On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Charles Matthews <[email protected]> wrote: > Carcharoth wrote: >> On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Charles Matthews >> <[email protected]> wrote:
<snip> >>> And another thing - I'd resist this in all cases where there was a place >>> for a person in a line of succession boxes. It is really no good merging >>> an article if it messes up some useful navigation. >>> >> >> Succession boxes are useful navigation? :-) In some places, and for >> some things, yes, but succession boxes can be misused and overused, >> like anything else. In particular, I hate those articles where someone >> held multiple offices and titles and you see 5 or 6 succession boxes >> (or those big list templates) crammed in at the bottom of the article. >> Sure, I use them sometimes to find other articles, but they *look* >> horrible and unprofessional. >> > Oops - you'd better stay away from [[Pope Julius II]], then. I'd argue > that it is exactly in such cases, where someone has a career with > numerous spells holding different offices, that succession boxes show > their greatest value. It is much more clumsy to express such careers in > full detail in the main text. Climbing the greasy pole does belong in > displayed form, I'd say, since those who don't want the details should > be able to ignore them. 15 succession boxes? That must be some kind of record. Personally, I'd find a good timeline there easier to read than trying to work out which bits overlap where from the succession boxes. And its the timeline I want, really, not who came before and after (though that information should still be present if salient and accessible even if not). When you click open the templates at the bottom of Pope Julius II, only about 60% of the article's screenspace is actually the article itself. The other 40% is the succession boxes and templates. Maybe I need to switch to a skin that puts categories somewhere more visible? I wonder if there is also a record for the number of navbox footer templates shoehorned in at the bottom of an article? I found five here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_I_of_England But I'm sure I've seen more. And there is invariably massive redundancy between the template listings, the succession boxes, and the categories (different ways of presenting the same, or nearly the same, information). A better-designed system would give the reader the option to switch on and off the bits they want to see - in a more permanent fashion than "show/hide". Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
