Template talk:Eastern Christianity

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Contents 1 Necessity 2 noinclude tag 3 Imbalanced, necessary? 4 Delete? 5 "Eastern Rite" link

[edit] Necessity

Is this template necessary? This template may be replaced with {{portalpar}}. Joelito 15:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Either that or it should be moved to the talk page, as is standard with ads for WikiProjects. - SimonP 22:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Per Template:Christianity, Template:Anglicanism, Template:Methodism, and Category:Religion navigational boxes, I feel this template should be re-written in a manner which reflects the format of these other boxes. Maybe we could start coming up with a list of links for the template?--Andrew c 21:39, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok here are some categories that are found on other boxes to get an idea of what we could include: Background, Doctrinal distinctives/Beliefs/Philosophy, People, Largest groups/Churches, Related movements, Influences, Liturgy and Worship, History, etc.--Andrew c 21:43, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I made a rough draft Template talk:Eastern Christianity/rework, but it seems a little long. Anyone, please feel free to edit it or comment on it here. --Andrew c 02:11, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This template looks really ugly if it is combined with other vertical templates. It has just been added to Syriac language (edit|talk|history|links|logs), I've jigged it around a little but it still looks bad. In that article, the infobox is in first position. I can understand why infoboxes take up that top-right position, they present basic information on the subject. However, this is a navbox, a navigational template, and the general style guideline is to have navboxes as horizontal templates at the bottom of the article. Especially in cases where there is an infobox, this template only serves to clutter the page. Can we not just use the portal box? — Gareth Hughes 19:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] noinclude tag

This template includedes a category, Category:Religion navigational boxes, but in a manner that added the category to all the articles, etc., the template was added to. I've wrapped the category link in "noinclude" tags, which remove the category from the articles, but only after they are edited the next time. If someone wanted to go through all the pages that link here and perform a minor edit to clear the pages' cache, that would be very helpful. Gentgeen 18:56, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Gah, sorry about that. I'm trying to go through all the articles that included the old template and repositioning it so the format looks good, and it doesn't seem like I have any help on that. But, I can go through that category and do as you said, because this mistake was my fault to begin with.--Andrew c 00:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks like all the excess pages have been cleared up (at least on my end it looks that way). I am also to blame for the same mistake at the Anglican template. My bad. At least I can call this a learning experience, heh. Sorry for the hassle.--Andrew c 00:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Imbalanced, necessary?

IMO, the subject is really too complex for this template. The similar one, Template:Christianity, links to multiple overview articles, but Eastern Christianity has realtively few overview articles dedicated to it on WP.

One example of how this template has inherent issues is, for instance, the list of people. It almost seems arbitrary. Thoughts? —Preost ^{talk contribs} 23:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Well you can see the history of this. I brought up changing the format of the old template to something similar to the ones found Category:Religion navigational boxes ten days ago. Later that day, I made a rough draft based on the articles listed at Eastern Christianity portal. I went around posting and asked for input. I went to half a dozen different Christian project pages, I went to the Eastern Christianity portal, I went to the big Eastern Christianity article's talk pages, and no one wanted to help revise the rough draft. I got a very small handful of users that gave positive comments, and no negative comments, so after waiting a week, I let it go live. I really wish others would have been involved in the creation of this (or at least spoken up earlier if people thought that it was not needed). But, now that it is live, more people can see it, and more people are welcome to edit and change it and make it even better. (The reason I feel the old template was bad is because it felt more like something that went on talk pages, not in the main article, and I felt that Eastern Christianity should have a box similar to the Anglicans and Methodists). I apologize if I was too bold in the creation of this, but hopefully an even better template will be produced over the coming days (and weeks). Feel free to change or remove whatever you want. Like I said, I got most of my content from Portal:Eastern Christianity.--Andrew c 00:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The difficulty is in selecting a balanced list of links. The list of church communions is pretty good, and the "Background" section is pretty good, as well. I'm not sure that a list of people could ever be balanced enough, though with some honing, the list of theological distinctives might be good.

I think what the rest needs is for there to be overview articles written on the various topics, which this WikiProject could help to provide. An article on Eastern Orthodox worship or Eastern Orthodox theology would be good, for instance.

Alas, I think Eastern Christianity on Wikipedia probably suffers from roughly the same level of disorganization that it does in real life!  :) —Preost ^{talk contribs} 00:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I agree. Eastern Christianity isn't exactly my fortee, so I think I have gotten myself a bit over my heels on this. Hopefully something usefull and productive, not only to this project, but to the readers of wikipedia, will come from all this. I agree the people listed are sort of random, but then again the ones listed in the Portal aren't much better (if you didn't notice, I trimmed out a good number of people listed on the portal). I think maybe having a list of either famous historical figures and/or a list of the current highest figures of maybe the 5 largest churches would probably be best. Slightly off topic, when going through the articles that transcluded this template, I found a number of lists of Patriarchs of different sects and regions. I'm not sure if that could ever be turned into a template or not, but I think for organizational purposes I think I will work on a list of lists, and maybe start a new category (if one doesn't already exist). --Andrew c 00:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delete?

I trimmed the template considerably, but I still think much needs to be done. Unfortunately, what needs to be done is not so much with this template as with what it could potentially link to.

My opinion is that this template ought to be rendered inactive (removed from articles) until it can link to good overview articles. At this point in the development of articles on Eastern Christianity, this template can't be much more than a list of related articles, but such a list, to be balanced, would have to be massive, thus rendering this template pointless.

My vote is that it be returned to being merely a link to Portal:Eastern Christianity or that it be deleted altogether. Wikipedia just isn't ready for it yet. Perhaps it can come back as templates limited to Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Assyrian Church, etc. What do other folks think? —Preost ^{talk contribs} 18:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Eastern Rite" link

The link for "Eastern Rite" leads to a disambiguation page. I suppose ideally it should lead to a general article about Eastern Christian liturgy, or to a section within Christian liturgy, if there were a good treatment of the subject there. Since that treatment does not seem to exist yet, it may be best to drop the link for now. Does anyone else have any thoughts on how to deal with this? Chonak 21:08, 26 August 2006 (UTC)