). But it serves no practical purpose anymore; the associated US project is all but dead, with most of the activity having to do with editing this template. It is basically an upmerge of many, many smaller projects into one in the hope that this would create a larger pool of active users, but this has failed.

Now, this complex, extremely large project tag is no longer the best solution to group and tag articles for the different smaller projects; this can best be done by un-merging the tag (for those projects that want this) or simply removing it (for the others).

Negative effects of the template and how it is implemented are e.g. the totally ridiculous assessments; these are taken directly from the sub-projects, with the effect that the Category:Top-importance United States articles contains articles like Talk:Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College (where it was top for WikiProject New Hampshire - Dartmouth College), Talk:Hillerich & Bradsby (which was top for the Louisville project), or Talk:Theodore Hesburgh (top for the Notre Dame University). These taggings for the US project have been done over 1 1/2 year ago, so it's not as if there wasn't time to correct them. Talk:East Carolina Pirates shows the bizarre way these are assessed, with the higher assessment of a smaller subproject taken over the lower assessment of the more broad subproject.

This template needs quite a lot of heavy maintenance, but serves no actual purpose anymore. Getting back to the smaller templates (the situation before 2012 basically) allows for a lot more flexibility without any clear loss of any benefits. Fram (talk) 09:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Support - For many of the same reasons mentioned above. I attempted to recreate this project in the hope of getting people to collaborate but I have to concede that idea failed miserably for several reasons. I can't even edit the template anymore because it was protected, partially so that I couldn't continue to develop the project. People don't want to collaborate, they want to do what they want and not be bothered by discussions and working in a team. If they wanted to be a part of a team they can do that at work or join a sports team. Even the active projects like MILHIST are showing signs of slowdown. 99% of the projects are either dead or serve as bully boards to push POV and article ownership. Additionally, since restarting this project it has been nothing but a drama magnet from editors and other projects who feel they own the articles and other projects shouldn't be allowed to tag them. Since no one wants to enforce WP:Ownership, they are allowed too. IMO, the entire WiiProject concept on Wikipedia is a failed idea and should be scuttled as a failure. We should delete all the WikiProjects, they cause far more problems that they solve and its time to get back to editing articles and less blogging and MMORG'ing. I would also add that with the coming implementation of WP:FLOW by the WMF, the talk pages won't support templates anyway, so the WikiProject Templates will be useless at that point effectively killing the WikiProjects. So we may as well get ready for that now. I could go on and there are many other reasons but this is long enough already. Kumioko (talk) 11:17, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment FLOW causes so many problems with everything concerning the way Wikipedia works right now. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 12:30, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
    • Facts: Flow doesn't even exist, so it's certainly not causing any problems right now.
      Kumioko, you are incorrect about Flow's planned effects on these templates. If you would please go read the use cases, you will see that support for WikiProject banners is already on the list of required features. When Jorm says that "templates" may not be supported, he specifically means templates like {{thank you}} or {{done}} that are placed in the middle of an editor's comments, not templates like {{WPUS}}. (And even there, the problem isn't using a template in a message; the real problem is after you've used the template, being able to open the page in the wikitext editor and see it as a "live" transcluded template instead of as (more or less) subst'd text.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
      • Maybe your right, we'll see. I'll believe it when I see it. If the development and implementation of Visual Editor is any kind of judge, the release of Flow is going to be exactly as much of a disgrace. But I am going by what Jorm has said in multiple venues, that templates in general including WikiProject Templates will likely not be supported. Maybe that has or will change, but that is completely unknown at this time. Kumioko (talk) 23:44, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
        • Specifically, what Jorm and his team said in the official page on what they're going to do in Flow is, "By metadata we mean things such as wikiproject tags - templates at the top of the talkpage that indicate those Wikiprojects the article falls under, and how those projects grade the article in terms of quality and importance. This sort of metadata - other examples would be media coverage of the article - has absolutely nothing to do with the process of discussion itself; it lives on the talkpage because there is nowhere else for it to go, and it is generally useful to have around. This is a good example of a use case for talkpages that Flow has to take into account; the inclusion of metadata about the associated article. Any Flow deployment will need to either include these elements in Flow-enabled pages, or find a better way of representing them." If "Any Flow deployment will need to include these [templates]" sounds like "WikiProject Templates will not be supported" to you, then there's really no point in continuing the discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
          • • That wasn't the location of the discussions I had with him. I'll try and find the later but I think they were at the Flow\FAQ page. Kumioko (talk) 00:48, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• De-merge per nom. The merging of banners caused much drama at WT:COUNCIL and WT:USA. But we shouldn't "mirror" the situation previously evident, instead, we should demerge to state-level banners, and subprojects that exist within one state should be signed on using the state-level banners. But US-topics that do not have some individual banner, and are signed on using other project banners, should also be signed on using the WPUSA banner (ie. American Samoa, and its alternate WPMICRONESIA bannering). US-wide topics would (USTV, USfilm, USanimation, etc) would stay signed on per the American Samoa previous point about not previously having a separate banner but using shared banners. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 12:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• De-merge per 70.24.etc, in particular I support the proposal for going back to state-level banners, and using the generic US banner only for US-wide topics.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 12:47, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Comment An alternative to deletion might be to just remove the Importance ratings for WikiProject United States and only allow the task forces to assess importance individually. -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:50, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment we'd need to add a taskforce for US-wide then, for topics that are US-wide but don't fall under one of the existing taskforces. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 12:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
    • I don't think so. I'm really the only one doing anything with this project and I will be editing less and less so no one will be using it anyway. There is no need to invest time and energy into a project no one cares about and there is no need to create a useless task force that no one is going to use or support. As a note I had been talking to Mr. Stratavarius about a better way to display the projects and give more prominence to the state and other supported projects if the WPUS banner is used. He is rewriting the WikiProjectShell template into a Lua module. I'll let him know to watch this so he doesn't have to waste his time on that uneeded functionality. Kumioko (talk) 13:40, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
      • You and I are not the only ones assessing articles though. And as we're not at MfD for deletion of the WPUSA project, there's no prediction of what some future Wikipedian who has a bent for assessing things US will do. Without a TF setting for US-wide, there's no allowance for this. Having a TF setting does not mean you will have to go about and assess things, just that it allows assessments to be done. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 04:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Simply delete The failure of WP:USA should not be seen as reflecting on other very active and functioning projects. Also the projected de-merger is somewhat moot when the underlying state projects are in a similar or even worse condition. Anybody who wants to resurect a stateproject can do so as and when from the last assessment log entry. Agathoclea (talk) 14:04, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • How would that impact those subprojects that have activity, when we remove their only banner from everything they have, and have assessed? -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 04:06, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Support getting rid of huge unlovely flying fortress of a template, especially because of the bizarre assessments it leads to as exemplified by the nominator. Bishonen | talk 14:14, 11 September 2013 (UTC).
• Delete with a clause in the edit summary that deletion of this template does not qualify future sub-project templates for CSD:G4. Technical 13 (talk) 14:38, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - Just a couple of considerations that will need to be addressed with this. The subproject templates will need to be modified, some will need to be recreated. Some of the associated subprojects such as the college or city related ones should be rolled under the state related projects banners. A bot will also be needed to replace all the banners and restore them back to the state related banner. Also a lot of the bots will need to be modifed to reflect the new banner vice the WPUS template. Kumioko (talk) 14:44, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Comment/Question - I'm not particularly well informed on the use of templates. If the decision is to delete this template, will people have to go around and manually remove it, or will that be done by a bot or something? Second, what do you propose to do about articles about the United States as whole that do not already belong to other subprojects? And is there an existing subproject list somewhere, so people who have been using the US tag can find which subproject they should be using instead? Thanks. HistoricMN44 (talk) 16:01, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • To answer the second question first there are about 200 US related projects and yes there is a list but not all are on it and it needs to be cleaned up. In theory a bot could do the work to split the articles back into the individual projects but no one is intersted in making a bot to do WikiProject tagging anymore. All the old bot ops that did it have either left the project or been thrown out so for the most part all the bot operators that are left are the ultra conservative ones who won't do a task unless it is 100% benign. Since the WikiProject banners have no standardization, it would be hard to do with zero mistakes. On the second question, IMO its really pointless anymore. The project has been going for several years and there was never enough interest in it. So I was the only one doing a lot of the work and IMO we just don't need to have a project that no one wants to participate in. It may sound like a bad attitude but I tried my hardest to make this project work for the last several years and no one wanted it so now as far as I am concerned we just don't need it and don't need to tag the articles. If they don't fall into one of the active projects then they can stay untagged and unassesed. Additionally, as I mentioned above with WP:FLOW coming in the next few months WikiProject banners (or any other talk page related template for that matter) won't work anyway. Kumioko (talk) 16:22, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Strong Keep and De-merge. Extremely useful WP, for example for federal politicians, CEOs of corporations on the NYSE, etc. However, for topics relating to specific states, there should be a WP for the state instead as there is for Tennessee, but strangely enough not for Texas for example.Zigzig20s (talk) 18:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• delete all wikiprojects or else keep per Kumioko. i agree this is not a collaborative website, and what collaboration does accidently occur is done offsite. the project has historical interest like esperanza. Duckduckgo (talk) 18:49, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Delete per Fram (talk · contribs), since the United States WikiProject has been dead since I don't really care about the project anymore since it grown too large like WikiProject Biography for example like I've pulled Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska and New Mexico in for US WikiProject but they don't really care about it. JJ98 (Talk) 19:43, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Strong Keep and De-merge Keep the template for USA wide articles, but demerge the state, county, city, etc. If a bot de-merge isn't possible, change the template to ask editors to demerge the template on each talk page, noting WP USA is dead, and turn off display of the "|importance=" parameter and it's value. Lentower (talk) 20:33, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep and de-merge per Zigzig20s. I'm completely sympathetic to the arguments for deletion here, but there are plenty of legitimate topics of interest to a US project that aren't attached to particular states. I think there's a general problem with overlap in some WikiProjects, and WPUSA certainly seems to be the worst offender. Fram and others, can you clarify whether you want the project itself marked as historical or deleted? If not, why have a WikiProject without an associated tag? --BDD (talk) 20:55, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Also, Kumioko, while it's entirely likely you know more about WP:FLOW than I do, I'm looking over its documentation and it looks like WikiProject tags and other templates will still be on talk pages: "Current plans indicate that there will be... A place for an 'introduction' to the page, which can contain free-form text, user boxes, templates, etc." Are you sure you're interpreting this correctly? --BDD (talk) 20:58, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Demerge all subprojects back out of this. As for the template itself, it may or may not have some use at the point, and we'll need to re-evaluate it then. Imzadi 1979 → 21:01, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

  Clarification pls ....WikiProject United States has been viewed 29108 times in the last 30 days and is full of current conversation - thus the project is not dead. What is leading people to believe its dead? -- Moxy (talk) 22:06, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

  That's a good question, Moxy. I believe that the only data point in favor of this "dead" assertion is that Kumioko, who has been a major player, said that he's not interested in it any longer. I can easily imagine him not being interested in what must be round five of the "how dare you tag my article with your bloated projecte!" I'm tired of people complaining about "overlapping" project scopes, as if that were a problem in practice or even in theory, and Kumioko must be extremely tired of it, because it's normally been presented as an attack on him and the group that he's worked hard to create. (Before people got WPUS in their sights, most of the "overlapping scope" complaints were about WPLGBT daring to tag articles that interested their members.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. The WikiProject still exists, and it's clearly useful to have a project and template for American articles. I don't have any opinion on 'demerging' the state and other subproject templates; that might be a good idea, but even if it is done, this template still needs to exist for topics that are associated with the US but not any particular state. I don't think the number of transclusions of this template is a good reason to delete it; {{WPBIO}} is on even more, and I don't see anyone calling to get rid of that one... Robofish (talk) 22:12, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep, or, more precisely, let the active members of that project decide to do whatever they want, without interference from anyone else per the long-standing guideline on this point. State-level projects (which are nearly all dead) are not required to use this banner. If you happen to be one of the few members of a state-level project and your project doesn't want to use WPUS—then just don't use it. But nobody outside the project has any business telling that group of people what they are or are not permitted to tag, just like nobody has any business telling several state-level groups that voluntarily merged with WPUS's banner that they are no longer permitted to be merged in.
  In terms of ratings, only the WP:1.0 team cares about the importance rating, and if WPUS doesn't want to mess with it, then they can follow MILHIST's lead and simply ignore it. (For those who are boggling over the number of tagged articles, please note that WPBIO has tagged over a million.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:13, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep. The WikiProject talk page shows a decent amount of activity (even ignoring the one-post threads). As long as the WikiProject is alive, its talk-page template should be kept. -- Ypnypn (talk) 00:24, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
  • To all the "Keep, the project is alive!" votes: there are in reality only two active members of the project, Kumioko and 70.24.244.158; they both agree with the deletion or unmerging of the template. Fram (talk) 07:29, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
    • Please don't mistake my vote for enthusiasm. As WhatamIdoing put it quite eloquently above, I simply tired of fighting about a project that no one wants but me and one or 2 others. Sadly, I have been begging for bots to do tasks to help maintain and build the project and no one is interested in collaboration. I have no doubt though when this passes there will be a flurry of interest from bot ops and editors in a rush to rip the project apart and remove all the articles. That is the problem I have had from day one. Lots of people wanting to tear it down but very few wanting to build it. So at this point it doesn't matter because you and Imzadi and a bunch of the other folks who voted here want to make sure that your projects are in control. Sadly, no one can see it or cares but me. Kumioko (talk) 12:39, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep - regardless of the currency or status of a project, project tags should never be open to a 'delete' option if there is any understanding of the importance of project tagging to actually help organise the larger wikipedia project - just like categories (which are under constant attack with some of the weirdest of arguments) - project tags, regardless of their context, should be kept. If there are 'size issues' then there will always be a tech solution that might eventuate later. Even dead project pages tagged are ways of insuring things might return again. sats 13:45, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep - In agreeance with sats about size issues. I have a belief that although there is a slowdown in the project system, an eventual solution will emerge and the incredible progress made in the project should not be undone. No opinion on demerging. Also main argument for deletion seems emotionally driven as previously stated by Kumioko, "Sadly, no one can see it or cares but me." --Molestash (talk) 23:37, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• De-merge the states post haste. –Fredddie™ 04:19, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep - Overall, the project banner template remains functional and practical in the provision of article statistics and in sorting articles by quality and importance. It also functions to provide valuable statistical overviews, such as at User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/United States. At the very least, this template should remain for articles and content that are specifically about United States-related topics. Regarding de-merging, I'm still contemplating the potential benefits versus potential disadvantages. Northamerica1000^(talk) 06:06, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

• I have no problem with the de-merging of all subprojects, and replacing the current template with a lightweight template for a smaller project concerned with topics of cross-USA interest only (things not covered by a current US-subproject or covered by multiple US subprojects). But for those people advocating the status-quo; why? We have this template on 350,000 pages; how many of these have the past year benefited from this project in any way or shape? How many have been e.g. promoted to GA or FA thanks to some collaboration via the project (there are apparently 867 featured and 1,624 good articles within WikiProject United States scope at the moment)? Have new standards, new guidelines, been developed? Common useful sources found? In what way does the actual work of the project compare to the work done on the template, and the placing of the template on 350,000 pages? Fram (talk) 08:05, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

• De-merge the "subprojects" and keep a stripped-down template for Wikiproject USA. The establishment of WP:USA as an omnibus WikiProject encompassing all other US-related WikiProjects as subprojects should be chalked up to history as a failed experiment -- an ambitious initiative that didn't work out. IMO, focused Wikiprojects have value as platforms for interaction among contributors with shared interests and/or knowledge. In principle, Wikiproject USA could function as a venue for interactions about topics of national scope (e.g., 2010 United States Census, Colonial history of the United States, and Belt regions of the United States), but that functionality was lost because of the diffuse scope of the WikiProject. WT:WikiProject United States (which I have watchlisted for a long time, largely because I believe it has potential) seems to be used primarily for announcements of proposed deletions of pages related to various miscellaneous aspects of the United States -- such as image files for individual city flags and cartoon-show logos. Meanwhile, the merger of individual wikiprojects into the US project has necessitated a lot of unproductive work for Kumioko and other contributors (I'm recalling problems like the period when the individual neighborhoods of Washington, DC, were "top level" importance for WikiProject USA and when the eastern Kentucky coalfields Wikiproject disappeared into the Louisville Wikiproject). I have a hunch that participants in some of the included Wikiprojects may have become less engaged due to the perception that WP:USA was now in charge. Let's keep the USA template for topics of national scope -- and Wikiproject participants interested in those topics -- and restore the subproject templates to the individual Wikiprojects. --Orlady (talk) 15:48, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

• Delete with All WikiProjects per Kumioko. Vanquisher.UA^(talk) 23:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

• De-merge and keep as per Orlady. The widening of the scope of WikiProject USA to include everything in the US whatsoever seems to have generated a lot of delightful busywork for those who enjoy it, but, as Fram points out, has had no clear impact on actual content creation. Trim it back to topics of national scope, but let it stand on those. Choess (talk) 01:25, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

• De-merge and keep. WPUSA is still a useful project for collaboration and discussion of topics of national interest, and should absolutely be kept in that regard. However, the merger of the state projects (and the other related projects) strikes me as a failed experiment. The mergers were intended to draw more attention to small or inactive state projects, but they haven't really accomplished that goal; it seems that editors are either interested enough to get involved with the project or aren't interested enough to edit those topics much. If anything, having the state banners subsumed within the WPUSA banner has hurt the visibility of the state projects (and it hasn't helped that all the template shuffling messed up the project importance ratings and state task force tagging). If the less-active state projects take off again, it's not going to be because of WPUSA. (And for the record, I'm a WPUSA member and one of the people who supported merging the less-than-active WikiProject West Virginia in the first place, for those who are worried about outsiders telling the project what to do.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:41, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
  • That seems to be what happened with WPCANADA, where the merged province banners resulted in dead province projects, and not all that much increase at the national project (and also drama, such as found at WPUSA, with some some subproject people not liking the merger). -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 10:31, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
• Delete or de-merge - It is better to start from the ground up. Delete this template, delete the "conglomerate" that is WikiProject US and start again. The current implementation is certainly not working. RGloucester — 📬 02:03, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep and De-merge, I support keeping WikiProject United States for articles of broad interest to the United States as a whole, but all of the individual state WikiProjects should be made independent of WikiProject United States. I previously opposed an attempt to merge one of the three state WikiProjects (Oklahoma) I am affiliated with into WikiProject United States, because I envisioned some of the problems mentioned in this discussion occurring if the merger were successful, which may have contributed to the proposal's failure. --TommyBoy (talk) 03:07, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep. The de-merge idea sounds good, but that's not my main reason for advocating a keep. A template that's been so heavily used and has such a long history really shouldn't be deleted. Mark it as historical if you want, but don't get rid of the history, since the template isn't hurting anything. On top of that, the project still exists, so we shouldn't get rid of its template, no matter how bleak the situation appears right now. Nyttend (talk) 04:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep The templates are useful for lovating Wikiproject-relative articles even when the Wikiprojects themselves are inactive. Delete this and United States-relative wikiprojects become hard or impossible to locate. Dimadick (talk) 15:36, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep and de-merge per Orlady. The template and its WikiProject are relevant to topics of national scope. • Gene93k (talk) 16:05, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep and de-merge - I believe all that can be said has been said on this matter and thus, I endorse in the same lieu. DarthBotto _talk•cont
• Keep and De-merge - and please in doing so don't lose the WikiProject Asian Americans / Native Americans / Mexican Americans etc. all-America sub project Talk Page templates. For example currently when adding a Talk template like this there is no standalone template. If the all-US one goes the "WikiProject Asian Americans" project tag should be left intact as a separate template by any bot implementing the change. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

PROPOSAL: Why not integrate all the states into WP:United States? I know that I commonly use the following:

– States ... That have already been integrated into WP:United States template, such as Indiana for ACW.

– USMIL .... The US Military section.

– ACW ...... American Civil War since I'm one of a few who are doing the ACW (the stubs to higher assessment) and expanding existing articles, for example Indiana and Kentucky.

I think we should go one by one and see if there are certain subcategories that are not so active or inactive and remove them. While introducing all the American states, which would to me, would be a "must have" since they are all in the same country. I am willing to do a expand the WP:United States with other things if other users are willing to do it as a team effort. Adamdaley (talk) 05:53, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Keep per Nyttend, Orlady, Choess, and TheCatalyst31 with a return to core US topics and focus. I suspect there are a number of editors who use WPUS resources on an on-going basis and contribute tagging and other duties without listing themselves as members of WPUS. I don't believe we should conclude that WPUS is a "total failure". If there's a clear "To-do" list / process, I'm willing to help in an "undo" effort.
  WPUS didn't get messed up in one day; it won't get fixed in one day. It should be an enduring lesson in why grassroots efforts shouldn't be forced into a ultra-centralized effort.
  A Controlled de-Merge is essential. It must be driven by State projects in charge of when to depreciate their TF at WPUS. Once the TF is depreciated, the existing articles have to be changed from WPUS to WPstate. Non-state TFs will require the wisdom of a Solomon to decide whether and how to revert what's been done or whether to terminate some TFs if there's no group willing to resurrect a dead project.
  This effort must begin with more authority than this Delete question. An affirmative action, perhaps multiple RfCs is essential to set direction on how to proceed. It might be instructive for someone to briefly recount how the consolidation effort originated and developed.
  SBaker43 (talk) 06:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

• Regarding the history of how consolidation happened: It seems to have started in this discussion initiated by Kumioko in October 2010. The following month, Kumioko started discussion of consolidating numerous talk page templates and issued invitations to discussion on talk pages of some 75 WikiProjects related to U.S. topics. Some people and Wikiprojects objected to the proposal, so their Wikiprojects were dropped from the proposal. I have the impression that if nobody from a Wikiproject objected, Kumioko went ahead and merged that Wikiproject's template into the U.S. template. --Orlady (talk) 02:06, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• Keep and keep merged: Misuse isn't a reason in itself for deletion. There are thousands of articles which relate primarily to the United States as a whole rather than one specific state. Also, it being transcluded on a large number of pages should be a reason to keep it, not delete it. Many of the delete votes are in reality expressing displeasure at WikiProjects in general, yet there is a consensus for WikiProjects, including this one, to exist. pbp 21:41, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
• Delete - I prefer use of the individual subproject flags, which people can actually see. The USA template is a giant amoeba that does not effectively direct effort. Carrite (talk) 03:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
  • A simple delete will not result in subproject banners automatically coming into being. And what of those topics that are US-wide and not fall under any subproject? I'm not particularly keen on adding 20 or 30 state project banners to an article. -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 10:31, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep Can be used on articles that relate to the United States as a whole, rather than just one specific state (United States, President of the United States for example) Canuck^{89 (talk to me)} 03:59, September 16, 2013 (UTC)

• Comment since the deletion option has come up, can someone inform all the subprojects ({{tfdnotice}} , {{ping}}, {{talkback}}, etc) that they may not have a project banner at the conclusion of this discussion? -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 12:25, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
• Comment just a reminder that the issue of a de-merger is not actually in the jurisdiction of a TfD. Any sub-project that wants to be de-merged can do so regardless of the outcome of this TfD, conversly any subproject that does not express that desire, will just fall away if this template is deleted. Agathoclea (talk) 16:24, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

In any event, this discussion is headed toward a resounding result of "no consensus". Rather than waiting for the included Wikiprojects to ask to be de-merged, perhaps it's time to start unmerging some of the ones that never actually consented to join in the first place. I see that members of the Rhode Island project complained back in early 2012 (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rhode Island/Archive 5), but apparently their complaints were considered inadmissible because the project was already merged. That would be a good candidate for de-merging. The talk page history for the NIH Wikiproject shows no indication that the project was invited to join; apparently it was just merged.

Looking at a few other random included Wikiprojects, I found new-to-me evidence of how problematic inclusion in the WP:USA template has become. Look at the todo list in the template on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Colorado. Before that project was joined into WP:USA, the todo list was well-behaved and presumably was useful: [2]. Inclusion in WP:USA seems to have rendered it ugly and useless: [3]. Apparently the leadership of WP:USA didn't identify this as an issue to be fixed, nobody at the WikiProject complained, and -- significantly -- editing of the to-do template ceased: [4]. --Orlady (talk) 17:06, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Just for the record you would do well to look at the history of that page and see what it looked like before and after I edited it before you pass judgement. Kumioko (talk) 18:09, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you made what look like valuable formatting improvements to the todo template. It's the way it appears on the talk page that's a problem. My links above are to the talk page history, before and after the project's template was merged into the US template. --Orlady (talk) 18:26, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

First I'm not planning on editing anymore but I fixed that. The todo is built into the template so there is no reason to have a separate to do template with useless crap in it. You could have done that too rather than use it to justify why me and the WPUS project are evil. Now, I'm not planning on continuing to follow this discussion so you can go ahead and ignore all the things I have done to help the projects and focus on how I destroyed everything, delete this template and return all the projects to the inactive or defunct state they were in before I added them to the template. Kumioko (talk) 18:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that fix. You are correct that I could have done that, but the truth is that I couldn't tell what the problem was. That page apparently had had that same ugly appearance for more than a year-and-a-half, so it appears that the Wikiproject members who had worked on that todo template also could not figure out what the problem was. Similarly, you've pointed out me that I can edit the US Wikiproject template, but the truth is that the template is many times more complicated than I would dare to try to edit. Don't underestimate your ability to intimidate other users with your technical skills. --Orlady (talk) 18:49, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I discovered (to my bewilderment) that there were two different to-do templates. The template for the Colorado component of WP:US has different contents than Wikipedia:WikiProject Colorado/to do (which you removed). I can imagine that Wikiproject participants have been bewildered by trying to find items they added to one or the other to-do list. --Orlady (talk) 19:06, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

• keep as this deletion discussion is predicated on the idea that the underlying project is dead and this appears to be an attempt to back-door closing the project. Maybe it is dead, I haven't looked into it, but unless it is marked as {{historical}} or {{inactive}} as a result of a consensus-based process of some kind the reasons presented in the nomination for deleting are completely invalid. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:50, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
• keep - This project is useful, just like any other country's WikiProject. The fact that it is so big needs to be addressed, but not necessarily here in the TfD forum. --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:03, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment if this is to be addressed on the template's own talk page, I will not be participating, as that page is indefinitely semiprotected. It takes too much contortioning to post a comment on that page, where it will inevitably be out of date when it is transfered onto the discussion thread through an edit request. -- 70.24.249.39 (talk) 20:02, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep and de-merge - a lot of the WP:US problems came from the undiscussed and unilateral merging of state-level WikiProjects into it, undoing that would be a large step to making both the project and its currently-bloated template viable again. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:03, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep and (mostly) de-merge I wasnt around when this was created, didnt know it was a consolidation. all i know is, as an editor at the California/SFBA projects (and the nearly sole editor at the latter), i thought it odd that some states were in this, some werent. i support having all the state, city, and university projects be moved out, and given their own projects or merged with their state as appropriate. i think the national level projects should stay in it, and i dont parse the joint projects to know how that would be handled. I find the projects i work on useful to get an overview of the articles/categories etc. I find the assessments and rankings engaging, and i cannot support deleting all projects as i gave assessments/ratings to all the unassessed/unrated SFBA articles (about 1,000 or more). maybe i would have used that time to actually edit articles, but it does keep me engaged. I understand that its frustrating when noone is working on a project besides oneself, but i figure someone may come along someday and do more work, and in the meantime we have precious metadata that should not be deleted for any reason (libraries removed metadata when they destroyed card catalogs, shame on them)Mercurywoodrose (talk) 06:23, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep. It is still useful for some types of articles (for example for inclusion of most US-related biographies), and has future potential. It should not be used when a more local project wp tag can be used instead, and should be removed/replaced there. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep and separate - This banner has many uses and many issues, size being a minor detriment since it's used on talk pages. A rewrite in Lua would certainly make it more efficient and far smaller, but regardless there are several important uses for this:
  1. Links to project pages, where standards concerning style, formatting, titling, and most importantly, maintaining consistency across American articles, are set out. In addition, the project talk page centralizes important discussions for determining the aforementioned standards. While many content-specific discussions and disputes are best handled by the more dedicated "sub" projects, most discussions not concerning content are best brought to the attention of a wide array of editors; an RfC is often too broad, and attracts well-meaning but uninformed opinions.
  2. An assessment system covering all American topics. Admittedly, the disparity of the importance ratings could be addressed by having a separate parameter for the national importance.
  3. A system for identifying articles that are in need of some content which is handled by task forces with no specific subproject loyalty/attachment. For example, many editors dedicate their efforts to making maps of specific geographical areas for topics of all varieties; we should strive to make it easier for these editors to know where their skills are required.

Obviously the history of the template is important to preserve. One possible solution may be to tag talk pages with subproject banners, and code those banners to add the article to the national wikiproject assessment and categorization system. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 11:15, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Comment The size of this WP-USA template isn't an issue if a Talk page uses one of

• Collapse all WikiProjects templates inside the {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} template,
• Put the {{Skip to talk}} template at the top of the Talk page (& if needed, __TOC__ before the first talk comment),
• or both.

Lentower (talk) 15:29, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

None of those will solve the size issue: in fact they will make it worse. The problem is not how much visible space is occupied, but how much wikicode gets transcluded. As noted by the nominator, it "is over 180K large" - in fact, excluding the TfD template and the documentation, it's 192,182 bytes, or 187 KB. This size is mainly because of all the subprojects and taskforces - 92 in total - and even if they are not used, their presence contributes to both size and transclusion time. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:49, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Why is this a problem?

What percentage of WP server time is this taking?

What percentage of the WP Foundation budget is this consuming?

I don't notice Talk pages with this template taking longer to load, than those without it.

Doesn't seem a real problem to me. Lentower (talk) 16:03, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

OK, I took Wikipedia talk:Sandbox in its normal near-blank state, and got:

NewPP limit report
CPU time usage: 0.120 seconds
Real time usage: 0.140 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 312/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 1807/1500000
Post‐expand include size: 18778/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 6986/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 15/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500

whereas following this edit, I got:

NewPP limit report
CPU time usage: 1.464 seconds
Real time usage: 1.524 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 10845/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count: 75629/1500000
Post‐expand include size: 46691/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 14587/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 26/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
Lua time usage: 0.007s
Lua memory usage: 490 KB

Doing the subtraction, we find that the {{WikiProject United States}} consumes:

CPU time usage: 1.344 seconds
Real time usage: 1.384 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count: 10533
Preprocessor generated node count: 73822
Post‐expand include size: 27913
Template argument size: 7601
Highest expansion depth: 11
Lua time usage: 0.007s
Lua memory usage: 490 KB

and that's with no parameters at all. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:32, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the data (I had assumed good faith about the proposer's claim), but's it's only a fraction of what's needed to answer one of the questions I proposed. Also needed is the average total seconds consumed per day for all WP servers, and the average number of times {{WikiProject United States}} is transcluded per day. Once we have that, and the total budget spent running the servers, my other question could be answered. I still doubt the size of this template is a real problem. Lentower (talk) 18:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

You don't need that much data in the end. The fact that it takes 1.384 seconds to only load a blank template is a problem for any page that contains this template. According to this tool the template is used on 354,031 different articles and 1,440 potential redirects according to rdcheck.py. Just for the transclusions, this results in at least 489978.904 seconds to load. To help make sense of that, it would take 5 Days, 16 Hours, 6 Minutes, and 18.9 Seconds just to load this template if each page was loaded a single time for every transclusion.

Expected Rebuttal: Not all of those pages would load the template since not all of the are visited every day. That is a good point, so let me provide some extra details of this waste. To show just how bad the problem is, I decided to pick a article from the Category:United States articles of Top-importance. Since we want a high quality article, though not a feature article which would cause an inflation in results, I also decided to pick it from the Category:A-Class United States articles as it is the next best category. Of the two articles in Category:A-Class United States articles of Top-importance, I decided to pick the American Civil War talkpage for this test. According to Wikistats (alpha)] the most views for the page was 1,157 different viewers on 10/9/2012 and it gets an average of 40 views a day. That means that it wasted at least 26 Minutes and 41 seconds in on October 9th to load and about 55 seconds each day. However, that test was only done with an empty template. Adding the class, importance, "USOldwest," "USOldwest-importance," "UShistory," "UShistory-importance, "USMIL," "ACW," "portal1-name," and, finally, the "portal1-link" parameters increase the time taken to load such a muddled up template on just the American Civil War talkpage. Not to mention the other parameters in the template that this template uses, eight full pages for all of the parameters and at least ten to just show the full template, makes this a template worth getting rid of. --Super Goku V (talk) 04:14, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting data, but again it only applies to the numerator of one of the ratios in these two questions I asked:

"What percentage of WP server time is this taking?"

"What percentage of the WP Foundation budget is this consuming?"

Can anyone provide information on the other numerator and both denominators?

So far, it still appears the size of this template is not a real problem. Lentower (talk) 10:56, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I asked at WP:VPT#Processing time for WikiProject banner. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:42, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

VPT cavalry here. The answer to both of these questions is: insignificant. If it were causing noticeable load, someone would have already stepped in and fixed the issue, see WP:PERFORMANCE. Rendered pages are cached for 30 days and only regenerated on demand; talk pages for obscure articles have very few visitors anyway. The rendering time should only be considered on the „usability” basis – if it takes too long to load a page, visitors will become annoyed and probably leave instead of waiting. A second is probably not a significant length of time here, either.

That said, let me add that, as sort of an outsider to the community here, I consider this template absolutely ridiculous. Linking to seven screens' worth of wikiprojects just can not be useful for anyone and takes away the purpose of talk pages. Matma Rex talk 13:17, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• It seems to me that the most significant impact of this template on Wikipedia resources has not been the effect on technical resources, but rather its effect on human resources. Maintenance of the template, article tagging, resolving problems with article importance ratings, etc., vacuumed up a large amount of Kumioko's time and kept him from being able to engage in the collaborative editing work that he envisioned when he got involved in this initiative. It's not fair to blame Kumioko for this; the difficulties he encountered probably were inevitable results of the size and complexity of the template and the project it supported. He has expressed frustration that he didn't get more help with this work. It seems to me that the lack of help is attributable to the size and technical complexity of the template (does anyone other than Kumioko understand its structure well enough to edit it?), coupled with a general lack of volunteer interest in tasks like article tagging (most contributors would rather improve articles than tag them). It's mighty hard to get very many volunteers excited about helping with projects that they don't feel competent to undertake or that are generally not considered to be rewarding. It's no wonder that Kumioko is feeling burned out. --Orlady (talk) 23:20, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Note about De-Merging WikiProject Massachusetts currently uses this WP-USA template instead of one just for the state. Might be true for other sub-projects of WP-USA.

Getting both state and non-state sub-projects to list both as options, with criteria to choose between them (probably if the article concerns the entire country or federal government), would cut down on use of this {{WikiProject United States}} template. Seems to need an additional separate template for each sub-project, note https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:WikiProject_Massachusetts&oldid=496632213. Lentower (talk) 22:05, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's true about many of the state sub-templates. I think it applies to at least half of them. --BDD (talk) 22:20, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - Wow, I wish I would have had the interest in building the project and collaborating than is shown here in this TFD for destroying it. This TFD shows to me, conclusively, that Wikipedia is no longer of interest to me nor is it worth my time. With that said, I want to point out one thing that seems to be lost in all this discussion. This TFD does not have the power to demerge all the projects. If you want to do that, you need to start a discussion on the projects talk page. If the project wants to stay, it should be left in this template. If they project wants to break out, then that's ok too. Additionally, do not take silence as consent to remove it. Most of the projects were inactive when I added them so you won't get any response anyway. I would also add that all this technical lingo about load times is complete nonsense. That has never been an issue. Does it take time to load? Sure, but no different than if you had multiple banners and with Lua coming that argument is invalid anyway. So its really just bullshit to mask the fact that this TFD is based on users who do not and never did want this project to succeed and want it and me out of the way so they can continue to peddle thier POV and article ownership issues from projects like USRoads. Kumioko (talk) 13:19, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Let me get this straight: Because you are no longer interested in maintaining this template, and no one else seems to be interested in doing so, you support its deletion (as you stated earlier on this page), which would have the effect of instantly dismantling a huge number of Wikiprojects (something that can be predicted to upset a lot of people), but you are asserting that preserving those Wikiprojects by extricating their templates from the huge unmaintainable US template would violate the rights of Wikiproject participants unless they specifically ask for this to be done? That looks like WP:wikilawyering with malicious intent! (I very much hope I misunderstood what you are trying to say...) --Orlady (talk) 23:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Sub-Comment Not sure if this is the place to insert this comment, but the above conversation is what made me remember this. And Kumioko can verify or correct my memory as to what happened. When the Texas project was brought into WPUS, at my urging, Kumioko was still permitted to run bots. As such, he began running a bot to put the WPUS template on Texas project articles. In the middle of the bot running, Kumioko had his bot privileges taken away from him and the placement of WPUS templates on Texas articles was stopped with several thousand articles left untemplated by WPUS. He posted a request (on the bot request page, as I recall) that someone run a bot to finish that, but no one ever did. I made manual template insertions where I found them, and I think Kumioko did also. I mention this, because I assume that either deleting the template, or even the un-merging, would have to be done by bot. So, what happens if someone with authority decides part-way through that this should not be done? I mean, we have the Texas project as a testimony that such a thing can happen. If that occurred, there would be a real mess with a partially done process. — Maile (talk) 00:28, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

@Maile, et al. That is all correct but I do not think you will have trouble finding a bot op to take this on. There are more than enough people who want to destroy this project. (The following is not directed at you Maile but to the other characters who have commented here). Oddly, no one is lining up to delete Template:WikiProject Biography with over a million articles. Nor are the trying to delete Template:WikiProject Military history, Template:WikiProject India or Template:WikiProject Africa all of which have a large number of associated projects similar to WPUS. So I assume that these projects will also be demerged based on the same technical reasons given above? Or is it that my assertions were correct, that it has nothing to do with this project and more to do with individual POV and article ownership. And to answer your question Orlady, I don't care how you understood my comment. Take it anyway you like. If I get blocked at this point it will just keep me from answering pointless rhetorical questions. I would add that this template is not unmanageable and I do not care about maintaining it. I wasn't allowed too. There is a big difference. Now, I just don't care because I have become so fed up with the bureaucratic bullshit and POV pushing and articles ownership from admins who should know better and who don't want to follow policy. And other admins and Arbcom who let them do it and look the other way. The results of this discussion are clear proof of how useful the WPUS project is. Considering only a couple members have voted (as keep) and a lot of non members have voted to demerge it. I was even trying, as you might have noticed, to reduce the complexity of the template and get rid of stuff we didn't need but it was you, as I recall, that wouldn't let me. In addition to the fact that every damn thing is protected so only admins can edit it and I am not worthy to be able to have access to the tools because I am blunt and want admins to follow policy instead of play wikipal and help their buddies. So honestly, at this point, I absolutely do not give one shit about what happens on wiki, to this template or WikiProject United States. Because I cannot do it by myself and you Orlady and a lot of other folks here would rather spend over 100, 000 bytes to destroy a collaboration than 10 bytes to collaborate in it. Kumioko (talk) 00:53, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding us of the history of the loss of bot privileges (I forgot that part of the story). That hindered the development of this project -- but the fact that no other bot operator was willing to take over the task was testimony to the size of the job and the controversy that the bot edits were expected to arouse in the community.

Of the project templates you name, the only one that approaches this one in size and complexity is MILHIST -- and that template is just half the size of this one (in bytes). Because MILHIST doesn't rate pages on importance and doesn't have nested subprojects (just task forces), that template avoids the knotty problems that arose in WP:US over several layers of nesting of subprojects and issues like different importance levels for different nested projects. --Orlady (talk) 02:14, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

There is no difference between the subprojects in the WPUS template and the task forces in the WikiProject MILHIST template. The key difference is that the WPUS uses the Wikishell template (or whatever its called) and the MILHIST template doesn't. So maybe we just need to drop the shell and build the template manually. That would eliminate a lot of the extra processing and server requirements but it would also incresae the complexity of the template exponentially. Aside from that this whole TFD is pointy, absurd and should be closed as being the wrong venue and way, way outside the scope of TFD. Has anyone even notified the projects yet? It doesn't appear so and that would have been done if the intent was fairness towards the supported projects and not a desire to kill this project template. 138.162.8.57 (talk) 19:03, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

There is are in fact some other very large differences between the MILHIST template and this WP:US template. One big difference is the use of the "importance" parameter in WP:US and the vast majority of its subprojects. Dealing with separate importance ratings in each of two or three nested layers of projects has been a continuing source of challenges in WP:US (including all those articles that are "top" or "high" importance for a narrow subproject, and were automatically given that same rating US-wide). Most of those importance ratings for the subprojects that were assigned by volunteers before the projects were merged into WP:US, and should be presumed to have value for the subprojects. The absence of "importance" ratings in MILHIST simplifies its template structure. Also, The WP:US template has a lot of other subproject-specific content, such as photo requests, that came in when the projects were merged -- and are still presumably important to the focused project that added them. MILHIST task forces don't have those kinds of project-specific features. --Orlady (talk) 22:45, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Keep I disagree that the project has failed. It's providing a useful forum and information site. It might not be what Kumioko envisioned, but it has evolved into something really useful. Granted, there isn't a lot of teamwork on maintenance and placement of the template itself and the assessments, which is what I think Kumioko is disappointed in. There's not a lot of teamwork on a lot of other projects. So what? This one has a purpose. If the template itself is a thorn in the side, then take it project by project on a polled consensus of those that want to unmerge from the template. And I bet what you will find, is at best one or two in any given project who voice any opinion at all, but mostly the response will be lackluster. As mentioned farther up on this thread, the template gives users an option on the talk pages of which project they want to deal with - the state, or WPUS. Options are always good. Please do not delete the overall template. — Maile (talk) 14:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep & Demerge, but seriously it's become a big miscellaneous category. From my small corner of Wikipedia, there is no reason that Rutgers (the University) and its related pages should be under this project as opposed to being a sub-project of the NJ wikiproject.--ColonelHenry (talk) 15:16, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

That would be for the same reason that a lot of these projects are in the template. Because no one showed an interest...except me, for keeping these projects going. If New Jersey wants to make them a subproject or task force then great. But as far as I know they have never voiced any interest. Kumioko (talk) 15:25, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Keep and demerge - the fact it's active on 350k pages means that outright deletion is borderline insanity. It is definitely an enormous, and enormously over-the-top template (ironic), but the nomination statement simply isn't within policy. Whether or not WikiProject USA was successful or not is irrelevant; it's still an active WikiProject, and has an ENORMOUS amount of editors who are active in topics that relate to it, whether they're "officially" part of the WikiProject or not. We should focus on demerging the unnecessary bits from the template, and then seeing where we stand, before just blindly wandering in with a nuclear bomb and blowing everything to pieces. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 17:41, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• De-Merge: Per nom. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 09:32, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
• Administratively close and open a new discussion within that WikiProject or as an site-wide Request for Comments or move this ongoing discussion to the WikiProject or an RFC, but with a deadline of a lot more than 7 days. As this is really a discussion about how this WikiProject and the state-level WikiProjects operate, this is outside of the narrow scope of TFD. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:27, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

This discussion may not be in the Officially Designated Noticeboard for discussion of the proposed dismemberment of omnibus Wikiprojects (is there such a board?), but it hasn't exactly been hidden from sight. By my count, at least 50 people have expressed opinions here. That's equivalent to almost one-fourth of the 217 watchers of Wikipedia:WikiProject United States and its talk page. There have been two announcements of this discussion on the US Wikiproject talk page and there are links announcing this discussion on every one of the ~350,000 talk pages that use this template. Candidly, I think this discussion has received more attention here at TFD than an RFC on the Wikiproject talk page would have received, since (apparently due to the broad ambit of the project) broad-interest items on that page tend to be overlooked when they quickly become buried in a steady stream of narrow-interest items like announcements of the proposed deletion of individual images (topics of some recent announcements have included images of a bus company marketing symbol, a gun, a video-game box, a 19th-century doctor/botanist, and an artist's depictions of airplanes). --Orlady (talk) 15:19, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, WikiProject US seems to have more "watchers" than any of its subprojects. I looked at "watcher" counts for a large sample of the subprojects, and didn't find any that were in 3-digit numbers; some had fewer than 10 watchers. There are more than 100 watchers at WP:WikiProject California and WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, but those aren't subprojects of WP:US. --Orlady (talk) 16:05, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

• Keep OK, some people don't use WikiProjects and want to get rid of them for those who do. In my experience, heavy content editors are much more likely to use WikiProjects to get assistance and feedback. Part of the reason for the decline of WikiProjects probably has to do with the fact that there's not that much content editing that happens. Hopefully it will pick up someday and these will get more activity, but in the meantime they do help. Postscript: OK, I was pretty much responding to Kumioko's call to delete all projects. As far as the borked importance, I'd rather see that fixed incrementally or however is most efficient. Large topics are better for WikiProjects given the limited activity, so I'd rather see us keep this and get rid of the niche projects (turning those into task forces or something if necessary). II | (t - c) 19:23, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep (De-merge) per Orlady and TheCatalyst31. There are still articles and categories of national and federal importance that WPUS should manage, especially when there isn't a separate WikiProject like MILHIST, Politics, or Biography also involved. I urge interested parties in the various state WikiProjects to de-merge of their own accord from WPUS. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:40, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

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.

Template:US-screen-actor-1870s-stub

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 no consensus, and wrong venue since stub templates are discussed at WP:CFD. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 20:24, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:US-screen-actor-1870s-stub (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Uneeded and unused stub template. Neither Film nor television came about until well after 1900. Kumioko (talk) 02:00, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment motion pictures were first done in the 1870s, per our article on the subject -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 12:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect all pre-1900 screen actor stub templates into the general {{US-screen-actor-stub}} template -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 12:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• wrong venue per WP:TFD#What not to propose for discussion here. Frietjes (talk) 16:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep It doesn't mean "active in the 1870s" - it means "born in the 1870s". When talkies began in the 1920s, there were plenty of actors aged 40-50 who would have been born in the 1870s. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:03, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Delete If there ever is a stub on which this template should be used, it can always be recreated. Garion96 (talk) 21:06, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Comment The first motion picture was Fred Ott's Sneeze, which was made in 1894. Ott was born in 1860. 192.186.141.184 (talk) 03:06, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment experimental motion pictures were already done in the 1860s. -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 04:09, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
• Delete For being un-used. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 13:23, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep It's for actors born in the 1870s. It needs to be used, not deleted. --Gott (talk) 17:13, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
• Delete. Despite good intentions, pre-20th-century screen actors were merely silent actors. Also, I bet that it could be a good redirect to the general screen-actors stub. --George Ho (talk) 07:09, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

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.

Template:Extra track listing

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 withdrawn by nominator; non-admin closure. Tbhotch.^™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 02:30, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:Extra track listing (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Reviewing the talk page and the usage of this template throughout wikipedia I am going to be WP:BOLD and suggest that this is not required. If you look at the deletion log for templates numerous templates for individual albums have been deleted where users have pointed out that if someone wants to know the running order of an album they would navigate to the album page. Singles from an album are already linked in the artist's template which appears at the bottom of every song/single page and thus it is quite redundant to have what track comes before and after the song in the infobox. There is confusion over when to use the template and tbh it clutters the infobox, which is supposed to be a summary of the article contents. Since you wouldn't list a full track listing of an album on the song/single page there's no reason for the full track listing to appear in the infobox either. → Lil-℧niquԐ 1 - { Talk } - 01:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Strong Keep - It has and will continue to be a great source of navigation at the top of the page for Wikipedia users like me, who are definitely not interested in going to another page just to look at another song in the same album. They should be within one-click length, because the song articles inter-woven articles under a single project: the album. For us, we'd like to navigate through the album with ease. Not the singles chronology, not through the template at the bottom of the page, but the album itself. Unless you have a different approach to how this should be done, don't take away this privilege from us. As I have pointed out many times before, this template IS useful to some people.
  P.S. This template is used in numerous articles, and from many different deletion discussions I've take part in, it's very unusual for templates that are used extensively and accordingly to be deleted. So, good luck with that!
  RazorEye ⡭ ₪ ·o' ⍦ ࿂ 02:21, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Strong Keep – Agree with above. The template provides an easy way for users to navigate between the tracks of an album. Since it's minimized by default, it doesn't take up any space, those who are interested can expand and use it, the rest can ignore it. 2Flows (talk) 07:48, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. On my screen, this template only takes up a mere 40 pixels! I do not understand how this is supposedly cluttering the infobox! It was designed to be collapsible for this reason anyway!

RazorEye ⡭ ₪ ·o' ⍦ ࿂ 08:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Its redundant navigation, there's already links to the album and all its singles/charting songs in the artist template at the bottom of the page. Often there are not many links in these such navigation, beyond the singles. To prove my point, look at the number of discussion regarding the deletion of track list templates for individual albums here and how many actual templates have been deleted, at least 11 deleted here for The Supremes and Bob Dylan ones, 6 Rihanna ones and 3 Sugababes ones, 1 for Leona Lewis, 14 Madonna ones, 6 for T-ara and one other and 18 here for various popular releases including Katy Perry's Teenage Dream which had 8 singles and linked songs. That's over 30 such deletions including albums templates where every song has a page and got deleted. So the whole "its minimised therefore doesn't cause anyone any harm, leave it alone argument" doesn't wash. All those templates could have been minimised yet ALL of them were deleted! I asked members of the linked discussions (users who voted keep and delete) to participate in this discussion.→ Lil-℧niquԐ 1 - { Talk } - 15:31, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Do not WP:OTHER, the templates you listed are for specific albums and were deleted since they were not needed in their cases, which in no way implies that THIS template should be deleted. As RazorEye, CaseyPenk and ₳aron stated, this template provides useful navigation, and being misused for few albums does not make it less important. 2Flows (talk) 18:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Strong keep. I am surprised to see this nominated, because I found it to be one of the most interesting and unique features about song articles on Wikipedia. It provides a valuable way to contextualize the songs within an album; the reader can understand which tracks went where and how they related. Often the track order on an album is vital to understanding the album as a whole; seen in a linear fashion (as this template does) the album can be seen to "progress" through different stages. For example, if this template were used on the second track of an album, we could see what the first track was, analyze how the music had changed since then, and look ahead to the third track to see where the album is headed. All of which is to say, this is valuable for the reader as (s)he explores an album. CaseyPenk (talk) 16:14, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• comment, a better approach would be to consider each of the track listing templates first, then nominate this one if all the track listing templates are deleted. there are cases where it isn't as clear. See Iridescent (song) for example, where "Transformers: Dark of the Moon – The Album track listing" does not have a navbox on the page, nor is it in any other chronology. now, one can argue whether or not such navigation is necessary, but in this case the navigation is not redundant. Frietjes (talk) 16:17, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually I'd be willing to consider what User:Frietjes has said. Can you do a mass deletion? → Lil-℧niquԐ 1 - { Talk } - 16:22, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I would start by creating a list of the ones with (a) very few links and (b) which are redundant to the links in a navbox, and then nominate those. if all of those are deleted, you can then move on to the next set, or examine what is left. but, start with targeted list of similar track listing templates with a clear threshold. most of them should be in the track listing template category, but you may find some more with this search. Frietjes (talk) 16:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this template needs to be deleted, but it is generally overused so Frietjes' suggestion is probably the best way to approach this. I actually have put a few lists together but just haven't got around to nominating them as bundles, but definitely am willing to do so. One of the reasons I created Category:Album track list templates was to more easily find and weed out the bad ones. Some of the issues I have with these templates are: 1) too few songs have links and I don't see how it matters what the non-notable 9th or 10th track of an album is when one is looking at an article on the second single released from the album (see {{Over the Rainbow track listing}}) - in these cases, the artist or singles navbox does serve a better purpose; 2) using them for Christmas, live or compilation albums where links may exist for most or all of the songs, but the sequence is generally not important and the impact of each other song has nothing to do with that particular album (see {{Shakira: Live from Paris track listing}} and {{Elvis' Christmas Album tracks}}, not to mention how this template is used on articles like "Wanna Be Startin' Something"); 3) redundancy with Album Navboxes, such as {{Let It Be tracks}} and {{Let It Be}}, both being used on the same articles and serving the same identical purpose. How is it helpful to have both in the article for "Dig a Pony", for example? --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 17:19, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

They're both essential to the article. Since the article for "Dig a Pony" is inheritably large, having navigation at both the top and the bottom of the page, as I've said numerous times before, is extremely convenient! Call us lazy, but I think we all know most of us don't actually read the entire article to the bottom. I would really like Wikipedia to adopt a system for all articles to have dual-navigation, and these series of templates are a damn good place to start.

P.S. That music sample should really not be in the infobox! Talk about "cluttering the infobox", eh?

RazorEye ⡭ ₪ ·o' ⍦ ࿂ 22:41, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• I'm very much for keeping this. It shows what song comes before and what song comes after, as well as the number in the track list. It demonstrates a sequence.  — ₳aron 16:43, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep. Very useful when the song navigation is used on articles that use the song infobox, so it can continue with articles that use the singles infobox. Although, I do believe that the option to add an entire track listing of an album should be removed. — Status (talk · contribs) 19:04, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Keep, I disagree with creating individual album track listing templates, but this generic template appears useful for the infobox. WikiRedactor (talk) 21:44, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Nominator Comment, its obvious this tastes like snow so I am happy for the discussion to close as Keep. → Lil-℧niquԐ 1 - { Talk } - 21:58, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

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.

Johannesburg Region navboxes

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) 00:18, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:Johannesburg Region 1 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Template:Johannesburg Region 2 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Template:Johannesburg Region 3 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Template:Johannesburg Region 4 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Template:Johannesburg Region 5 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Template:Johannesburg Region 8 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Template:Johannesburg Region 9 (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

The 11-region division of Johannesburg was replaced by a subdivision into seven regions in 2006. The navboxes based on this previous regions are no longer useful for navigating between articles and should be deleted.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 01:11, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

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.