Lets just discuss here as the only editor who appears to object to the removal of the styles is the editor who added them in the first place you Your rationale in this revert was Its important to have distinctive aesthetically pleasing boxes to aid navigation Why is this important The trend for years ever since  was formalised has been to move away from custom styling except where it provides some tangible benefit to the reader Here your chosen stying is arbitrary there is nothing in the chosen colour scheme which relates any particular field of nanotech to its colour distracting the colours are bold and clash with the article body and potentially damaging to article accessibility whether by the letter of WPACCESS it is prohibited to change the colour of links or not it is plainly not appropriate to do so on a whim Lastly aesthetically pleasing is in the eye of the beholder and the general move to vanilla styling on sidebar templates strongly suggests that the defaults are aesthetically pleasing to a majority of editors