Wikipedia talk:Article series/Archive 2

message: Is there any difference between a Wikipedia:page footers and series boxes apart from their positioning on the page ? Jay 09:56, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Series boxes and page footers 

message: As one of the original proliferators of the idea for making these sidebars (boxes is fine), Im dismissing (no offense to anyone) the senselessly exaggerated claims that Wikipedia will somehow become a repository for garbage or useless schemes. Didnt people say the same thing about the entire idea of creating an encyclopedia in the first place? Some consensus is good, and its good to see that, but this claim that somehow they will get out of hand is nonsense, for the same reason that we dont see any spam or porn here - it gets corrected. After all, the point of these is to make it easier to consolidate and cross reference articles, both for reading and for editing. -Stevertigo 17:28, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The is absolutely nothing that these boxes do that cannot be done with see also links. And how would you keep the boxes from getting out of hand? Which one of the five boxes that I listed as an example for Heteronormativity would you correct, and for what reason? And who could possibly decide which of these boxes get the more prominent place, and which the less prominent one?  Sorry, but they neither help the reader who will be confused by the boxes, not helped, nor any editors, who ought to know anyway where to go from a particular article, and who, instead of writing or improving articles, will be compelled to build more useless boxes themselves so that cross-references don't get drowned by other boxes, and then fight for the positioning of these boxes.  I see the point why those boxes were invented, but the consequences were not very well thought through. -- AlexR 19:34, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I agree with all of that - except that its far easier to add boxes with an msg:box tag than it is to make new ones each time. Thats the point of the Mediawiki namespace - to allow for insertable and editable text - box or not. There are limits to how these can be useful, but your arguments do not hold water, and are reminicent of m:deletionist-style ignoratio elenchi - an extreme exagerration of the possible potential negative behavior of imaginary hooligans. -Stevertigo 01:14, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No - just create the list once, as as at biology, and link to that article. Presto! --mav 03:33, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cut the Nonsense, Please 

message: After much debate on the subject, Hyacinth suggested creating clear guidelines for writing and placing boxes in Talk:Heteronormativity, which is a good idea, in my opinion. Here, therefore, my attempt can be found: User:AlexR/Article series boxes -- AlexR 16:48, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  General proposal on Article Series Boxes 

message: Some people may have a hard time understanding proper box heirarchy : In a case like biology, which has a very detailed list of subfields within biology there is no need to have a biology box there.  If its the top link ("articles in the FOO series"), then if it is to have a box, it will have a MORE GENERAL ONE - one that links to higher categories. Biology, then would have a sciences box leading to other equivalent and related.  Also, lets call these classification boxes, not series boxes - these arent linear - they are paralell, or related links.
Repeat/summary:
*Top level articles should have a higher level classification box. Use the same Wikipedia:classbox if articles fit within the same classification. Some articles may fit under more than one category.
*As an example, dont put the biology classbox on biology. Use the sciences classbox instead.
-Stevertigo 16:35, 6 May 2004 ((Copy this message everywhere that an understanding of this basic principle is lacking.)
: I don't really understand the need to link my name with people above, especially since I never spoke at all about biology or science boxes, neither for nor against them. Also, if you had read the proposal, you might have noticed that I did make a clear distiction between series boxes which link linear and clearly defined and limited topics, and article series boxes, which are what you call classification boxes. So maybe you should try to get an understanding of another basic principle - read first, answer after you read and understood a text, and don't insult people unnecessarily. -- AlexR 18:07, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Watch your box 

message: Right now, political succession boxes just use the wiki table markup (or HTML table markup if they haven't been converted), and they are kind of bland. I liked the way the article series boxes looked and thought we might be able to use them for succession boxes as well; there are some examples on my sandbox page, and comments are welcome. (I'm not sure where exactly this should be discussed, so I hope this is the right place!) Adam Bishop 17:51, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Political succession boxes